One 'Short' Day
on the Upper East Side - A Self-Guided Walking Tour
What to do in 8 hours around
Manhattan's Museum Mile
by Lauren
Hauptman
It’s called Museum
Mile, and it is daunting. Fifth Avenue runs along
the east side of Central Park, and from about 79th
Street to 110th Street, it is home to nearly a dozen
world-class museums. That’s not even counting those
slightly south and east. This swath of Manhattan’s
Upper East Side is also home to some of the
wealthiest citizens of the world and their requisite
beautiful buildings, shops and restaurants. And it
is among the loveliest of places to spend a day. Our
tour comprises both Fifth and Madison Avenues.
We will list all the museums from which you may
choose, but it would take days, weeks even, to visit
all of them. So we suggest you choose one or two or
three, and carefully check their open days on their
websites. (Each museum is generally closed for one
or two days each week. Additionally, most offer time
each week when admission is free or “pay what you
wish.” Consider yourself warned: Museums can get
crazy crowded during these times.) We’ll also
include stops for eating, shopping, gawking and
playing in the park. Take a cab, bus or subway to
our first stop.
8:30 am: Breakfast
For breakfast and brunch, both locals and tourists
flock to
Sarabeth’s (1295 Madison Ave. at 92nd), a
New York institution due to its cozy atmosphere,
famous jams and baked goods, hot porridge served
“three bears style” and lemon & ricotta pancakes
(our favorite). It all comes at a price, though:
excruciatingly long waits, and they don’t take
reservations.
Just across the street is
Yura on Madison (1292 Madison Avenue at
92nd), recommended by locals — including 1980s teen
queen Phoebe Cates (more on her later) — which
offers excellent food in a more cafeteria-esque
format. It’s a better choice if you’re in a hurry.
Which, of course, we are.
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CENTRAL PARK |
10 am: Northern Central Park
Our first post-breakfast tour stop is the
northeastern border of magical Central Park (get
here by walking up Fifth, not Madison, from
breakfast). At the corner of 110th Street and Fifth
Avenue (across from the future home of the Museum
for African Art), you will find Duke Ellington
Circle, which is, surprisingly, New York City’s
first monument to an African-American.
Compared with the south part of Central Park, which
is filled with sights and sounds and things to do,
the northern end is decidedly more laid back and a
bit more, well, natural. It is also quieter and less
crowded.
After paying respects to the Duke, walk south on
Fifth Avenue to 105th Street, where the Vanderbilt
Gate opens to the Conservatory Garden,
Central Park’s only formal garden. The
Conservatory comprises six acres (though it feels
much smaller) of Italian, French and English
gardens. With myriad fountains and paths, it is
incredibly beautiful and peaceful, as it is an
officially designated “Quiet Zone.” Who knew? Exit
back through the gate.
11 am: Museums
Practically facing you is
El
Museo Del Barrio (1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th),
a museum dedicated to Latin-American and Caribbean
art and culture. Originally housed in a series of
storefronts and brownstones, El Museo was founded in
the late 1960s by artist/educator Raphael Montañez
Ortiz as a tribute to the Puerto Rican diaspora in
the United States.
Our first non-negotiable museum stop is one of our
favorite museums in the entire world:
Museum
of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Ave. at
103rd). This is a wonderful place to learn about the
history, development and culture of the greatest
city in the world — sort of a tutorial about what
makes New York New York. Exhibitions range from
baseball to theater to fashion to art to
architecture to religion. A visit here is always
fascinating.
Noon: Shopping
Walk south along the park to 96th Street, and turn
left toward Madison Avenue. Stroll south on Madison
on the west side of the street. You will pass lovely
shops, including one of our new favorites,
Blue Tree (1283 Madison Ave., between 91st
and 92nd). Owned by the aforementioned Phoebe Cates,
of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and
married-to–Kevin Kline fame, this well-curated gift
shop offers everything from jewelry to clothing to
children’s toys. And Phoebe herself is often behind
the register (making this a must-stop for men who
came of age during the Me-decade).
Cross at 90th Street and head north back up Madison
Avenue. Stop in
Eleni’s New York (1266 Madison Ave., between
90 and 91st) for intricately decorated cookies, from
incredible likenesses of Oscar winners to beautiful
butterflies to some of our favorite souvenir gifts,
the New York City gift boxes.
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UPPER EAST
SIDE |
MUSEUMS
12:30 pm: Museums and lunch
Turn left on 92nd Street and head back toward Fifth
Avenue. You may be happy to know you are in the
Carnegie Hill Historic District, which dates
back to the late 1800s. Be on the lookout for
brownstones ranging from Neo-Greco to Romanesque
Revival to French Neoclassical and Federal style.
Buy yourself a pretzel if you can identify which is
which.
New York’s
Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd)
lives in a French Gothic limestone chateau. Though
it was founded in 1904, it moved to the Warburg
Mansion in 1947 and is one of the world’s largest
institutions devoted to Jewish culture. It has a
phenomenal shop and a kosher restaurant called
Café Weissman.
Speaking of food, most of the museums have cafés
and/or restaurants — the Met alone has more than
half a dozen eateries. Offerings range from
nondescript cafés to buzz-worthy hotspots and are
the perfect place to have lunch on this Museum Mile
Day (we’ll mention some of the more notable options
as we go).
Continuing south on Fifth Avenue, you’ll encounter
the mother lode of museums:
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian
Institution (2 E. 91 St.) is the only museum
in the United States devoted exclusively to historic
and contemporary design. The museum is housed in the
64-room, turn-of-the-(19th) century, Georgian-style
former home of Andrew Carnegie and has a wonderful
private garden.
The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts
(1083 Fifth Ave., between 89th and 90th) was founded
in 1825 and houses one of the largest public
collections of 19th and 20th century American art in
the country. Its annual exhibition is
world-renowned.
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GUGGENHEIM
MUSEUM |
As fabulous outside as inside, the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth
Ave. at 89th) is “among the 20th century’s most
important architectural landmarks.” Designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright, the spiral Guggenheim (which
makes even the most uncoordinated among us want to
skateboard around and around and around) collects
art ranging from Impressionism to contemporary, and
marked its 50th anniversary in 2010. Part of its
yearlong celebration included the opening of its
much-hyped, ultramodern restaurant, The Wright.
Neue Galerie New York (1048 Fifth Ave. at
86th, ), in a 1914 Beaux Arts French chateau, is
devoted to early 20-century German and Austrian art
and design. It is also home to local favorite
Café Sabarsky, a traditional Viennese café.
3 pm: Shopping, strolling and a snack
Turn left on 86th Street, and head back to Madison
Avenue. On the north side of the street, between
86th and 87th Streets, is
Park
Avenue Synagogue (50 E. 87 St.), one of the
largest Conservative synagogues in America. It’s
Moorish architecture features a beautiful cast-stone
façade, which is especially evident at the main
entrance on 87th Street.
Continue walking south on Madison. On the west side
of the street, you will find a key stop and
fortification for the rest of the day:
William Greenberg Desserts (1100 Madison
Ave., between 82nd and 83rd), home to the best
version of the unofficial official cookie of New
York, the Black-and-White. It’s really somewhere
between cookie and cake, and New Yorkers have loved
them since, well, forever. We prefer the black, but
won’t balk at eating both sides.
Turn right on 82nd Street for a great promenade to
the behemoth known as
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: This block
is chock full of breathtaking brownstones, a mix of
private residences, offices and galleries. The Met
(1000 Fifth Ave., from 80–84 streets) takes up four
whole city blocks and holds more than 2 million
works of art. We find it overwhelming and prefer a
quick stop on the impressive front steps and/or in
the gift shop.
While the French Renaissance mansion of the
Ukrainian Institute of America (2 E. 79 St.)
marks the sort-of-official bottom of Museum Mile, it
is by no means the end of the neighborhood museums —
or our tour.
4 pm: Madison Avenue
Walk back to Madison on the north side of 79th
Street, and gaze at the beautiful brownstones and
buildings on the south side of street. The rest of
our tour stays on Madison Avenue, heading south.
This stretch is one of the loveliest strolls in the
entire city. It is the epitome of a real (upscale)
New York neighborhood, where real (albeit moneyed)
people live their lives in the soaring spectacles
that line the streets, and store after store
welcomes window shoppers from every economic level.
Be sure to stop frequently to look up at the amazing
architecture. But please, please, do not stop dead
in your tracks at any point. There is nothing New
Yorkers hate more than having to knock over a
clueless tourist (well, truth be told, it can be
fun, but we prefer not to). Step to the side, and
gaze up to your heart’s content.
Highlights of this late-afternoon stroll include the
Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison
Ave. at 75th), which has been celebrating its
signature exhibition — “The Whitney Biennial” — for
75 years (by the way, if you’re not museumed out,
The
Frick Collection is back on Fifth Avenue at
East 70th Street); the fabulously ornate 1897
Rhinelander chateau that is the
Ralph Lauren flagship store between 71st and
72nd Streets; the two-tone-brick, Neo-Baroque–ish
building that houses
Fred Leighton at the northeast corner of
66th Street; and, finally, one of New York’s finest
department stores (with the hands-down best window
displays),
Barney’s at the northwest corner of 61st
Street.
5 pm: Grand Army Plaza
Head west back to Fifth Avenue and finish your tour
at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue by reveling in the
convergence of southeastern Central Park, The Palace
Hotel, The Apple Store and
Bergdorf Goodman at the little island called
Grand Army Plaza.
You’ve conquered Museum Mile and Madison Avenue, and
you still have time for dinner and a Broadway show.
Congratulations. You’re almost a New Yorker.
If you liked this
tour, you might also enjoy one of opur other
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