photo : keiko niwa / tenement museum
The Tenement Museum of New
York provides an essential perspective on America ’ s immigrant history . If you dip from the European gene pool , it ’ s pretty likely some relative in your past spent time in what was New York ’ s teeming Lower East Side . For outof-towners , the museum demonstrates how so many millions suffered tough conditions just to be American . For New Yorkers , it ’ s a way to understand how tenement structures became such a staple of city architecture . tenement . org photo : chris devers / creative commons
New York CITY
The big museums — the Met , MOMA , the Whitney , et al — are wonderfully absorbing , but nowadays I more often head for the smaller places that I ’ ve missed .
1.1 miles from Penn Stn .
The Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows is a NYC-must , if for no other reason than to see the Panorama of the City of New York , a gigantic , 3-D mapping of municipal geography . This massive exhibition was created for the 1964 World ’ s Fair and features a dawn-to-dusk lighting scheme and landing airplanes , as well as the opportunity to adopt your own piece of island real estate for a $ 50 donation . What a bargain ! queensmuseum . org
The New York Botanical Garden is a Bronx classic . Calvert Vaux and the Olmsteds — the designers who created Central Park — laid out this verdant , 250-acre landscape 125- years ago on behalf of botanist Nathaniel Lord Britton , who believed New York should have its own version of London ’ s Royal Botanic Gardens . Indeed , the grandeur and elegance of the buildings and esplanades transport you to a more graceful era . But walk in the oldgrowth forest , a last vestige of virgin east coast wood land , to experience what the wilder ness was like before Gotham was born . nybg . org
58 minute subway ride from Penn Stn .
The Louis Armstrong House
Museum is the place to begin your Satchmo education . Armstrong was one of the fundamental artists of American jazz . Take the short subway ride from Grand Central to visit the home in Flushing , Queens where he lived and died . It ’ s packed with memorabilia that helps in the understanding of this influential trumpeter and the great music he created . LouisArmstrongHouse . org
31 minute subway ride from Penn Stn . 36 minute subway ride from Penn Stn . photo : library of congress
long island
Sagamore Hill National Historic
Site sits upon a grassy rise near the beaches of Oyster Bay . Home to one of my real heroes — 26th President Theodore Roosevelt — it ’ s an elegant yet understated Victorian structure that remains in much the state that Roosevelt left it when , in 1919 , he died in the upstairs guest room . TR ’ s legend has grown larger-than-life during the last century so it ’ s refreshing to walk through this comfortable home , sensing the simpler man behind the myth . Yes , there is much that is iconic : dozens of animal-skin rugs , trophy heads , and elephant tusks , gifts from heads of state and historical memorabilia , but even more impressive is the poignant and bookish truth of the man . TR was an astonishing reader and writer , a devoted husband and father , and an American patriot . nysm . nysed . gov
35.6 mi . from Penn Stn .; 55 min . via LIRR ; 5.4 mi . from Syosset LIRR Stn . photo : mick hales / new york botanical garden
The Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City , Long Island celebrates man ’ s glorious but turbulent journey to the skies and beyond , and com memo rates the burgeoning aviation industry that once flourished on Long Island , develop ing much of the fundamental technology that made modern flight possible . The guides are enthused , the exhibits fascinating . And I had no idea that the Apollo Lunar Modules were constructed twenty minutes away in Bethpage ! The Cradle of Aviation displays the LM-13 , slated for Apollo 19 . For a moon-child like me , who watched in awe as Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969 ... what a thrill . cradleofaviation . org
26.2 mi . from Penn Stn .; 45 min . via LIRR ; 2.0 mi . from Garden City LIRR Stn .
Long Island ’ s Historic Gold Coast Mansions were created by the wealthy industrialists of the early 20th century and were immortalized in F . Scott Fitzgerald ’ s The Great Gatsby . Tour grand estates like Oheka Castle in Huntington , Chelsea Mansion in East Norwich , Coe Hall and Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay and Falaise in Sands Point . historiclongisland . com
33.9 mi . from Penn Station ; 55 min . via LIRR ; 4.5 mi . from Garden City LIRR Stn .
Coe Hall
NY MUSEUMS BY RAIL 3