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This double row of small brick and stucco, timbered, Tudoresque townhouses, hidden on a private street, is one of the many delightful surprises to be discovered in Manhattan. The developer, a restaurateur named Thomas Healy, took his inspiration in 1921 from the sets used for a popular play by Lewis Parker called Pomander Walk , hoping to recreate the village atmosphere depicted in the play. Gloria Swanson, Rosalind Russell, and Humphrey Bogart are among the players who have lived here.

The sign reads “Guggenheim SoHo” but the new occupant of the building is an extraordinary $40 million flagship store for trend-setting Italian retailer Prada, a sign of SoHo’s shift from art to fashion. Dutch architect Rem Kookhaas is responsible for the ultra-hip floating stairs, undulating walls, futuristic elevators and hi-tech dressing rooms. The entire Prada line is sold.

Frederic Olmsted and Calvert Vaux considered this park, opened in 1867, to be their masterpiece. The 90-acre Long Meadow is the longest unbroken green space in the city. The pools and weeping willows of the Vale of Cashmere are particularly fine, along with Vaux’s Oriental Pavilion and Concert Grove.

This 1912 carousel with hand-carved animals was moved here from Coney Island in 1950.

Tunnel through a prairie dog town, master baboon language, leapfrog across lily pads.

Hand-carved marionettes are used to present children’s classics.

This skyscraper Gothic church modeled on Chartres cathedral and financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1930, has a 21-story tower with wonderful Hudson River views. Inside the tower is the largest carillon in the world, dedicated to Rockefeller’s mother. The brilliant stained-glass windows are copies of those at Chartres with four notable exceptions – the early 16th-century Flemish windows on the east wall. The congregation has long been active in liberal social causes.

A walk through this area shows the late 19th-century townhouses that characterize the Upper West Side. West 88th Street is a good example. The earliest, Nos. 267–71, were built in 1884. Nos. 302–38, from the early 1890s, have stepped gables and Roman brick, while Nos. 315–23, circa 1896, have bow fronts in brown or white stone. The Yeshiva Ketana School, at 346 West 89th Street, begun in 1901 by Herts and Tallant, occupies one of only two survivors of the mansions that once lined Riverside Drive.