NYC on a Rainy Day: The City Is Better Wet

Do not redo your whole trip. New York loses the parks in the rain and almost nothing else. It is the densest, most indoor-adjacent city in America, half of it is connected by subway you never have to surface from, and several of the best things here are actively improved by weather.

Then there is the part nobody tells you.

Times Square in the rain is the best thing on this list

We have a whole guide to surviving Times Square, most of which is about hustles and where to sit. This is the opposite of that. Times Square in the rain, at night, is genuinely one of the great sights of this city, and hardly anyone plans for it.

Here is what happens. Every one of those screens is throwing light down onto a street that has just turned into a mirror, so the reds and blues and greens come back up off the pavement, run down the crosswalk stripes, pool around the curbs and smear when a cab goes through them. The umbrellas catch it. The puddles catch it. You are standing in the middle of a block that is fully saturated color in every direction, above and below, and the rain has thinned the crowd to the point where you can actually see it.

It is vivid in a way the daytime version is not, and it is free.

Go at night, and go after it has been raining a while, so the street is properly wet rather than damp. Stand at the north end of Duffy Square, around 47th, and look south into the wall of screens. Then walk down the middle of the closed-off blocks between 47th and 42nd and look at the ground as much as the buildings.

Bring the phone out for this one. It is the one place in New York where a phone camera at night beats expectations, because there is more light hitting that street than most rooms you have ever photographed. More spots in the best photo spots guide.

Everything in our Times Square guide about hustles still applies. Nothing goes in your hand.

Museums, with the one bit of strategy that matters

Everyone within thirty miles has the same idea on a wet Saturday, so the famous museums fill by late morning and the queue is outdoors.

Go at opening or go small. The Met absorbs crowds better than anywhere because the building is enormous, and if you only have one museum in you, we have an argument about which one and how long to spend in it.

If you would rather not queue at all, the smaller ones are better on exactly this day:

• The Frick Collection, a house full of masterpieces, and small enough to finish.
• The Noguchi Museum in Queens, a sculptor’s own museum with a garden in the middle of it.
• The New York Transit Museum, in a decommissioned subway station, with platforms full of old trains you can walk through. It is underground, which on this day is the point.

And if the budget is the problem rather than the weather, the free and pay-what-you-wish list is the one to open first.

Rooms worth being in for their own sake

These are not fallbacks. They are destinations that happen to have a roof.

Grand Central Terminal. Stand on the east balcony and watch the floor for ten minutes. Go and whisper into the corner of the arches outside the Oyster Bar and listen to it come out of the opposite corner. Nobody charges for any of this.

The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The Rose Main Reading Room is one of the great rooms in the country, it is free, and you can sit in it as long as you like with a book. The building itself is worth an hour.

The American Museum of Natural History, if you have kids, which we cover properly in NYC with kids.

Eat your way through it

A wet afternoon is the best possible excuse to do the thing this city is actually best at.

Chinatown is the correct answer to rain. The whole neighborhood is a short dash between doors, and soup is the right food when you are damp. Koreatown on 32nd Street is the same idea in one block, and most of it is open late.

Food halls solve the group-that-cannot-agree problem while staying dry: Chelsea Market, Essex Market on the Lower East Side, Grand Central’s lower level.

And a long lunch that turns into a longer afternoon is not a wasted day here. Where to eat is the whole list, and the M List is the short version.

Bars in the afternoon

New York is unusually good at the dark room in the middle of the day. It has the density of bars to make it work and no judgement about it whatsoever. Bars has the full list, and rain is the correct weather for the ones with no windows.

The practical bits

Buying an umbrella is a solved problem. Within about ninety seconds of the first drop somebody will be selling them on a corner for around five dollars. It will fail in real wind. For one afternoon it does not matter.

Shoes matter more than the umbrella. You will walk regardless, the crossings pool at the curb, and wet feet end a day faster than wet hair.

The subway mostly does not care about rain, which is one of its better qualities. In a serious downpour some stations do flood and the delays are real, so in heavy weather check before you set off and have a second route in mind. Our subway guide has the basics.

Check the ferry before you rely on it. The NYC Ferry still runs in rain and the top deck is still open, which is either miserable or excellent depending on your commitment level.

What to give up on

The parks, which is the real loss, especially in the fall. Rooftops, which will be shut. Long outdoor walks, and any plan that involves standing still outdoors for an hour.

Move those to your good-weather day and take the indoor day now. That trade is the entire skill of visiting New York in bad weather, and it is most of what our three days in NYC itinerary is doing anyway.

Questions about anything in this guide? Reach MUSEENYC at museenyc.art@gmail.com or @museenyc on Instagram.

Wet streets, better colors → museenyc.com