Not looking for famous stuff like WTC, Empire state building, Met art museum, etc.
I like Grant’s tomb, don’t know if that is offbeat enough. Only about two other people there when I went.
The Morgan Museum has interesting exhibits in a beautiful building. I saw a great one on Frankenstein in 2018.
There are tons of odd little museums in New York that most people don’t get to.
Paley Park is just a small park with a waterfall in the heart of midtown. I used to go there to eat lunch every day when I worked on Park Avenue one summer.
Forget the circle line, ride the ferries from Wall Street to Astoria, Long Island City and Roosevelt Island. Get off there and visit a lighthouse on the north side and the ruins of an old smallpox hospital on the south side, with a great view of the UN. There is a free bus that goes around the island, and you can take either the subway or a tram back, the tram costing a subway fare.
Check out the Life Underground sculptures in the 14th St/8th Avenue subway stations.
The High Bridge walkway (not the High Line) is where the old Croton Aqueduct crosses the Harlem River. The Cloisters (also with a visit) are half a mile to the north on the Manhattan side, and Yankee Stadium is less than a mile to the south on the Bronx side. The Bronx side is a hilly, leafy yet gritty neighborhood of mainly Dominican families.
Also, in Queens near Shea Stadium (choke-“Citi Field”-choke), is the Queens Museum, including the Panorama, an amazing scale model of the entire city. It was made in the 60s, with sone updates since. More languages are spoken within a couple miles of this than any comparably-sized place on Earth. (So… good food around there!).
The Irish Immigration memorial (the official name might be slightly different), down near Wall Street near the Hudson shore, is a piece of Irish countryside literally transported to this spot, surrounded by gleaming skyscrapers.
Try to do anything that emphasizes the city’s amazing physical geography. That could mean the Circle Line (or, better, the other boats Voyager mentioned), or riding the tram from 59th St and 1st Ave to Roosevelt Island and walking down to the FDR memorial at its tip, or checking out the new mini-parks on the piers in Brooklyn south of the Brooklyn Bridge, or stopping by the River Project in Chelsea (Manhattan), where students and marine biologists are studying and restoring the estuary ecosystems (e.g., oyster beds).
Fifty or so years ago, the journalist William Whyte - who coined the word “groupthink” - was awarded National Geographic’s first grant for a research expedition to an city, arising out of his work with the New York City Planning Commission. He studied urban behavior, and how people interacted with each other and with the urban landscape. (He writes amusingly about having to certify that all his research team had the appropriate vaccinations for New York.)
One of the tasks he set himself was to figure out why some public spaces - parks, plazas, museum forecourts - attracted people, and others didn’t. Paley Park was his favorite example of a successful public space. One of his conclusions were that a space was more attractive if it didn’t require a conscious decision to enter; in other words, if it was easy to wander into. Sunken or raised plazas, that must be entered by climbing or descending narrow steps, didn’t draw the idle passerby. Paley Park apparently has broad, wide steps that are easy to negotiate unconsciously. It also gets sun, but is shaded by trees, and has a water feature that creates white noise.
(Another preference he discovered from direct observation was that people like seating that they can move; when he convinced the Rockefeller Center to take away their fixed benches and replace them with free-standing wire chairs, the pedestrian count went up. Interestingly, people would almost always move them a bit before sitting, if only for a few inches.)
He wrote up his research in The City: Rediscovering the Center, which is eminently readable and entertaining for a book about city planning and urban design.
Good one. It was made for the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The building was the New York City Pavilion. It is one of the few structures that survived. I saw it when it opened.
You get to the fairgrounds on the 7 line, second to last stop. Last stop is Main Street Flushing with the amazing food mentioned.
Who is buried there?
If you head up to Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, you’ll see a neighborhood that doesn’t look like what you’d expect in Manhattan. Go further north, to the mainland, and you’ll find Marble Hill. It used to be on Manhattan Island, and is considered part of the borough. However, it’s a place where you’ll see detached houses.
You check out Forgotten New York http://forgotten-ny.com
^ yes that Forgotten New York site is amazing.
That’s one of those “dumb questions” that has a counterintuitive answer. Actually, no one is buried there. The remains of Grant and his wife reside in sarcophagi, rather than being buried in the ground.
Obscura! You might be familiar with their TV show.
I would go with NY waterways ferry as recommended, not circle line. I did circle line and after a hour or so I felt it was really dragging and I was missing out on other stuff. The ferry service is also surprisingly fast, that boat moves and gets you to other places to explore.
Walk along Broadway from 96th street to the South of the island. You’ll see a nice variety of the city.
I’m fond of the cloisters, and I like the little formal garden tucked into Central Park. (It’s towards the North of the park, but i forget its name.)
Fort Tryon. Good call. See my mention of the nearby High Bridge (again, not the High Line! Though that’s worth doing, too, despite the hype).
I was trying to think of a walk that would accomplish what you suggested, and you nailed it. Note how every building is different (often, from a different era than its neighbor) — and has interesting middle and upper parts. Drink in some of the details with your eyes (and ears, and nose). Be sure to walk a block or two down several random side streets.
And if a cab pulls over to the sidewalk and a passenger begs you to help answer a trivia question, give it your best shot!
I really enjoyed the Tenement Museum.
Yeah, that’s worth a look. You can try to get into Electric Lady Studio, built by Jimi Hendrix. My wife talked us through the front door and we were shown around, but it’s not a tourist place, but rather an active recording studio.
And if you keep going north from Fort Tryon Park, you’ll get to Inwood Park, which has the last forest stand and brackish marsh in Manhattan, along with what’s believed to be the place where Manhattan was “bought” from the Lenape. You can also go to the Indian Road Cafe, which is very good. (I used to do their trivia nights every Wednesday. They were great!)
If you go south from Fort Tryon, you can eat at Golan Heights. The atmosphere is zero, and the tables are almost always grubby, but those guys have truly amazing Israeli food. (Golan Heights is right near Yeshiva University, so there are also some other interesting kosher restaurants nearby. There was a great kosher Chinese place that did interesting fusion Chinese-American and Ashkenazi Jewish food. The pastrami egg rolls were delicious. It’s not exactly fine dining, but it’s culinarily interesting. I can’t remember what the place is called, though. Phooey. Maybe you could find out with a little research.)
Go a bit further south, and you can visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion and the Hispanic Society of America Museum and Library.
If you keep going south, you’ll get to Harlem. The Studio Museum there is good. You can also head into the area that’s now called “Little West Africa” or “Petit Senegal” and visit the Malcolm Shabazz Market. If you’ve never had Senegalese cuisine, try the bakery at Les Ambassades and the buffet at Baobab.
You’re spoiled for choice for great food in Harlem. You could eat at at one of the amazing places on Frederick Douglass Blvd., which is basically a row of amazing restaurants now. Or you could also head to Sylvia’s, the soul food place Bill Clinton loved (Somehow, the food is better at the lunch counter than in the sit-down dining area. I don’t know why that is, but that’s been my experience. And I think the food is better at Amy Ruth’s, but that’s me.)
Keep going south, and you’ll get to the Upper West Side.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a cathedral and art exhibition space, is worth a visit. There’s also a cool sculpture garden area, which has a few peacocks wandering around during the warmer months.
Near the cathedral is Book Culture, which is an awesome bookstore. There’s also a very good dessert place called “The Hungarian Pastry Shop.” Combine those three things, and you have a very pleasant afternoon.
If you want a bit of serenity, go to the Nicholas Roerich Museum. Nearby, if you go in the morning, you can have what are, IMHO, the best bagels in New York at Absolute Bagel.
Are you a fan of pencils, stationery, and stickers? There’s a store, CW Pencil Enterprise, dedicated specifically to pencils, although there’s also a big sticker room. It tends to be a hit with visitors, AFAIK. And you can eat at Cheeky Sandwiches when you’re done.
Just to be clear–CW Pencil Enterprise isn’t on the Upper West Side. It’s down near Chinatown, IIRC
The Museum of the Moving Image is good, as is theNew Museum.