Winter in New York is cold and sometimes snowy One can take advantage of the snow by walking through Central Park when it is white and quiet. One of my favorite places in the park is the Conservatory Garden at Fifth Avenue and 106th Street, a small and peaceful place in winter even when the fountains are not running. It has strategically placed benches for contemplation or photography.
The garden is conveniently close to another winter treasure, the Museum of the City of New York. Here the third-floor exhibit of toys yields a surprise: a magnificent doll house made by Florine Stettheimer, a friend of many artists of the early and middle twentieth century and an artist of sufficient reputation to have had her paintings shown at the Whitney Museum and other major museums around the world. The doll house is so fragile that it never travels. The only way to see it is to travel to it yourself. It is well worth the trip for both its historical interest and its aesthetic quality.
A stroll down Fifth Avenue from the museum will give you a chance to choose from the institutions known collectively as New York's Museum Mile. One of the newer gems here is the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue and Eighty-Sixth Street. It houses a world-class collection of German and Austrian fine and decorative art from 1890–1940. It also has a snazzy tea room, Cafe Sabarsky, for refreshment after a long walk.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has many treasures. One of my favorites is the room of musical instruments. Only a few more blocks and you arrive at the Frick Collection, a small and intimate museum. Like the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston, the Frick is a personal collection of Old Masters housed in a mansion once owned by the collector.
A short walk or cab ride from the Waldorf Astoria is Grand Central Station, with a vast indoor mall that has been upgraded and made more interesting with the addition of shops, services, and restaurants. Here you can buy the best souvenirs of New York at the New York Transit Museum Store. You can dine upon a wide and fresh selection of fish and seafood in the classic Oyster Bar or choose from among many more restaurants.
Taking the Staten Island Ferry out across the harbor gives one a magnificent view of the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island, the Hudson Riven and the Palisades—and it is free. The cold weather of January and the crisp sea air require warm clothes, but the view is unforgettable. My own favorite outdoor winter excursion is a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge ending up a few blocks up Flatbush Avenue at Junior's for the best cheesecake in the whole city.
Then there are the museums newly located in Queens. The Museum of Modern Art, temporarily relocated in Queens while its midtown Manhattan facility is being renovated, has a spectacular film collection. You can make an appointment to see your old favorites or classics you cannot see anywhere else. The Museum of African Art has modern and relatively old African pieces that are always well curated (great documentation and descriptions) and displayed in stunning ways. The ethnic neighborhoods near these museums offer food from all parts of the world: Greek, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and many others.
A new complex of museums and libraries in a stunningly beautiful building is the Center for Jewish History at 15 West Sixteenth Street. It offers genealogy, exhibits of Americana by the American Jewish Historical Society, Sephardic history, German Jewish History from the Leo Baeck Institute, and art exhibits from the Yeshiva University Museum collection of modern art. It also houses a music library, a film collection, and the extensive print library of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The Palm Tree Café is a very nice refueling spot; the Chelsea area has many other restaurants and cafes as well as art galleries that you might never have visited before.
A new favorite museum of mine is the DIA Museum in Beacon, New York. Beacon is a beautiful small city on the Hudson, sixty miles from Manhattan. It has a sister museum in
Chelsea at 548 West Twenty-Second Street, but the one in Beacon is a sight to behold. An old printing factory with glass ceilings originally meant to aid the printers in typesetting, its huge rooms are filled with natural light by which to view monumental sculptures and paintings too large to be seen properly in other museums and galleries. Getting there by train is simple from Grand Central Station. It takes just over an hour, and the ride up the Hudson River in winter is beautiful. The museum is a short walk from the Beacon train station. A two- or three-hour visit can be fueled by lunch in the museum's tiny but sophisticated café.
All of these places have Web sites, and many can be visited virtually so that you can sample for yourself what you might most enjoy in New York.