5 Places to Find Quiet in the City
To someone used to life in the country or a small town, big cities can feel like an assault. Noise is a constant—from construction to traffic to the garbled mix of too many people all talking too loudly at the same time. In cities, advertising billboards scream (metaphorically) from every angle. Elbows are jostled, shoulders are bumped. Everything is constantly, maddeningly in motion.
Even seasoned city dwellers sometimes need a break from it all. We all need moments of peace in our lives, and we can’t always return to our own homes to get it. Here are five places to find quiet in the heart of a city.
1. Libraries and Bookstores
Maybe it’s due to years of conditioning with shushing librarian tropes, but there seems to be a social compact in play that says books deserve quiet spaces. Even vast and highly-trafficked downtown libraries usually adhere to the rule, and they almost always have a study desk or reading chair available to sit and soak in the silence. My go-to in Seattle was the top floor of the Central Library, where I could look down at the city while I worked.
Bookstores, especially independent ones, often have the coziest and most unexpected corners. Tattered Cover in LoDo Denver, has a smattering of chairs and tables atop its iconic green carpet, but the real prize is a high-backed wooden booth near the checkout counter. Just make sure to make a purchase if you’re planning to stay for long. It won’t be hard to find something you want, and supporting local bookstores is the only way to keep them alive.
2. Botanical Gardens and Parks
While botanical gardens usually require an admission fee, it may be worth it to spring for an annual membership if you live near one. Good garden designers create spaces within spaces, so it’s possible to stroll from one garden to the next feeling like you have the whole world to yourself. The plants create natural blocks for sound and vision lines, too, so they truly provide a respite from the city.
The best city parks offer a similar escape, having been designed by landscape architects to be multifunctional green spaces that somehow manage to welcome some aspects of urban life while providing an oasis from others. My husband and I once spent a lovely morning walking the trails in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, in our own world of hellebores and dogwood blossoms, while volleyball games, picnics, morning jogs, and dog runs played out in their own timelines nearby.
3. Coffee and Tea Shops
If walking into a coffee shop isn’t a door to another world, then I don’t know what is. Starbucks used to market their cafés as a “third place”—as in, their locations could be the next comfortable option beside your home and your office. The marketing strategy may be unique to Starbucks, but the concept isn’t. Hot drinks are for slow sipping and savoring. They naturally require a place amenable to comfortable lingering.
My favorite coffee and tea shops are the ones that foster an atmosphere all their own. My three favorites in Seattle were as different as they could possibly be, aside from their steamy, coffee-scented interiors. One served Cuban coffee in a brightly-painted space adorned with red devils and folk art flowers. Another soothed with a zen fountain and Turkish tile, embroidered cushions strewn haphazardly on light wood benches. A third placed lush leather armchairs facing a massive plate glass window so that one might sit for hours people-watching and sipping the most lush, velvety cappuccinos known to humanity. All three were their own worlds, separate from the city around them.
4. Museums
If you’ve ever been to a museum on free day (or the really famous ones on any day), you’re probably shaking your head and wondering what’s wrong with me. I’m not gonna lie—museums can be as hot, tiring, and crowded as theme parks if you catch the wrong one on the wrong day. If you catch the right one on the right day, though, they can be absolute introvert nirvana. (This is true of theme parks too, by the way, but that’s a story for another day.)
When my husband and I arrived in London on a trip in the late 1990s, I was so jet lagged, culture-shocked, and overwhelmed by my first time leaving the US that I burst into tears when faced with a coin-operated toilet in the train station. (In my defense, I didn’t have the right coins, and I really had to go!) I wanted nothing more than to hole up in a hotel room and block out the city for eight or ten hours. With limited time and not wanting to extend our jet lag any longer than necessary, we opted, instead, to drop our bags in the room, make use of the coin-free facilities there, and head straight to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It couldn’t have been more perfect. The quiet, dark galleries, rich with British history, eased the transition and soothed my overstimulated mind. If you’re looking for quiet, you could do a lot worse than a room lined with softly-lit dioramas.
5. Up High
My favorite takeaway from William Powers’ wonderful book, New Slow City was his assertion that cities take on a different character at the third story. Three stories above the ground, is high enough to rise above the people, the cars, the traffic signals, and billboards. Higher is even better. It’s no wonder the viewing balconies at the tops of cities’ tallest buildings are such popular attractions. It’s not just about the views, which are certainly awe-inspiring and perspective-shifting, it’s the feeling of being in another world, far from the hubbub below.
While house hunting in Los Angeles, a rooftop patio became an unexpected must-have on my list of features once we settled on the idea of an urban small-lot location. I’ve never regretted it. Any time you have a chance to climb above the third story, take it.
Quiet places in a city aren’t terribly hard to find if you know what you’re looking for, but they’re all the more special for their contrast with the noise around them. Take the time to notice the moments when the door closes behind you, a wall of leaves blocks your view of the freeway, when it’s so quiet you can hear your own breath, and when the city lights recede to become twinkles in the distance. Savor those times. They’ll hold you through when the world speeds up up again and the volume is turned to maximum.
Like this? There’s more on Patreon. My essay, “On Quiet Places” is a poetic and personal take on being an introvert in the city, as seen through the lens of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.
