We all already know the big hitters. If you’re going to New York (first time, or otherwise), I’m sure you already have a long list of things you want to see. Iconic landmarks and museums just roll off the tongue. The Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island. Brooklyn Bridge. MoMA.
But what about the other stuff? Here are 6 slightly more unusual, alternative, and less well known sights that I enjoyed in New York.
- The City Reliquary Museum – New York’s history through objects
- The 7-train – the ‘International Express’
- Flushing Meadows – the Great Gatsby’s ‘Valley of Ashes’ turned iconic park
- African Burial Ground – a poignant monument surrounded by office blocks
- Temple of Dendur – reflect on America’s opioid crisis next to an ancient monument
- King of NY Biggie Mural – a beautiful memorial to Notorious B.I.G.
The City Reliquary Museum – New York’s history through objects
It’s small. Okay, it’s tiny. But the City Reliquary Museum packs a lot into its two rooms.
The Reliquary aims to trace the history of New York – all five boroughs – through unusual artefacts connected to historical events. It’s – quite literally – stacked floor to ceiling with interesting bits of kitsch from throughout New York’s history. Memorabilia from the city’s two World’s Fairs; shrines to baseball player Jackie Robinson; fragments from landmark tokens.
The longer you stay, the more you notice. And there’s a lot of information to read, too, about the artefacts and the events they’re connected to.
The Reliquary also hosts small rotating exhibitions. When I went (February 2024), this was a collection of letters sent to Spiderman’s Queens address – mentioned in one of the comics and inhabited by a real-life Peter Parker. One of these adorable letters is pictured below. Plus, it’s a not-for-profit community museum.
Visit website
$10 entry.
The 7-train – the ‘International Express’
The 7-train is what it sounds like. A subway line. But this subway line is also a living, breathing monument to New York’s incredible diversity. It’s definitely worth a journey if you’re staying in the area, interested in world cultures, or after delicious food.
Designated as a National Millennium Trail by Hilary Clinton and also known as the ‘International Express’, the 7 train runs through one of the world’s most diverse areas.
The 7 starts from Hudson Yards in Manhattan – but it’s when it rises out of the ground in Queens that it truly shines. Thundering along the top of Roosevelt Avenue, the journey rewards you with breathtaking views of Manhattan’s skyline. It traverses through Jackson Heights, with Little India at one end (around 75th St Broadway) and a huge Latino population stretching all the way to Corona – with tantalising Colombian and Mexican food, and the awesome Latin jazz bar Terraza 7.
The terminus is Flushing – New York’s largest Chinatown. It started out as a satellite of the Manhattan’s Chinatown, but eventually grew to dwarf its older brother. It’s filled with Chinese restaurants, tea shops and the sprawling New World Mall.
Flushing Meadows – the Great Gatsby’s ‘Valley of Ashes’ turned iconic park
Flushing Meadows – full name Flushing Meadows-Corona Park – is hardly a hidden gem. In fact, it’s one of New York’s largest parks. But for many tourists, it doesn’t get a look in. On our visit, we enjoyed Flushing Meadows far more than the crowded Central Park.
The park is massive, and there’s a lot you can do. It hosted both both of New York’s World’s Fairs – in 1939 and 1964. From the latter, you can still see the iconic, futuristic Unisphere (pictured). At 140 feet tall, it’s the globe on the planet.
In front of the Unisphere is Queens Museum, home to the Panorama of the City of New York, built by a team of more than 100 people. The park is also home to a zoo and Queens Botanical Garden, and close to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre (US Open) and MetLife stadium (New York Mets).
Wandering around the park, you’ll come across plenty other interesting sights. One of my favourites was the retirement home for playground animals (pictured). There’s also a Fountain of the Planet of the Apes – a disappointingly small, unremarkable fountain, named by eccentric former parks commissioner Henry Stern due to the nearby (much larger) Fountain of the Planets.
Retirement home for New York playground animals, Flushing Meadows
For fans of the Great Gatsby, there’s another interesting connection. Before it became a park in the 1930s, Flushing meadows was a giant ash disposal heap. It was immortalised as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘valley of ashes’ – “a fantastic form where ashes grow like wheat.”
Visit website
Free entry
African Burial Ground – a poignant monument surrounded by office blocks
In the heart of Lower Manhattan – minutes from the City Hall and Brooklyn Bridge – is an important national monument. The African Burial Ground National Monument marks an area where around 15,000 enslaved and free Africans were buried from the 1600s to late 1700s.
In colonial New York, Black people were excluded from church graveyards, or from being buried in the city limits. Because of this, Africans began using the Lower Manhattan site as a cemetery. The burial ground was a much larger area than the monument – around 7 acres. Under British rule, slaves were also subject to nighttime curfews and not allowed to congregate in large groups. The burial ground provided a space where African slaves were able to gather, and practice cultural traditions of nighttime burials.
The burial ground was ‘rediscovered’ in 1991 during the building of a skyscraper and, following large protests from the African-American community, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The memorial was dedicated in 2007.
Visit website
Free to visit
Temple of Dendur – reflect on America’s opioid crisis next to an ancient monument
Okay, anything in the Met is hardly an ‘alternative’ thing to do in New York. And the Temple of Dendur, an Ancient Egyptian temple and one of the museum’s flagship artefacts, definitely isn’t. But this one is more about how you experience the Temple. Or, rather, the room it’s in.
When it first opened, the gallery hosting the Temple (along with several others nearby) was called the Sackler Wing. It was funded by a $3.5m donation from the Sackler family – a huge sum in 1960s money, when this took place. It’s a stunning space. Huge glass windows. A glittering reflection pool. And that stunning, ancient temple.
But the money, of course, came from the Sackler family – owners of the family business Purdue Pharma, infamous for aggressively marketing the highly addictive drug OxyContin, and tied to the country’s opioid crisis.
The Sackler Wing in the Met was one of many philanthropic donations from the family, and probably their most famous. It was the venue of Mortimer Sackler’s 70th birthday party. And when the link between the Sacklers and the opioid crisis became understood, a major ‘temple of greed’ protest took place in 2018, led by the group PAIN, who threw hundreds of orange pill bottles into the reflection pool.
You won’t find any mention of the Sackler family in the gallery any more. Their name was removed in 2021 – as it is being from museums across the world. But it remains an evocative place to reflect on the opioid crisis in America, the greed of one family that contributed to it, and the grassroots movement that has led to their ‘unnaming’ in museums across the world.
If you don’t already know the story of the Sacklers, there are now plenty of books and documentaries on the topic. I highly recommend Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain.
Visit website.
$30 admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
King of NY Biggie Mural – a beautiful memorial to Notorious B.I.G.
New York is home to a lot of pop-culture icons. Few have the global legend-level status of Biggie Smalls. In Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, you’ll find a large, stunning mural to the rap legend. He looks out over the street, taking up the side of a two-story whole building on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Quincy Street.
It was painted by Scott “Zimer” Zimmerman and Naoufal “Rocko” Alaoui of the Spread Art NYC collective in 2015, in the Notorious B.I.G’s home neighbourhood. It attracts a lot of hip-hop fans. When we visited, a group of people were recording their own music video.
Just a short walk away is Biggie’s childhood home (no plaque) and Christopher Wallace Way – a section of St James Place co-named after him. Along the street you’ll find various murals and monuments.
Free to visit.
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