Outside in New York
Things to do, by neighborhood
Places
75 placesEvery place we cover, A to Z. Pick a stop for somewhere to be before or after.
Four blocks of lawn and benches running north from 33rd Street between the Hudson Boulevards, planted for pollinators and mostly empty on a weekday afternoon.
Daily, 6am to 11pm
The Bohemian Citizens' Benevolent Society was founded in 1892 and put up this building in 1910, and the yard behind it is still run by the society. It is long trestle tables under trees with a beer window at one end and a Czech kitchen indoors. The complex holds 800 people and operates year-round, so the garden is usable in October as well as July. You find a space at a shared table and go and get your own beer.
Tue to Thu, 5pm to midnight. Fri, 3pm to midnight. Sat, noon to 1am. Sun, noon to 10pm. Closed Mon
A paved trail that follows the Bronx River north through Westchester, part of the first linear park in the country, opened in 1925. The stretch nearest the theater runs through trees between the parkway and the water, so the traffic is audible but not visible. It is flat and easy, and you can do fifteen minutes of it and turn back.
Open daily, dawn to dusk
The northern end of the park, between the two bridges, where the old Fulton Ferry landing and Pebble Beach sit on the water. Pebble Beach is a short shingle strand you can walk down onto, with the Manhattan skyline framed by the bridge cables, and Jane's Carousel is in its glass pavilion a minute away. The park is free and open from 6am to 1am, and the carousel charges two dollars a ride on a seasonal schedule.
Every day, 6am to 1am. Jane's Carousel runs seasonally, roughly 11am to 6:50pm weekdays and 10am to 6:50pm weekends in summer
A third of a mile of walkway cantilevered over the BQE, with benches facing the harbor and the lower Manhattan skyline. The traffic runs underneath you and you mostly stop hearing it. Entrances are at the west ends of Montague, Remsen, Pierrepont, Clark and Pineapple Streets. Orange Street also leads in, and it costs nothing at any hour.
Open 24 hours, with occasional closures for permitted events
Seventy-five acres of steep woodland on South Greenbush Road, opened to the public in 1975, built around a waterfall coming down the Palisades ridge. A short path leads from the parking area to the falls and the stream below them, and other trails climb to two overlooks that take in the Ramapos to the west and South Mountain to the north. The whole circuit is about a mile and a quarter and takes an hour. There is no fee.
Daily, 6am to 6pm
The park sits on a deck built over the FDR Drive between 84th and 90th, so the promenade along the top looks straight out at the East River and Hell Gate with the traffic running underneath and out of sight. The walkway is called the John Finley Walk and it continues south to 81st Street. Gracie Mansion is at the north end. There are benches the whole way and the wind off the water is the point.
Daily, 6am to 1am. The playground closes at 9pm from March to October and 6pm in winter
The green at Eleventh Avenue and 23rd, part of Hudson River Park, with a turf field, a free public basketball court, a playground and one of the bigger dog runs in Manhattan. Benches face the river. It is the nearest grass to the gallery blocks and to the two West Chelsea venues, and none of it costs anything.
Mon to Sun, 6am to 1am
A small triangle of park across from the Stonewall Inn that became the first unit of the National Park System dedicated to LGBTQ history. George Segal's white sculpture of two couples sits inside the railings. A visitor center opened at 51 Christopher Street, the first of its kind in the park system, and costs nothing to enter.
Christopher Park: 7am to 8pm from May 1 to October 30, and 7am to 5pm from November 1 to April 30. Visitor center: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm. Both are free
A block-through garden the neighborhood bought back from the city for a dollar in 1984. The front half stays open to anyone during daylight.
Front gate open during daylight hours. Back garden by member key
Lawn and a pier over the Hudson five minutes from Terminal 5. A good way to spend the gap between doors and the set you actually came for.
Daily, 6am to 1am
The park sits on the ground that used to be Five Points, and the neighborhood now plays mahjong under the pavilion for most of the day. Erhu players and singers set up along the paths in the afternoon. Tai chi groups take the benches early in the morning.
Daily, 6am to 1am
The ornamental pond just inside Central Park at Fifth and 74th, where people sail model boats. Kerbs Boathouse on the east side was built in 1953 and rents the boats to walk-ups, with races on Saturday mornings from about ten. There are benches all the way round and the Alice in Wonderland group is at the north end. The boathouse opens at half past seven and runs to dusk.
Boathouse daily, 7:30am to dusk. The park itself, 6am to 1am
Six and a half acres on the site of Peter Cooper's glue works, which his descendants sold to the city in 1895. A 2012 rebuild put in turf, a concrete skate park and a quarter-mile jogging loop. The dog run sits in the southwest corner at Sharon Street and Morgan Avenue.
Open daily under the standard NYC Parks schedule of 6am to 1am.
The Wonder Wheel was built in 1920 and has been turning on the same spot ever since, with swinging cars on the inner ring and fixed ones on the outer. Entry to the park is free and you buy rides one at a time, so a single turn on the wheel is ten dollars and about four minutes. The Vourderis family has run it since 1983.
Opens late March for weekends, then daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends into the fall. Shut from late autumn to March
Five acres along the East River on the site of the Domino Sugar Refinery, with an elevated walkway built from the old crane tracks and syrup tanks left standing in the middle of it. It runs from Grand Street down to South 5th, directly under the Williamsburg Bridge at the far end. Open at 6am.
Daily, 6am to 11pm. Free
Thirty-six acres of tidal marsh on the bay side of the peninsula, reaching northeast into Jamaica Bay between Sommerville Basin and Grass Hassock Channel. The Red Trail starts at Bayfield Avenue and Beach 65th Street and runs out along the shore, with Manhattan visible about fifteen miles off on a clear day. It sits on the Atlantic Flyway, so egrets, herons, hawks and ducks are the usual company, and swimming is not allowed.
Daily, dawn to dusk
Four and a half acres on the Kill Van Kull at the foot of Faber Street, with a skate park, basketball courts, a playground and shaded grass, and tankers and tugs going past a few hundred feet away. The pool at the center of it opened in July 1932 so that children would stop swimming in the channel, and at 140 by 75 feet it was the largest on Staten Island when it was built. The Bayonne Bridge is the thing you look at.
Park open daily, 6am to dusk. The outdoor pool is summer only, Tue to Fri 10am to 6pm and Sat noon to 8pm, closed Sunday and Monday
Brooklyn's first public park, set aside in 1845 after Walt Whitman argued for it in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and laid out by Olmsted and Vaux. The 200-foot column at the top is the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, put up in 1908 over a crypt holding remains of some of the 11,500 people who died on British prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay. Wallabout Bay is the water the Navy Yard was later built on.
Open 6am to 1am daily. The visitor center runs 8am to 4pm, later in summer
The park runs along the cliffs above the Hudson, with the George Washington Bridge and the New Jersey Palisades in front of you the whole way. The three-acre Heather Garden holds about 660 varieties and is open to anyone without a gate or a ticket. Linden Terrace at the high point is where people end up sitting.
Daily, 6am to 1am. The Heather Garden has unrestricted access
A volunteer club that has been putting people on the Gowanus Canal for over twenty years, from a dock at the end of 2nd Street. Walk-up paddling is free, you get a life jacket and a paddle and a short safety talk, and then you are out on the water that the neighborhood is named for. Sessions run on scattered afternoons from late spring into October.
Walk-up paddling 1pm to 5pm on scheduled dates, roughly late May through mid-October. Check the club calendar before going
A triangle of movable chairs under plane trees between Broadway and Sixth, with ping pong tables at one end and a clean public restroom at the other. Horace Greeley sits in the middle looking unimpressed.
Daily, 7am to 10pm. Restroom 8am to 10pm
One of the first parks the City of Brooklyn ever laid out, on land taken in 1857 and built between 1870 and 1871 to an Olmsted and Vaux plan. It was Tompkins Park until it was renamed for Herbert Von King, a community leader people called the mayor of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The amphitheater in the middle carries free performances through the summer.
Open 6am to 1am daily. The cultural arts center inside keeps its own shorter hours
The last natural forest and the last salt marsh left in Manhattan are both here, along with glacial potholes in the rock and some of the largest tulip trees in the city. Trails climb the ridge from Seaman Avenue and the marsh is tidal and brackish, with crabs and waterfowl in it. The nature center on the water reopened in 2024 after twelve years shut following Hurricane Sandy.
Park open daily, 6am to 1am. Nature center weekends only, 10am to noon and 1pm to 3pm
A full square block of park that Kings County bought in 1895 and laid out with curving paths the following year. The brick shelter in the middle went up in 1905 and is still there. This is the only real green space at the southern end of Bushwick, where the venues thin out.
Playground hours 6am to 9pm. The paths and benches are open through the day
A small park east of York Avenue on 77th, on the block called Cherokee Place, stepping down toward the river, with an outdoor pool and a playground and benches under the trees. It is the closest green space to Bohemian National Hall by a wide margin. There is nothing scenic about the approach and the park itself is a genuine relief from the avenues.
Daily, 6am to 1am. The outdoor pool runs 11am to 7pm in season, closed 3pm to 4pm for cleaning
A long strip of park along the Grand Concourse above 161st Street, with the Lorelei Fountain at its southern end. The fountain is a marble memorial to Heinrich Heine that Ernst Herter finished in 1893, was turned down by Düsseldorf, got bought by German-Americans in New York instead and was dedicated here in July 1899. It was vandalised almost immediately and restored again in 1999. There are benches, chess tables and a view straight down the Concourse.
Open 6am to 1am daily, the standard NYC Parks schedule. Parks does not post hours for this park specifically
Two hundred and thirty-five acres east of Queens College, built around Kissena Lake with a loop path, a velodrome that is the only outdoor cycling track in the city, and a grove of rare trees left over from a nineteenth-century commercial nursery. The lake path is about half a mile. The corridor along the old railbed connects it north toward Flushing. It is free and open from early morning.
Daily, 6am to 1am
The operating amusement park that took over the old Astroland footprint in 2010 and now runs most of the rides between West 10th and West 16th, including the Cyclone and the Thunderbolt. You buy credits at a kiosk or a wristband and walk on, and a single ride is cheap enough to do one thing and leave. The season runs from late March to the end of October and the schedule thins out sharply once school starts.
Seasonal. Daily 11am to 10pm in summer, later Fri and Sat. From mid September it is weekends only plus Halloween Harvest dates, with weekday opens as late as 4pm. Closed November to late March
Six acres between 23rd and 26th with a reflecting pool and a rotating outdoor art commission that changes a few times a year. The benches under the plane trees face the Flatiron Building. It is the nearest green ground to the Jazz Gallery by a distance.
6am to 11pm from November 1 to May 31, and 6am to midnight from June 1 to October 31. Lawn access daily 10am to 7pm, weather permitting
The park sits on a rock outcrop that Fifth Avenue had to divide around, and at the top of it stands the Harlem Fire Watchtower, cast in 1856 and the last structure of its kind left in the city. Parks took the tower apart in 2014, sent it out of state and put it back in December 2019 after a $7.9 million rebuild. Urban Park Rangers unlock the gate and walk people up on selected days.
Park open daily, 6am to 1am. Watchtower access only on scheduled Urban Park Ranger tours
Bushwick's main park, seven acres between Knickerbocker and Irving, with paths laid out in 1896 by the same landscape thinking behind Washington Square. It was renamed in 1989 for a resident who organized her block against the drug trade and was killed for it. A 2007 mosaic of a green parrot near the entrance marks the neighborhood's Puerto Rican community.
Daily from 6am until 1am
Seven acres of lawn on the East River at the foot of North 8th Street, on the site of the old Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal. It was East River State Park until 2020, when the state renamed it for Marsha P. Johnson. The Manhattan skyline sits directly across the water.
Daily, 10am to dusk. Free
Thirty-five acres straddling the line between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, opened in 1906, with a running track around the playing field and a WPA-era pool at the Lorimer Street end. Sunday afternoons the soccer pitches are all in use. It is the one piece of open ground both neighborhoods share.
Daily, 6am to 1am. Free
The Midland Avenue end of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Boardwalk, which runs about two and a half miles north from here toward Fort Wadsworth with the Verrazzano bridge in front of you the whole way. A sea turtle fountain sits at the entrance and there is a playground beside it. The beach itself is guarded from Memorial Day weekend to the Sunday after Labor Day.
Boardwalk daily, 6am to 9pm. Lifeguards 10am to 6pm in beach season
Six acres of triangular green between Broad Street and NJPAC, laid out to a Frederick Law Olmsted plan. There is a carousel, a café kiosk and seasonal programming from the city parks foundation in warm weather. It is the piece of downtown Newark that has benches and people sitting on them before an event.
Daily, 7am to 9pm
The stretch of restored riverbank that runs along the west edge of downtown, with paths on both banks of the Mill River and a carousel in a glass pavilion at the middle of it. A grove of cherry trees survives from the old park and flowers in April. In winter the lawn beside the carousel becomes an outdoor skating rink run by the same nonprofit that maintains the park.
Daily, 7am to 10pm. Carousel and rink keep their own shorter hours
A hundred and eighty-seven acres of flat former airfield at the foot of New Dorp Lane, now ball fields, a bocce court, picnic tables and a stand of swamp white oak that birders walk. Two enormous 1920s seaplane hangars still stand at the edge of it. A short beach runs along the bay side, though the Park Service does not recommend going in.
Daily, 6am to 9pm. Ranger station 8:30am to 5pm
Thirty acres on the rock escarpment that separates Morningside Heights from Harlem, laid out to plans by Olmsted and Vaux. Stone staircases run down the cliff face to an ornamental pond and waterfall added in 1990, where herons turn up. A farmers market sets up on Saturdays.
Daily, 6am to 1am, the standard NYC Parks schedule. The Saturday farmers market runs through the morning and early afternoon
Eighty-three acres of wooded hillside on the east side of Mountainview Avenue, held by Rockland County and managed for hiking rather than recreation. The Long Path runs through it. There are two viewpoints, one west over the Ramapos and one east to the bridge across the Thruway cut, and a wet stretch near the top called Bear Swamp. A full loop is about three miles with 567 feet of climb.
Daily, 8am to 8pm
Three acres of lawn and paths opened in May 2019 on the block facing the Prudential Center, with a children's play area, a splash pad and benches under young trees. It is the piece of ground that links the arena, Penn Station and the edge of the Ironbound, and in December it fills up with the Newark Winter Village. A pedestrian bridge over McCarter Highway and the rail tracks is the unfinished second phase.
Daily, dawn to dusk
Two hundred and fifty acres on the far side of the Bronx River from Fordham, with the glass Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the middle of it and fifty acres of forest that was never cleared. You can spend twenty minutes or four hours in it and it works either way. New York City residents get the outdoor grounds free on Wednesdays, and everyone gets them free between ten and eleven that morning.
Tue to Sun, 10am to 6pm, and select Monday holidays. All-Garden Pass thirty-five dollars on a weekday and thirty-nine at a weekend, fifteen and seventeen for children two to twelve. NYC residents can buy grounds-only access for fifteen dollars, and get the grounds free all day on Wednesdays
Philip Johnson's 1964 pavilion stands directly beside Queens Theatre, which is in fact the pavilion's old theater building. The Tent of Tomorrow is an open steel ring on sixteen columns. Its roof cables are long gone. Three observation towers rise behind it. You cannot go inside: a $54 million restoration has been underway and the interior remains fenced. From the path you are a few feet from it and the scale reads properly from there.
Visible from the surrounding park paths at any hour, daily 6am to 1am. The interior is fenced and closed to the public
The triangle of green at Westchester Square, bounded by East Tremont Avenue, Lane Avenue and Westchester Avenue, with benches, grass and a World War I memorial in the middle of it. A five million dollar rebuild finished in 2013 added a pedestrian plaza and an outdoor performance space, which is why the square now reads as somewhere to sit rather than somewhere to cross. It is named for a local teacher who gave a speech at the memorial's unveiling in 1925 and collapsed and died minutes after sitting down.
Daily, 6am to 1am
A pier built out over the Hudson at the end of North Moore Street, with a boardwalk that steps down toward the water and a tidal marsh at the far end. It opened in 2020 and the planting is native species meant to show what the shoreline held before the city did. The park it belongs to stays open until 1am.
Hudson River Park is open daily 6am to 1am unless otherwise posted. Individual facilities on the pier may close earlier
The Christopher Street pier, rebuilt as a lawn and a boardwalk that runs 850 feet into the Hudson. People sunbathe on the grass in the afternoon and the west-facing end is where the sunset is. It is the closest open water to the West Village stages.
Hudson River Park operates a 1am curfew across the park. The lawn and the pier itself are open daylight hours
Two acres of lawn and benches on the roof of Pier 57, which is the same building City Winery is in. It opened in 2022 as a public condition of the pier's restoration, it costs nothing, and it stays open until one in the morning. You get in through the ground floor entrance at the south end, next to City Winery, then take the stairs or the elevator up. The view is downtown, the harbor and Little Island directly below.
Mon to Sun, 6am to 1am
An outdoor counter at the end of a pier in Riverside Park South, with tables facing the Hudson and New Jersey behind it. You order at the window and take whatever table is free. It runs from May to the middle of October and shuts for the winter.
Seasonal, May to mid-October. Daily 8:30am to 10pm, with a coffee window from 8:30am and the full menu from 11:30am
Two white wings forty feet high standing on the esplanade just north of the ferry terminal, facing the gap in the Lower Manhattan skyline. Inside them are 274 plaques, one for each Staten Island resident killed on September 11, 2001 and in the 1993 bombing, each carrying a name and birthday. A job and profile silhouette complete each plaque. It was designed by Masayuki Sono, who won an open competition in 2003, and dedicated on the third anniversary. The esplanade it sits on runs along the harbor past the ballpark and is open and free.
Outdoor and publicly accessible. The esplanade is a city waterfront walk with no gate and no admission
Come in at the Grand Army Plaza entrance and the path drops you under Endale Arch, which Olmsted and Vaux built to cut off the city before it opens onto the mile-long Long Meadow. The arch was stripped back to its original banded woodwork and sandstone in a restoration finished in 2020. Past it the meadow is flat, open and full of people lying on the grass, and it runs most of the length of the park.
Park open every day, 5am to 1am
Thirty-nine acres that began as a five-acre horticultural exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair and stayed. There is a rose garden, a wedding garden, a bee garden and a visitor center that was the first building in New York City to win platinum green certification. Admission is free from November through March and cheap the rest of the year.
Tue to Sun, 8am to 6pm April through October. Tue to Sun, 8am to 4:30pm November through March. Closed Mon
A brick plaza off Main Street with a fountain, seating and a run of shade trees, wedged between the office towers and the shopping district. There is a greenmarket on it most Wednesdays in season and a stage that gets used for free summer concerts. The rest of the time it is simply somewhere to sit outside downtown that is not a parking structure.
Open daily, dawn to dusk
Two and a half miles of boardwalk opened in 1923, running from West 37th Street past Coney Island and Brighton Beach to Manhattan Beach. The beach below it is public and free and the water is open to swimmers when lifeguards are on duty in summer. Walking east from Coney Island to Brighton Beach Avenue takes about twenty-five minutes and the crowd changes completely about halfway.
Open all year, all hours. Beach swimming only when lifeguards are on duty, late May to early September, 10am to 6pm
Five and a half acres on the west bank of the Hackensack River, with a promenade, picnic tables, a paddling and fishing dock, a boat ramp and a small marina. The site was part of a wartime seaplane base and later a restaurant called the Barge Club before the state opened it as a park in 2008. It is free, it is open dawn to dusk, and there is nothing to arrange.
Daily, dawn to dusk
Five and a half miles of city beach and rebuilt concrete boardwalk running from Beach 9th Street in Far Rockaway west to Beach 126th Street in Rockaway Park, with a bike path the whole length of it. The section at Beach 73rd Street is a straight walk south from the cinema and is one of the quieter stretches, well away from the concession islands. The boardwalk itself is open from six in the morning until ten at night all year, and lifeguards work the water only between Memorial Day weekend and the Sunday after Labor Day.
Boardwalk open daily, 6am to 10pm, year round. Lifeguards on duty 10am to 6pm from Memorial Day weekend to the Sunday after Labor Day
A long strip of park running from Houston down to Canal between Chrystie and Forsyth, with basketball courts at the top and community gardens along the length of it. The M'Finda Kalunga garden has a koi pond and a chicken coop behind its gate. It is the green space immediately behind the Bowery Ballroom block.
Daily, 6am to 10pm. The M'Finda Kalunga garden gate opens Thu 5pm to 7pm and Sat and Sun noon to 4pm
A line of city piers along Emmons Avenue where the party boats tie up, so at most hours of the day there is a crew hosing down a deck or a mate selling tickets for the next trip. The Ocean Avenue footbridge crosses the water to Manhattan Beach and reopened after its rebuild, which makes a short loop out of a walk that used to dead end. Benches face the boats and nobody asks you to buy anything to sit on one.
Open daily, dawn to 1am under Parks rules. Boat departures cluster around 7am mornings and 7pm evenings in season
A thousand feet of pier straight out into the Atlantic at West 17th Street, rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy and reopened in 2013. People fish off the end at all hours and the lamps stay on. From the far end you get the whole Coney Island shorefront behind you, which is the one view that makes sense of the place.
Open all year. Gates generally open early morning to late evening, hours not formally posted
Four acres between Montrose Avenue and Boerum Street, renamed in 1990 for Frances Hamburger Sternberg. A synthetic turf field takes up most of it, with handball and basketball courts alongside and a dog park at the southern end. The playground shuts at 9pm.
Park open daily. Playground hours are 6am to 9pm.
The square that Stapleton is built around, two blocks of grass and plane trees with Edgewater Village Hall standing in the middle of it. The hall went up in 1889 for the Village of Edgewater, which is what this part of the island was before the city absorbed it, and it is a designated landmark. There are benches, a playground at the Canal Street end and a war memorial, and on a weekday afternoon it is mostly people cutting through and sitting.
Open daily, 6am to 1am as a city park
A fifty-foot octagonal clock face standing on its own at the foot of Essex Street, left behind when Colgate pulled its soap works out of Jersey City in 1985 after a hundred and forty-one years. The Hudson River Waterfront Walkway runs past it on a paved path, with lower Manhattan across the water. The clock was put up in 1924 and moved to this spot when the factory came down.
Open at all hours. Lit after dark
Opened in 1927 at Surf Avenue and West 10th, a city landmark and on the National Register, and still built of wood. The ride is about a minute and three quarters and it is rough in a way modern coasters are not. It sits inside Luna Park but takes a single ticket, so you can ride it and leave without doing the rest of the park.
Late March to late October. Daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends either side. Shut November to March
An acre of lawn and planting sitting a level above Water Street, reached by an escalator tucked beside the entrance to an office tower. Almost nobody finds it who has not been told it is there. The east end looks out at the harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge, and it is legally required to stay open to the public.
May 1 to September 30, 7am to 10pm. October 1 to April 30, 8am to 8pm. It may be closed for events up to twelve days a year, with notice posted at the entrances
The widest stretch of the High Line, where the planting gives way to a shallow lawn and a set of timber steps people sit on facing west. The 23rd Street access at Tenth Avenue has both a stair and an elevator. From here the walk north goes past the gallery blocks and arrives at Marquee's corner without touching a sidewalk. Free, and nothing to book.
April to November, 7am to 10pm. December to March, 7am to 8pm
The quiet end of the High Line, north of where the Chelsea Market crowds pile up. Enter at 34th and walk south and the deck is mostly yours.
Daily, 7am to 10pm. Shorter in winter
The old freight viaduct, planted and walked rather than driven. The West 16th Street access has both stairs and an elevator, and from there it is a few minutes south to the Gansevoort end or a longer walk north past the gallery blocks. It is free and there is nothing to book. Going south from 16th takes you over Chelsea Market through the covered cut in the building.
April to November, 7am to 10pm. December to March, 7am to 8pm
A nine-tenths of an acre site on 30th Avenue that was a school playground from 1971 until Astoria's Greek-American community raised the idea of turning it into a gathering place. A city-funded reconstruction began in 1990 with Stamatios P. Lykos as architect, laying out a central court with an amphitheater. Anthony Frudakis's bronze of Socrates, seated and mid-argument, was unveiled in 1993, and three fluted granite Doric columns under a curved entablature went up in 1996. It is a public park with benches and nothing to pay.
Open daily as a public park, 6am to 1am under the standard Parks schedule
A twelve-story stainless steel globe built by US Steel for the 1964 World's Fair, standing in a fountain at the center of the park with the three rings of early satellite orbits around it. Walk five minutes south and the New York State Pavilion's sixteen columns are still holding up what is left of the Tent of Tomorrow, closed off and mid-restoration but visible from the path. The whole thing is open parkland with benches.
Park open daily, 6am to 1am. The fountain runs in the warm months
Ten and a half acres between Avenue A and Avenue B, and the center of gravity for everything on this stretch. The elm near the middle is where the first Hare Krishna chanting outside India took place in 1966. It stays open until one in the morning.
Daily, 6am to 1am
More than a thousand acres starting at the top of Broadway, with a lake, the oldest public golf course in the country and the cross-country course that most New York high schools have run. The Parade Ground at the Broadway end is the flat open part and it is where everything happens. The Putnam Trail runs north from the lake on an old railway bed.
Open 6am to 1am daily, the standard NYC Parks schedule
A small square between Montgomery and Jersey Avenue, ringed by the brownstones the neighborhood is named for. On Saturday a farmers market sets up along the Jersey Avenue edge and runs through the morning into the afternoon, year round. The rest of the week it is benches, a playground and people cutting through.
Park open daily, dawn to dusk. Farmers market Saturdays, 8am to 3pm spring through autumn, 9am to 1pm in winter
Nine and a half acres with a fountain in the middle and a marble arch at the north end, and on any warm afternoon several musicians working different corners of it at once. The stone chess tables on the southwest side are in use most of the day. It is the closest open ground to every venue on Bleecker Street.
Open daily until midnight, with a 10pm close on Friday, Saturday and Sunday under a curfew introduced in 2021. The playground closes at 6pm from November to March and 9pm from March to October
Twenty-eight acres of garden on the bluff above the Hudson, looking straight across at the Palisades. It was a private estate that Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt both rented at different points, and it became a public garden in 1965. There is a pergola, a glasshouse, wild gardens and a lot of benches pointed at the river.
Tue to Sun, 10am to 5:30pm, last entry 5pm. Closed Monday. Ten dollars adults, six students and seniors, four for children six and up, free on Thursdays
The site where WNYC's radio transmitter towers stood until the 1990s, opened as a park in 2012 at the foot of Greenpoint Avenue. A pier runs out into the East River at the end of Kent Street and people fish off it. The Manhattan skyline is straight ahead and the Empire State Building lines up with the pier.
Daily, 6am to 10pm. Free