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Broadway Theater

Attraction | "Come on along and Listen to the Lullabye of Broadway"

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Along with London New York is the greatest theatrical centre of the English-speaking world. This goes for both ‘straight’ acting and also for the oft-criticised but phenomenally popular genre of musical theatre. There is a lively transatlantic cross-fertilisation at present. Broadway smashes inevitably transfer across to the West End – and vice versa. At the time of my visit, for instance, Trevor Nunn’s version of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music was hoovering up Tony’s and the taxis were full of adverts for Mary Poppins. However, when I as a Brit think of New York I do predominantly think of musicals – how could I not considering all the famous shows set in New York, from On Th...Read More

Along with London New York is the greatest theatrical centre of the English-speaking world. This goes for both ‘straight’ acting and also for the oft-criticised but phenomenally popular genre of musical theatre. There is a lively transatlantic cross-fertilisation at present. Broadway smashes inevitably transfer across to the West End – and vice versa. At the time of my visit, for instance, Trevor Nunn’s version of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music was hoovering up Tony’s and the taxis were full of adverts for Mary Poppins. However, when I as a Brit think of New York I do predominantly think of musicals – how could I not considering all the famous shows set in New York, from On The Town and West Side Story to Company and Rent? As such while I was over in New York I wanted to see a proper Broadway musical.

However, I wanted to see something specifically American. By this I actually meant something that I could not see back in the UK (I had already seen Mary Poppins for example). As it happens the musical we saw really was authentically American, rooted in post-war US society - Memphis. In a nut-shell the play told the (fictitious) story of a forbidden romance between a black club singer and a white DJ / rock and roll afficionado in the racially segregated Memphis, Tennessee, of the 1950s. The music was likewise authentically American, a powerful combination of early rock and roll, rhthym and blues and gospel.

I likewise found some aspects of the production very different to what I was accustomed to in the UK. The theatre, for example, (the Shubert Theatre) was surprisingly small – the lobby seemed about the size of my lounge. Most surprising though was the reaction of the audience – or rather one section of it. I knew about the history of segregation, of course, but I found it practised among the audience to a certain extent. Down in the stalls the audience were mostly white and casually dressed; up in the upper circle the audience was predominantly black, family parties and college groups, smart in suits and dresses. By this I don’t mean to suggest that any active discrimination was going on. But the cheaper seats were in the upper circle, and the racial composition of the audience up here was very noiceably different from that of the more expensive seats in the stalls. What soon became clear was that the crowd in the upper circle where we sat did not view the 1950s as a long-gone period piece – the scars of segregation still ran deep. At one point an adult white character casually called an adult black character ‘boy’. There was a shocked intake of breath from the seats around us. Worse still, later a character dropped the ‘n-word’. A sudden eruption of outrage even had one or two audience members shouting out at the action. Around us in the upper circle there was more emotional investment in the story and a more vocal reaction to it than I had ever before experienced whilst watching a show. It brought home to me the continuing legacy of racism in America in a way that I had never fully understood before.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on December 2, 2025

Broadway Theater
Theatre District, Times Square
New York, New York

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Times Square

Attraction | "Times Square Under the Neon"

Quote:

What can be said about Times Square that hasn’t been said before? Well, how about: "underwhelming"?I fail to see anything special, remarkable or indeed note-worthy about Times Square. Sorry. It is just an awkwardly shaped road intersection crowded close with buildings, thronged with aimlessly gawping tourists, ADHD-lit by dozens of flickering video screens and illuminated billboards. Okay, so I can see that it might be impressive to some people – people who had never visited a city before, say, or those new to the wonders of electricity. But do these people really exist anymore? Once I can see that this might have been awe-inspiring, the central hub of the ‘Great White Way’. O...Read More

Member Rating 1 out of 5 on December 2, 2025

Times Square
1560 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
No phone available

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Grand Central Terminal

Attraction | "Another Hundred People just got off of the Train..."

Quote:

Once given leave to stay by the authorities on Ellis Island immigrants would be funnelled to New York’s train stations, from where they would be distributed out across a continent. Grand Central Terminal was always the biggest of these. But as its name – terminal – implies, it was also the end of the line, and domestic migrants used it to flock to New York to try to make good their dreams. In Copacabana Lola has ‘just arrived, track 17, all the way from Tulsa’ ; in Sondheim’s Company a character remarks that ‘another hundred people just got off of the train’. Grand Central is a place of arrival and a place of departure – how romantic, and how fitting for my first visit to t...Read More

Once given leave to stay by the authorities on Ellis Island immigrants would be funnelled to New York’s train stations, from where they would be distributed out across a continent. Grand Central Terminal was always the biggest of these. But as its name – terminal – implies, it was also the end of the line, and domestic migrants used it to flock to New York to try to make good their dreams. In Copacabana Lola has ‘just arrived, track 17, all the way from Tulsa’ ; in Sondheim’s Company a character remarks that ‘another hundred people just got off of the train’. Grand Central is a place of arrival and a place of departure – how romantic, and how fitting for my first visit to the United States.

I spent two hours at Grand Central, and not because I was actually using the trains there (these days all services are local lines – Lola would not be able to get back to Tulsa, Okla, from here). Instead I turned up for a free tour. Every Wednesday at 12 :30 the Municipal Arts Society run a tour to explain the terminal’s history, architecture and legends. This is a free tour, though a donation at the end is expected. The tour is scheduled to last 90 minutes though our group’s guide – Marty – admitted in advance that he in particular often ran over. He did, but his detailed and (very) enthusiastic presentation was worth the extra. Certainly give yourself two hours to take part.

We started off in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal (always ‘terminal’ – if you ask a local for ‘Grand Central Station’ they may well direct you to the nearby post office which is the only location in the city to go by that name). This huge vaulted space (470 feet long by 150 feet high) with its central ticket desk is instantly recognisable from a hundred cultural references. Yet it did not always look as good as it does currently. In fact, it is a miracle that the terminal even exists in its current form today. A tower block was almost built over it in the 1970s until public opposition from the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis stopped the developers in their tracks (pun unintended). Regardless, very little maintenance was carried out post-WWII. The ceiling was black with tar and nicotine from cigarettes. The windows had been blacked-out during the war and never uncovered. There was a hole in the roof dating from 1957 when a Redstone rocket had been installed here to pep up a populace worried by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. The central information desk was covered over with plywood boards. Plaster and paint flaked from walls and ceilings, rain collected in puddles, bums panhandled on the ramps leading to the lower concourse. It is to the enormous credit of Metro North that when they took over the lease in the 1980s/90s they spent an absolute fortune to restore it to its former glory – they even completed the original design by adding in the matching eastern staircase that had been left off in 1913 (in those days no one worthwhile lived to the east of Park Avenue so why bother providing them with a convenient entrance ?). It is now as breathtaking within as its original Beaux Arts frontage is without ; more so, I would say !

The main concourse connects the 42nd Street frontage (to the south) to the main level platforms (to the north). Stairways rise to the west and east. At its centre stands the main information stand, topped with its famous spherical clock, its four faces fashioned from thin-cut opal sheets (it has been valued at between ten and twenty million dollars). The chandeliers as well are intrinsically valuable, having been fashioned from gold (and not just gilded as had been assumed for many years). These latter hang from the towering barrel-vaulted ceiling. Now the black goo that once coated that ceiling has been removed (except for one small section) to reveal a turquoise sky, spattered with 2500 golden stars and constellations. The Vanderbilt family commissioned a French painter, Paul César Hellau, to decorate the ceiling with stars. After its unveiling it was casually pointed out to them that the stars were in the wrong place – they were actually gazing up at a mirror image of the night’s sky. Rather than admit that the artist probably had his original design the wrong way up they improvised – the constellations, they said, appear as they would do to God, looking down at the city from above !

Marty led us outside and across 42nd Street to admire the grand frontage. The clock outside is the world’s largest example of Tiffany glass. Notably Park Avenue here lifts off at Pershing Square and becomes a ‘circumferential elevated driveway’ (it wraps around the exterior of the building at first storey level). I have to admit there is something quite fun about finding yourself in a taxi which suddenly takes off and drives up above the roads and sidewalks down below. Here he explained about the growth of the railroads in New York in the 19th century and the dangers inherent with the early locomotives. ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt was the railroad tycoon who authorised the construction of the first Grand Central Depot on this site. This later became Grand Central Terminal – when the latter was constructed between 1903-1913 the tracks were electrified which meant that they could be safely buried in tunnels beneath the northern part of Park Avenue (boilers, fires and smoke were not an ideal tunnel combination in the 19th century and disasters were frequentl ; as such at one timem municipal laws dictated that the trains had to be towed through the tunnels by horses). This enabled the selling of the air rights over the tunnels, bringing in more capital.

We returned via the western Vanderbilt Avenue side entrance, where the 1920s office of John W Campbell has been renovated as a rather nice – if very manly – cocktail bar called The Campbell Apartment. It is very Mad Men, all heavy tartans and dark woods and with the office’s original safe in its false fireplace. From here we descended to the lower concourse and the Food Court. The most famous eatery down here is the Oyster Bar which has been in almost continuous operation since first opening in 1913. It is also a very bad place to divulge secrets in – the acoustic properties of the Guastavino tiles are such that whispers often carry across to the other side of the restaurant. All the other food stalls down here are one-offs or small local independents. No Golden Arches here ! Rebecca and I returned after the tour to visit Juniors, where we shared a big chunk of the New York cheesecake for $6.25. This is very good value, as it works out to only one cent for every three calories ! I was glad we only had one to share as it was certainly big enough for two.

Grand Central Terminal is not just a train station. It is a shrine in honour of both the golden age of locomotion and the ‘gilded age’ of New York society, where fantastically wealthy dynasties (many of whom had gained their position by pretty unscrupulous means) began to plough back their riches into the city, remaking (and in many cases renaming) it according to their desires. The size and ornateness of Grand Central is a tribute to an age when form was as important as function. The Municipal Arts Society’s free tour brings that age to life. This is not just a tour about a railway station, of interest only to civil engineers and trainspotters. This is a tour that sheds a light upon the development of New York as one of the world’s greatest cities. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on November 12, 2025

Grand Central Terminal
87 E 42nd St
New York, New York
(212) 340-2210

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Top of the Rock

Attraction | "Defying Gravity"

Quote:

If Manhattan is famous for one thing it is its skyscrapers. Okay, the iron-frame construction that allowed buildings to tower so far overhead that they caress the clouds may have been pioneered in Chicago. Okay, so New York no longer holds any of the top 10 tallest skyscrapers in the world (its current best is 15th place). Yet New York more than anywhere else witnessed the apotheosis of the skyscraper. Nowhere else is there such a concentration of these manmade pinnacles lining canyon-like streets, forming their own reefs and mountain ranges. New York and skyscrapers are as inextricably linked as pastrami and rye.Ascending a skyscraper is a must whilst in New York. And essentially t...Read More

If Manhattan is famous for one thing it is its skyscrapers. Okay, the iron-frame construction that allowed buildings to tower so far overhead that they caress the clouds may have been pioneered in Chicago. Okay, so New York no longer holds any of the top 10 tallest skyscrapers in the world (its current best is 15th place). Yet New York more than anywhere else witnessed the apotheosis of the skyscraper. Nowhere else is there such a concentration of these manmade pinnacles lining canyon-like streets, forming their own reefs and mountain ranges. New York and skyscrapers are as inextricably linked as pastrami and rye.

Ascending a skyscraper is a must whilst in New York. And essentially the visitor has two options. The first is the Empire State Building. This of course has many advantages. The Empire State Building is the iconic building of New York. It has been immortalised in movies like An Affair To Remember, Sleepless In Seattle and – of course - King Kong. It is the tallest building in the city and the 15th tallest building in the world. By choosing to ascend to its 86th or 102nd floor ‘observatories’ you get higher in New York than anywhere else. You area also well-placed for views south to the tip of Manhattan. All this comes at a price however: $22 for the 86th floor, and an additional $15 if you want to go up to the 102nd. Furthermore, the queues are legendary!

I took the second option, which was to visit the Rockefeller Center, a network of Art Deco buildings constructed during the ‘30s under the direction of John D Rockefeller Jr.. Here, for the ‘bargain’ price of $21 each we bought tickets allowing us access to the observation decks on the 68th, 69th and 70th floors of the GE Building – the ’Top of the Rock’. While not as high as the Empire State’s Observatory (it is only the 9th tallest building in New York City), one of the ‘Rock’s’ big advantages is that from here we could actually see the Empire State Building to the south, its instantly recognisable silhouette dominating mid-town Manhattan. It does indeed soar far higher than any of its neighbours, plonked plumb centre on Manhattan’s axis. Its shape reminded me of an art deco space rocket – or a bulky and rather unpleasant syringe – due to its spindly mast (once used for mooring dirigibles). Beyond it glimmered New York harbour and its speckling of islands; on one the Statue of Liberty could just be seem, dwarfed by scale and distance. The other advantage of the Rock is that by turning north we had a spectacular view down the length of Central Park, a lushly wooded moss-green rectangle hemmed in by tower blocks. We could make out individual features – the shimmer of water from the Lake and the Reservoir, open exapanses of grass marking the Great lawn and Sheep Meadow, and the sizeable jut of the Metropolitan Museum of Art into the eastern section of the Park. To the east we could see over the East River to Brooklyn and Queens (though sadly the beautiful Chrysler Building was mostly obscured by another, less aesthetically pleasing skyscraper). And to the west the sun was sinking, sheening the Hudson River bronze and throwing the long shadows of New Jersey across towards the USS Intrepid.

The 68th and 69th floors have viewing terraces which wrap around the exteior of the building; these have tall sheet glass barriers to prevent any accidents or suicides (and hence protect themselves from lawsuits). On the 70th, the very top of the building, these are absent – as the terrace is set back from those below any potential jumper would only be able to plummet one story. The views are vertiginous however, and people with a fear of heights maybe won’t get the best out of a visit.

And essentially that is it. The good folk at the GE Building have tried to jazz things up a little bit. Beyond the ticket desk downstairs are displays and video documentaries playing up the importance of the Center in New York and painting the Rockefeller dynasty as benevolent philathropists and visionaries. You can have your photo taken on a replica iron girder to recreate the famous 1932 ‘Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper’ image and then have that printed out or put on a keyring or t-shirt for ridiculous prices. And the lift up to the 68th floor has some rather natty projections designed to give the impression that you are flying through time and space – very Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. But all that is merely window-dressing. What we came for were the views over New York. And I find it hard to believe that these views can be beaten.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on December 2, 2025

Top of the Rock
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York
(212) 698-2000

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Central Park

Attraction | "Into The Woods"

Quote:

I have been to some cities in my time which have forgotten one of the key things to make a city liveable: parks. Green spaces provide a heavenly respite from the monochrome city. As New York is perhaps the finest example of a modern city it should come as no surprise that it has perhaps the finest example of a city park. Central Park is adored equally by residents and tourists.Central Park is an 843 acre rectangle of greenery slapped down right in the heart of Manhattan, 2.5 miles long and 0.5 mile wide. Yet it somehow manages to feel more spacious than this, as though one has stepped through a magic portal and been magically transported away from the concrete jungle t...Read More

I have been to some cities in my time which have forgotten one of the key things to make a city liveable: parks. Green spaces provide a heavenly respite from the monochrome city. As New York is perhaps the finest example of a modern city it should come as no surprise that it has perhaps the finest example of a city park. Central Park is adored equally by residents and tourists.

Central Park is an 843 acre rectangle of greenery slapped down right in the heart of Manhattan, 2.5 miles long and 0.5 mile wide. Yet it somehow manages to feel more spacious than this, as though one has stepped through a magic portal and been magically transported away from the concrete jungle to the woods of Narnia. Where the trees are close packed you cannot see or hear the surrounding city at all. Where the trees give way to open spaces the surrounding buildings can be seen above the tree-line, but only in the distance, like the peaks of some far-away mountain chain. The twisty paths and the frequent obstructions (bodies of water, transverse roads, cordoned-off lawns) combine to make the pedestrian take long, looping, circuitous routes. There is a way to find out roughly where you are by reference to a unique code on each lamp-post, but both times we visited we ended up emerging quite some difference from where we thought we would. Obviously, this is not a problem during the day, but at night the darkness and shadows (and recollections of lurid headlines from the Taxi Driver New York of the ‘70s and ‘80s) combined to make me feel very edgy. I should state for the record however that not once did we witness any form of anti-social behaviour in the park.

There are many iconic locations within Cantral Park, immortalised by hundreds of TV series or films. In fact there may even be one more soon – we came across a filmcrew parked across the northern reaches of the Mall shooting a picture entitled Friends With Benefits and waiting for ‘the talent’ (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) to arrive. The woods are dotted with expanses of water, each with unique names to tell them apart: Turtle Pond, The Lake, Conservatory Water, Harlem Meer, The Pool, The Loch and the massive Reservoir that almost cuts the park in two two-thirds of its way up. It is also cut back to provide several open spaces: the Great Lawn, the Sheep Meadow, Strawberry Fields (devoted to the memory of John Lennon). There are also entertainment facilities: the ice rink, the zoo, the Delacorte Theater and Swiss Cottage, the Belvedere castle and – for the hungry – the Loeb Boathouse. But most of all it is a recreational utility that New Yorkers always strive to get the best out of. People sunbathe on the lawns, read under the shade of trees, picnic in the Ramble, jog around the circumference of the Reservoir, walk their dogs, play baseball against rival teams or just come to walk and talk. Here we saw what new York does when it is not busy making money and getting ahead. Other than possibly the Statue of Liberty I would say that Central Park is the thing to see in New York. Only when the city is New York can the contrast of escaping from the city in a park be so great.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on December 2, 2025

Central Park
59th to 110th Streets
New York, New York 10023
(212) 310-6600

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Metropolitan Museum of Art

Attraction | "New Art is True Art, Old Art is Cold Art"

Quote:

I am a bit of a museum junkie and ‘the Met’ is known as one of the great museums of the world, consistently ranked alongside the Louvre, the British Museum, the Hermitage and the Smithsonian. While I do like art I am probably more into the artefacts of long-lost civilisations, and it was these I was most giddy about. However, what I found was that – in a large number of cases – the Met suffered from being the new boy on the block; only founded in 1870 it was playing catch-up with the collections of the more established European imperial powers from day one. Simply speaking, t...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on December 2, 2025

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. At 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028
(212) 535-7710

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New York Journals

New York, New York - It's a Wonderful Town!

Broadway Theater

Times Square

Grand Central Terminal

Top of the Rock

Central Park

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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