Midtown

Midtown is where people come to see New York, and where locals mostly pass through rather than stop. Both of those can be true without the place being a waste of your time. Skip the restaurants with photographs on the menu and the shops selling the same three t-shirts, and what is left is extraordinary.

The great rooms are the thing here, and most are free. The main concourse at Grand Central under its painted ceiling. The Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library. The Ford Foundation garden, a full jungle inside an office building, where almost nobody goes. Bryant Park behind the library, with the cleanest public bathroom in the city and a chair for anyone who wants one.

The rest is worth it too, in the right order. MoMA on a weekday morning before the crowds. Radio City and Carnegie Hall, both worth seeing a show in rather than photographing from outside. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, free and open, is a genuine break from Fifth Avenue. And the Transit Museum’s little gallery in Grand Central is free and takes ten minutes.

Green space is scarcer here than anywhere else in Manhattan, and the answer is small. Bryant Park is the big one. Beyond it, Midtown has a set of pocket parks built into the blocks: Paley Park on East 53rd and Greenacre Park on East 51st are both small courtyards with a wall of falling water loud enough to erase the traffic. They are free, they have chairs, and almost no visitor finds them. Greenacre runs from spring into December and closes for the winter. Central Park starts at 59th Street, ten minutes north.

Go early for anything famous, and eat a few blocks east or west of wherever you are standing. Two avenues make a real difference to both the price and the food. Then go somewhere else for the evening.