NYC Self-Guided Walking Tour: Midtown Icons

Broadway at Seventh Avenue and West 42nd Street · Open in Google Maps

On your own tour, each stop's narration starts as you walk up to it.

Start where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue. Until 1904 this was Longacre Square. That year The New York Times moved into its new tower at the south end, today's One Times Square, and the city renamed the square after the paper. The subway station below opened the same year, on the city's first subway line. The Times outgrew its tower within a decade, but one of its traditions stayed: since 1907, crowds have gathered here every New Year's Eve to watch a lit ball drop from the roof. Theaters had been moving north up Broadway since the 1890s, which is why this is still the heart of the Theater District.

Sources: History — Times Square Alliance · Times Square walking tour — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF)

Fifth Avenue between West 49th and 50th Streets · Open in Google Maps

On your own tour, you can ask your guide anything here, by voice or text.

Walk east to Fifth Avenue and turn in through the Channel Gardens. This site was first meant for a new Metropolitan Opera House. When that plan fell through, John D. Rockefeller Jr. built a commercial complex instead, and fourteen Art Deco buildings went up between 1931 and 1939, giving work to thousands during the Depression. At the end of the gardens, Paul Manship's Prometheus flies above the sunken plaza, with a line from the Greek playwright Aeschylus carved into the granite wall behind him.

Sources: Rockefeller Center — National Historic Landmark nomination, National Park Service · Prometheus — Rockefeller Center · History — Rockefeller Center

Fifth Avenue between East 50th and 51st Streets · Open in Google Maps

On your own tour, every stop is matched to Google Maps, with its Google Maps summary, Street View and a live map.

Back on Fifth Avenue, Lee Lawrie's bronze Atlas holds up a ring-shaped sphere of the heavens. Across the avenue rises St. Patrick's Cathedral. When Archbishop John Hughes announced it in 1853, the site was so far uptown that people called it Hughes' Folly. James Renwick Jr. designed it in the Gothic Revival style; the cornerstone was laid in 1858, work stopped during the Civil War, and the cathedral opened in 1879. Its twin spires, 330 feet tall, were finished in 1888. Walk along the side to see the buttresses between the pointed windows, and look for the Lady Chapel, added at the east end in 1906.

Sources: History and heritage — St. Patrick's Cathedral · St. Patrick's Cathedral designation report — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF) · Atlas — Rockefeller Center

Lexington Avenue at East 55th Street · Open in Google Maps

The audio sample ends here. Your own tour narrates every stop: make one, first few tours free.

Walk east to Lexington Avenue and north to 55th Street. Congregation Ahawath Chesed, following its members uptown, built this synagogue in 1870–72 to designs by Henry Fernbach, in the Moorish Revival style. Look up at the two octagonal towers with their globe-shaped copper domes, the rose window between them and the bands of tan and brown stone. In 1998 a fire during renovation brought down the roof, but firefighters saved the walls and most of the windows, and the restored sanctuary was rededicated in 2001.

Sources: Central Synagogue designation report — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF) · Our history — Central Synagogue · Our sanctuary — Central Synagogue

Lexington Avenue at East 42nd Street · Open in Google Maps

Walk south down Lexington Avenue and look up. The Chrysler Building went up in 1928–30 for the carmaker Walter P. Chrysler, designed by William Van Alen. In the race to build the world's tallest tower, Van Alen had a 185-foot spire assembled in secret inside the crown and raised through the roof in 1929. That took the building to 1,046 feet, briefly the tallest in the world. Look at the crown of stacked steel arches, made of a then-new rust-resistant stainless steel, and at the setbacks below it, where ornaments such as eagle heads echo Chrysler's cars.

Sources: Chrysler Building designation report — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF) · Chrysler Building — National Register nomination, National Park Service

East 42nd Street at Park Avenue · Open in Google Maps

Walk west on 42nd Street to Grand Central Terminal. It opened just after midnight on February 2, 1913, and more than 150,000 people came to see it that first day. Above the 42nd Street front is Jules-Félix Coutan's sculpture group, the Glory of Commerce: Mercury flanked by Hercules and Minerva. Step inside to the Main Concourse, about 125 feet high, one of America's classic interiors, and look up. The ceiling's constellations are painted in reverse, east and west swapped. The terminal's own explanation is that it shows the heavens as seen from above. The ceiling was cleaned and restored in the 1990s.

Sources: History — Grand Central Terminal · What to see — Grand Central Terminal · Grand Central Terminal interior designation report — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF)

Fifth Avenue at East 42nd Street · Open in Google Maps

Continue west on 42nd Street to Fifth Avenue. The library's main building stands where the Croton Reservoir once held the city's water; demolition began in 1899. Carrère & Hastings designed it in the Beaux-Arts style, and President Taft dedicated it on May 23, 1911. Its two marble lions guard the steps. In the 1930s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia named them Patience and Fortitude, the qualities he believed New Yorkers would need to get through the Depression. Climb a few steps and look at the triple-arched entrance and its Corinthian columns.

Sources: Patience and Fortitude — The New York Public Library · New York Public Library — National Register nomination, National Park Service

Behind the library, between West 40th and 42nd Streets · Open in Google Maps

Walk around the library to the park behind it. This ground has had many lives: a potter's field from 1823 to 1840, then the site of New York's Crystal Palace, built for the world's fair of 1853 and destroyed by fire in 1858. In 1884 Reservoir Square was renamed for William Cullen Bryant, poet and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. The layout you see, with its central lawn, formal paths and rows of London plane trees, comes from a 1934 redesign by Lusby Simpson. Look for Bryant's memorial at the library end of the lawn and the Josephine Shaw Lowell fountain at the Sixth Avenue end.

Sources: History — Bryant Park · Before they were parks: Manhattan — NYC Parks

Fifth Avenue at West 34th Street · Open in Google Maps

Walk eight blocks south down Fifth Avenue. The Empire State Building rose on the site of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Work began on March 17, 1930, and it opened on May 1, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover switched on its lights from Washington. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed it, with William F. Lamb leading, and it climbs in Art Deco setbacks of Indiana limestone and granite trimmed with aluminum and steel. Its mast was designed as a mooring point for airships, and in 1933 King Kong made it a film icon. At the Fifth Avenue entrance, look for the stone eagles and the words EMPIRE STATE above the door.

Sources: History — Empire State Building · Empire State Building designation report — NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (PDF)