There’s a moment, right around the time the sun starts dipping behind the Manhattan skyline, when the 22nd floor of The William Vale stops feeling like a rooftop bar and starts feeling like the best seat in the entire city. The glass railings disappear into the view. The whole grid of lower Manhattan — the Empire State Building, the Chrysler’s silver crown, the financial district stacked behind it — lines up across the East River like someone arranged it for you on purpose. Let me show you Westlight, because if you only know Williamsburg from street level, you have never seen it like this.

The Highest Rooftop in Brooklyn

Westlight sits on top of The William Vale, the slender hotel tower that rises improbably out of low-slung North Williamsburg like a periscope. At 22 floors, it is one of the tallest buildings in the neighborhood, and that height is the entire point. Most Brooklyn rooftops give you a flattering angle on the Manhattan skyline. Westlight gives you the whole thing — a near-360-degree sweep that pulls in the skyscrapers across the river, the Williamsburg Bridge to the south, and, when you turn around, the rolling brownstone-and-warehouse texture of Brooklyn fanning out toward the horizon.

The bar is the work of Chef Andrew Carmellini and his NoHo Hospitality Group, the team behind a string of beloved New York rooms, and you can taste the attention in the small plates — globally-minded street food designed to be passed around a high-top while the light changes. But nobody comes to Westlight first for the food. They come for the wraparound terrace, the floor-to-ceiling glass, and that specific Brooklyn magic of watching Manhattan light up from the outside, like you’re a guest at the city’s window rather than lost somewhere in its machinery.

What It Feels Like To Be Up There

Step off the elevator and the room opens up in two directions. Inside, it’s warm and low-lit, all rich wood and soft amber, a place that feels like a cocktail lounge that happens to float. But the move is to push straight through to the outdoor terrace, where the wind picks up, the city noise drops away into a distant hum, and suddenly you’re standing in open air a couple hundred feet above Wythe Avenue with nothing between you and the skyline but a pane of glass.

Time it for golden hour and the experience reorganizes itself around the sun. The glass towers across the river catch fire one by one. The Empire State Building, dead ahead, glows pink and then deepens to that floodlit white. Down below, the ferries cut bright wakes across the East River. People stop mid-sentence. Phones come out. And then the sky goes navy, the city flips fully into its nighttime self, and the whole thing becomes a different bar entirely — sleeker, later, the kind of place where a Friday night stretches comfortably toward two in the morning.

The Williamsburg Below

What makes Westlight feel earned, rather than just tall, is the neighborhood it crowns. North Williamsburg spent a century as an industrial waterfront — sugar refineries, breweries, shipping — before it became the cultural shorthand it is today. The William Vale planted itself right in the middle of that transformation, and from the rooftop you can read the whole story at once: the converted warehouses, the new glass condos, the stubborn old low-rises, and across the water, the Manhattan that all of it has always been in conversation with. It’s a view with an argument in it, which is more than most rooftops can say.

How to Visit

Address: Westlight, atop The William Vale, 111 N 12th Street, 22nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11249.

Hours: Monday–Thursday 4pm–12am; Friday 4pm–2am; Saturday 12pm–2am; Sunday 12pm–12am. Friday is the late one — the bar stays open until 2am, which makes it a genuine after-dark destination, not just a sunset stop.

Nearest subway: The Bedford Avenue station on the L train is the closest, roughly a 9-minute walk. The Nassau Avenue stop on the G train is also nearby if you’re coming from elsewhere in Brooklyn or Queens.

Cost: This is a premium cocktail bar — expect Manhattan-priced drinks and small plates. There’s no admission charge to ride up, but it’s a sit-down, order-something kind of room, especially as it fills.

Good to know: Guests under 21 are admitted until 6PM daily, after which it’s a 21-and-over room. On a clear Friday evening the terrace fills fast as sunset approaches, so it pays to arrive ahead of the light.

Insider Tip: Everyone fixates on the Manhattan-facing side, and it’s spectacular — but the locals’ secret is to claim a spot on the opposite edge of the terrace, looking back over Brooklyn. You get the underrated view of the borough sprawling toward the horizon, far fewer people, and — crucially — you’re positioned to watch the sunset light hit the Manhattan skyline rather than staring directly into the glare. The city looks best when it’s the thing being lit, not the thing you’re squinting at.

Why You’ll Remember It

New York has dozens of rooftop bars, and plenty of them sell a view. What Westlight sells is altitude with a point of view — the rare Brooklyn vantage tall enough to hold the entire Manhattan skyline in one frame, perched over a neighborhood that spent a hundred years earning the right to look back across the river. Come for the Friday sunset, stay until the city turns to lights, and you’ll understand why this one keeps the after-dark crowd until closing.

Looking for more elevated New York? Explore our other rooftop and skyline guides for the city’s best sunset spots, free observation decks, and hidden views most New Yorkers walk right past.