The short answer
Pick Hell's Kitchen if your trip is built around Broadway and late dinners. Pick the Upper East Side if you want to sleep with the window open and walk to Central Park before breakfast. That's the whole decision, and everything below is just the detail behind it.
We're on East 62nd Street, so we're not neutral. But we send people to the west side all the time when it's the right call, and this is the honest version of the comparison.
Where each one actually is
Hell's Kitchen runs roughly from West 34th Street up to West 59th, from Eighth Avenue west to the Hudson. Its spine is Ninth Avenue, and its most-photographed block is Restaurant Row, West 46th between Eighth and Ninth. The theatre district sits directly on its eastern edge, which is the entire reason people stay there.
The Upper East Side starts at 59th Street and runs north along Central Park to 96th. We're in Lenox Hill, the lower chunk of it, at East 62nd between First and Second. Fifth Avenue and the park are eight minutes west of our door. Bloomingdale's is at 59th and Lexington, three blocks south.
What Hell's Kitchen actually gives you
Proximity, and a lot of it. From Ninth Avenue you can walk to most Broadway houses in ten to fifteen minutes, which matters when you've got an 8pm curtain and a 2pm matinee on the same day. Ninth Avenue between 42nd and 55th is one of the densest eating strips in Manhattan, and a real share of it is open past midnight, because it feeds the people who work the shows.
You also get the river. Pier 83 at West 42nd is where the Circle Line boats leave from, and the Intrepid is up at Pier 86. Hudson River Park runs the whole western edge, and it's a genuinely good run or walk.
What you're trading: it's loud. Eighth and Ninth Avenues carry traffic, sirens, and bar noise well past 1am, and the blocks between them aren't much quieter on a Friday. If you're a light sleeper or you're bringing kids who go down at eight, read that as a real cost, not a small one.
What the Upper East Side actually gives you
Quiet, the park, and the museums. Midtown's best blocks are the quiet ones, and the East 60s are the clearest example: side streets of townhouses where the loudest thing at 11pm is somebody walking a dog.
Central Park is the other half of it. The Fifth Avenue entrance at 60th Street is about an eight-minute walk from us, which puts the Zoo, the Mall, and the Reservoir loop inside a casual morning. Museum Mile starts at the Met on Fifth at 82nd and runs north from there.
What you're trading: nightlife. The East 60s are not where you go for a 1am cocktail bar, and if you want one you'll take a train. Restaurants here mostly stop seating around ten on weeknights. That's a feature if you're here to sleep well and a bug if you're here to stay out.
Getting between them, because you'll do it daily
This is the part people overestimate. From Lexington Avenue/63rd Street, the closest station to us, the Q goes one stop to 57 St-7 Av. From there it's about a ten-minute walk up to the 45th Street theatres. Door to curtain is comfortably half an hour if you're not dawdling.
Going the other way, Hell's Kitchen sits on the A, C and E along Eighth Avenue (42 St-Port Authority and 50 St), with the 1 at 50th Street. To reach the Upper East Side from there you'll cross town, usually via the shuttle at Times Square or the E to Lexington Av/53 St, then up. It works, it's just a two-seat ride most of the time.
Money and space
At the same nightly number you'll generally get more room on the Upper East Side than you will a block off Times Square, because you're not paying the theatre-district premium. That gap widens the longer you stay. If you're here a week or more, space and a kitchen start to matter more than being 400 feet closer to a stage door.
Who should pick which
Pick Hell's Kitchen if: you've got three or more shows booked, you eat dinner after 10pm, you're here two or three nights, and noise doesn't wake you.
Pick the Upper East Side if: you're travelling with kids or a dog, you're staying five nights or longer, you want the park and the museums, you like a neighbourhood that isn't performing for tourists, or you simply sleep badly in loud rooms.
Where we fit in
We're apartments, not hotel rooms. No lobby, no key card, just your own front door and a code we text you before you arrive. Every apartment has a kitchen, which is the thing that makes a long stay here feel different from a week in a Midtown hotel room, and we run from studios up to the whole house. We don't have a rooftop or a gym, and we'd rather say so up front than have you find out on arrival. Dogs are welcome. Stay three nights or three weeks, it's your apartment.