Free things to do in the Bronx
A free beach, the city's largest park, a free contemporary art museum, a Gilded Age cemetery with Duke Ellington in it, the Art Deco boulevard — and the exact conditions under which the zoo and the botanical garden are free too.
The Bronx is cheap in the way the rest of the city used to be, and most of what is worth doing in it is free outright. It has a public beach, the biggest park in New York, a free museum on a boulevard that is itself a free museum of architecture, and two cemeteries that double as the best walks in the borough. The two famous paid things — the zoo and the garden — both have a free day, and the conditions are specific enough that people miss them, so they are spelled out here.
Getting here is the only cost: a subway fare, twenty to forty-five minutes from Midtown depending on how far up you go. Everything on this list is on the 4, the 6, the 1 or the B and D, and the borough's getting-there page has the lines.
Ordered roughly north to south, which is also roughly wild to urban.
The list
Orchard BeachFree
Pelham Bay · The Bronx
A mile of sand on Pelham Bay, free to enter, and almost no visitors know it exists — which is why locals call it the Bronx Riviera. The 6 to the end and the Bx12 bus; in summer the bus runs often. The city's only beach that feels like a secret.
Pelham Bay ParkFree
Pelham Bay · The Bronx
Three times the size of Central Park, with salt marsh, real woodland, thirteen miles of shoreline and the beach above, all free and all at the end of the 6. The Hunter Island trails are the walk; most of the park has nobody on it.
Van Cortlandt ParkFree
Riverdale / Norwood · The Bronx
Eleven hundred acres at the top of the 1 train with the oldest house in the borough, a flat woodland trail on an old rail bed, and the most historic cross-country course in the country. The ride up is elevated and worth a window seat; the park is free.
Woodlawn CemeteryFree
Woodlawn · The Bronx
Four hundred acres of Gilded Age mausoleums and mature trees, free to walk, with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Herman Melville in it — and architecture by the firms that built Manhattan, on a smaller scale and with nobody else around. The 4 to its last stop.
The Grand ConcourseFree
Concourse · The Bronx
The Bronx's Champs-Élysées, lined with one of the largest concentrations of Art Deco apartment buildings anywhere, free to walk for four and a half miles with the B and D underneath. Start at Yankee Stadium and walk north, or the reverse; look up at the lobbies and the corners.
The Bronx Museum of the ArtsFree
Concourse · The Bronx
General admission is free, always — no conditions, no suggested donation — for a serious collection of contemporary work by artists of African, Asian and Latin American descent, on the Concourse itself. Small enough for an hour; the First Friday evenings are free too.
Bronx ZooPaid
Bronx Park · The Bronx
Free limited admission every Wednesday, but you must reserve: tickets are released the Monday before at five in the afternoon and they go fast. "Limited" means the core zoo, not the ticketed extras. Plan the week around it rather than hoping on the day.
New York Botanical GardenPaid
Bedford Park · The Bronx
Grounds admission is free on Wednesdays — all day for city residents with proof of address, and from ten to eleven in the morning for everyone else. Grounds-only excludes the Conservatory and ticketed shows, but the old-growth forest and the rest of the 250 acres are the point anyway.
Arthur AvenueUnder $25
Belmont · The Bronx
Free to walk, and the reason it is on a free list is the indoor retail market: counters under one roof where a good lunch costs less than a coffee in Midtown. The century-old bakeries and cheese shops are worth going into even if you buy nothing. Cash welcome everywhere.
Common questions
- Is the Bronx Zoo free on Wednesdays?
Yes, with two conditions people miss. You must reserve the free limited-admission ticket online, and the tickets are released the Monday before at five in the afternoon and are usually gone within the hour. "Limited admission" covers the general zoo, not the ticketed attractions inside it. If you turn up on a Wednesday without a reservation you will pay full price.
- Can I do the beach and the park in one trip?
That is the trip. The 6 to Pelham Bay Park puts you at the southern edge of the park; the Bx12 runs from the station to Orchard Beach, and the Bx29 from the same station to City Island, which is a seafood village at the end of a bridge. Beach in the morning, the island for lunch, the park trails in the afternoon — all of it free except the food.
- How do I get between these without a car?
Subway and bus, all on the same tap. The 6 serves the Pelham Bay end; the 1 and the 4 serve Van Cortlandt and Woodlawn at the top; the B and D run under the Concourse for the museum, the zoo end and Yankee Stadium; Metro-North from Grand Central is the fast way to the Botanical Garden. Nothing here needs a car, and parking at the beach in summer charges a fee anyway.
Who should skip this
Anyone who needs everything within a ten-minute walk of everything else — the Bronx is big, the free things are spread across it, and a day here is a day of subway and bus.