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The cobbled streets, buildings, and piers that were the center of New York’s 19th-century seafaring activity (known as “the street of sails”) have been restored as a tourist center. There are shops, food stalls, restaurants, a museum with many seafaring exhibits, a fleet of tall ships for boarding, and plenty of outdoor entertainment.

When it was completed in 1883 linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, this was the largest suspension bridge in the world and the first to be built of steel. It took 600 workmen and 16 years to build, and claimed 20 lives, including that of the designing engineer, John A. Roebling. It is now a symbol of New York, and those who walk the 1-mile (1.8-km) span are rewarded with fabulous views of city towers seen through the artistic wire cablework.

Built in 1913, this has one of New York’s great interiors; marble walls, bronze filigree, a mosaic ceiling, and stained glass combine to magical effect. Architect Cass Gilbert also had a sense of humor – sculptures include Five and Dime mogul Woolworth counting nickels and Gilbert himself cradling a model of the building. It set the standard for the skyscrapers that followed in the 1920s and 1930s.

Built in 1922, this is a monument to excess but fun to see nevertheless. The façade is said to have more columns than any other building in the world, and the vast lobby is a forest of marble pillars. Close by at 120 Broadway, the former Equitable Building, built in 1915, is of note for another excess: the immense bulk of the building was responsible for the nation’s first skyscraper zoning regulations.

Manhattan’s oldest church was built in 1766 as an “uptown” chapel for Trinity Church and took on added importance while Trinity was being rebuilt after the great fire of 1776. The chapel was modeled after London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields and has been kept as close as possible to its original form.

The seat of city government since 1812, City Hall is considered one of the most beautiful early 19th-century public buildings in the U.S. The design, by architects Mangin and McComb, Jr., won a competition held in 1802. A statue of Justice, dating from 1887, crowns the top of the structure. The rear of the building, facing north, was not clad in marble until 1954, since the architects never expected the city to develop further north.

This building dominating the Civic Center area, straddling Chambers Street, was the first “skyscraper” by McKim, Mead, and White, a 25-story structure completed in 1914. The top is a vertitable wedding-cake fantasy of towers and spires topped by Adulph Wienman’s famous statue, Civic Fame. The intricate terra-cotta vaulting above the street is modeled on the entrance of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, and the subway entrance at the south end, an arcaded plaza, is a dramatic vault of Guastavino tiles.

Ascend the wide staircase of the 1926 New York County Courthouse (adjacent to the 31-story, pyramid-topped U.S. Courthouse dating from 1933) and enter to admire the marble columned rotunda with Tiffany lighting fixtures. Note, too, the ceiling murals depicting Law and Justice. The hexagonal building has a courtroom in each of its six wings.

An interior inspired by the Paris Opéra is one of the glories of this 1907 Beaux Arts beauty, boasting a magnificent central hall with marble stairways and ceiling mosaics. The façade features statues representing justice, the seasons, commerce, and notable New Yorkers, as well as figures depicting the stages of life.

Constructed in 1973, the city’s police headquarters can be found on a spacious pedestrian plaza, a welcome area in a district with very few public spaces. The 75-ton Tony Rosenthal abstract sculpture, Five in One, made of five sloping interlocked discs, symbolizes the city’s five boroughs.