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The mammoth museum whose holdings include 32 million artifacts.

Built on 15 acres in the 1950s, transforming slums into a giant cultural complex, the Lincoln Center houses an array of venues: the Metropolitan Opera; the New York City Opera and Ballet; the New York Philharmonic; the Lincoln Center and Walter Reade theaters; Avery Fisher and Alice Tully halls; and the Julliard School (see Avery Fisher Hall). In the summer, popular Mostly Mozart concerts take place, the central fountain plaza becomes a dance floor, and free concerts are held in the adjacent park. In October 2004, Jazz at the Lincoln Center moved to its new headquarters in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle.

New York’s oldest museum, founded in 1804, has organized much of its vast collection into the 4th floor Henry Luce III Center, which displays 40,000 objects divided into areas such as paintings, sculpture, furniture, silver, tools, and, notably, Tiffany lamps. Other galleries are used for changing exhibits. The society also maintains a research library.

One of the largest building projects in New York’s history is transforming this neglected urban plaza into an important public site. The redevelopment has attracted national and international businesses, such as giant media company Time Warner, which now has its headquarters in an 80-storey skyscraper. The new building contains shops, entertainment, restaurants, and the Mandarin Oriental hotel. It is also the new home of Jazz at the Lincoln Center, the world’s first performing arts facility dedicated to jazz. Other buildings in Columbus Circle include Hearst House, Trump International Hotel, and the Maine Monument.

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.

Another example of the landscape genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, a woodsy, hilly band of green planned in 1873, following curving Riverside Drive for 70 blocks and hiding the abandoned railroad tracks below. Playgrounds, sports fields, a promenade, and monuments were added later. The impressive 1902 marble Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument at 89th Street, a memorial to those who died in the Civil War, was modeled after the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens.

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.

Founded in 1973, in a former school building, this is a museum dedicated to the principal that children learn best through self-discovery. It uses a variety of participatory activities and fantasy world environments to engage its young visitors in learning that is fun. The Tisch Building, as the museum is known, has been renovated in a $6.5 million expansion headed by the museum chairman, Laurie Tisch Sussman. The museum’s many activities include exhibits to intrigue older children, while Word Play is an enticing environment for newborns to four year olds.

A monument to New York’s mania for finding the best foods and a landmark since 1934, this always-crowded market sells smoked salmon, sturgeon, and other Jewish delicacies, wonderful bread, desserts, coffee, and cheeses, and big selections of oils, vinegars, and gourmet gift baskets. The second floor is filled with cooking equipment, and a coffee counter at the 80th Street corner lets you taste the delicious baked goods.

Flea market junkies throng this school yard every Sunday, hoping for finds from among the piles of vintage clothing, crafts, books, jewelry, prints and all manner of memorabilia. Less glamorous, new merchandise, from socks to T-shirts, is also sold here. On a good day as many as 300 booths crowd the premises. A weekly green market shares the same space.