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Columbus Park
This is where outdoor mah jong and dominos take place at bridge tables while tai chi practitioners move through lyrical poses under shady trees and locals hang out on benches with their caged birds in tow. Judo-sparring and families relaxing are also common sights here, in the communal space created in the 1890s and now the property of the locals.
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Coney Island Boardwalk
About 50min by subway from Midtown, Coney Island sits on the calm Atlantic tides and is fronted by a beachside boardwalk. It makes for a fun day trip with rides, freak show, vodka and beach time. In late 2005, Mayor Bloomberg unleashed a plan to make Coney Island's famous amusement park a year-round attraction.
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Drawing Center
Here since 1977, this is the only non-profit institute in the country to focus solely on drawings, exhibiting work by masters as well as unknowns. Historical exhibitions have shown the work of masters including Michelangelo, James Ensor and Marcel Duchamp, while contemporary shows have focused on Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Tuttle.
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Dumbo Arts Center
One of Washington Street's best galleries, this collective also puts together the D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival each year. It offers a great overview of the neighborhood - who is working on what, and showing where - and maintains a rotating exhibit of various artists.
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East River Park
Flanked by a looming housing project and the clogged FDR Dr on one side and the less-than-pure East River on the other, this park has spanking-new ballparks, running and biking paths, a 5000-seat amphitheatre for concerts, lovely patches of green thanks to a $4 million face-lift, cool breezes and stunning views.
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El Museo del Barrio
This museum began as a celebration of Puerto Rican art and culture in 1969. It has since expanded into the premiere Latino cultural institution in the city, with a dizzying collection that includes 2000 pre-Columbian ceremonial objects, 900 traditional objects from countries including Brazil and Haiti, and more than 3000 Puerto Rican prints and posters.
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Eldridge St Synagogue
Built in 1887, this landmarked house of worship was once the center of LES Jewish life, attracting thousands to its services. It fell into disrepair in the 1920s, and closed in the 1950s. In the 1980s the community started the Eldridge St Project to restore it and it's now almost complete. It hosts concerts, art exhibits, educational lectures and readings, too.
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Ellis Island
Ellis Island is an icon of mythical proportions for the descendants of the millions of immigrants who passed through here. The process involved medical checks, being issued new names if their own was too difficult to spell or pronounce, and basically getting the green light to start their new, hopeful and often frighteningly difficult lives.
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Empire State Building
Catapulted to Hollywood stardom as the vertical perch that King Kong was knocked down from, the Empire State Building is one of the New York skyline's most famous landmarks. It's a limestone classic built in just 410 days, or seven million man-hours, during the depths of the Depression at a cost of over 40 million dollars. The view is a dandy.
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Experience Chinatown
To truly penetrate the layers that make up the bustling, insiders' world of Chinatown, you'll need a guide. And trusting one from the Chinatown-based Museum of Chinese in the Americas is definitely a good move. The tours, given weekly from May through December, are led by museum docents with family roots in the community and give you a sense of Chinatown's past and present.
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Federal Hall
Federal Hall stands on the site of the original City Hall, where Washington took the oath of office on 30 April 1789. After that structure's demolition this Greek Revival building gradually rose in its place between 1834 and 1842. Considered one of the country's premier examples of classical architecture, it served as the US customs house until 1862.
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Federal Reserve Bank
The only reason to visit the Federal Reserve Bank is to ogle the facility's high-security vault - more than 8928 tonnes (10,000 tons) of gold reserves reside here, 24m (80ft) below ground. You'll only see a small part of that fortune, but you'll learn a lot about the US Federal Reserve System on the informative tour.
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Flatiron Building
Built in 1902, the 20-story Flatiron, designed by Daniel Burnham, has a beaux arts facade and a uniquely narrow triangular footprint that resembles a massive ship. It boasts a limestone facade, built over a steel frame, that gets more complex and beautiful the longer you stare at it. Best viewed from the island on 23rd St between Broadway and Fifth Ave.
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Forbes Collection
These galleries house curios from the personal collection of the late publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes. Located in Greenwich Village, the galleries are housed within the lobby of Forbes Magazine's headquarters. There is an eclectic mix of objects on display, including Fabergé eggs, toy boats, early versions of Monopoly and tin soldiers.
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Frick Collection
This spectacular collection sits in a mansion built by businessman Henry Clay Frick in 1914, one of the many such residences that made up 'Millionaires' Row'. Most of these mansions proved too expensive for succeeding generations and were eventually destroyed, but the wealthy and wily Frick established a trust to open his private art collection as a museum.
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Gagosian
International works dot the walls at both the Gagosian in Chelsea and uptown. The ever-revolving exhibits feature greats like Julian Schnabel, William de Kooning, Andy Warhol and Basquiat.
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Gallery Onetwentyeight
A small gallery with emphasis on contemporary drawing and painting. Onetwentyeight also likes to turn its space over to local dabblers for impromptu, one-night only shows that are promoted only through word of mouth. If you stumble onto one, consider yourself lucky.
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General US Grant National Memorial
Popularly known as Grant's Tomb, this landmark holds the remains of Civil War hero and president Ulysses S Grant and those of his wife, Julia. Completed in 1897 (12 years after his death) the granite structure cost around US$600 ,000 and is the largest mausoleum in the country. Though it plagiarizes Mausoleus' tomb at Halicarnassus, this version doesn't qualify as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
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Grace Church
Nestled into a surprisingly verdant patch of land not far from Astor Pl, Grace Church's ethereal Gothic Revival design is quite an eye-catcher. Designed by James Renwick Jr, it's made of marble quarried by prisoners in Sing Sing, the prison upstate. It's also a much-sought after school, and students love the Harry Potter-esque feel of its hidden nooks, stained-glass windows and old libraries.
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Grand Central Terminal
The world's largest and busiest train station (76 acres; 500,000 commuters and subway riders daily) is also a gorgeous feat of engineering and architecture. Take in the theatrical beaux art facade from E 42nd St, particularly luminous at night, and then head inside to marvel at gold-veined marble arches and the bright blue domed ceiling, decorated with twinkling, fiber-optic constellations. Don't miss the tiny unrenovated corner of the original ceiling, left alone to acknowledge the size of the job. For a glimpse of how the unfinished ceiling looks underneath all the celestial glitter, find the northwest corner amid the 88,000 square foot ceiling, at the very end of the meridian line, and you'll see a small black patch that designers deliberately left there for contrast.
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Ground Zero
The foundation of the former World Trade Center, with its raw, rusty rivets sticking out, is still plainly visible from all sides of the Ground Zero visitor platform. Parts of it will remain even as development of the site moves forward. For another permanent memorial, check out the bronze, three-panel plaque that tells the story of 9/11 on the side of the firehouse at Liberty and Greenwich Sts.
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Herald Square
This crowded convergence of Broadway, Sixth Ave and 34th St is best known as the home of Macy's department store, where you can still ride some of the remaining original wooden elevators. The busy square gets its name from a long-defunct newspaper, the Herald, and the small, leafy park here bustles during business hours thanks to a recent and much-needed face-lift.
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Hispanic Society Of America
Preparing for a move downtown, the Hispanic Society hopes to draw more attention to its outstanding collection of Goya, Velazquez, Sorolla and El Greco masterpieces. Until it finds a new home, you can survey the Spanish masters in relative solitude way uptown.
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Historical Society
Built in 1881 and renovated in 2002, this four-story Queen Anne-style landmark building (a gem in its own right) houses a library (with some 33,000 grainy digitized photos from decades past), auditorium and museum devoted to the borough. The society also leads several Brooklyn walking tours (some free), and an occasional bus tour of the riverside Navy Yard.
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International Center of Photography
Consolidated from two locations at this expanded Midtown space, the ICP remains the city's most important showcase for major photographers, especially photojournalists. Its past exhibitions have included works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Matthew Brady, Weegee and Robert Capa.
