Bryant Park
Nine acres behind the New York Public Library that pack in free films, free games, free Wi-Fi and free winter ice skating — the best-value block in Midtown.
- What it costs
- Free, including winter skating if you bring your own skates. Skate hire and the food kiosks charge.
- Best in
- Any season
- Where
- New York, NY 10018, between 40th and 42nd Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues
- Official site
- bryantpark.org
The free stuff, by season
- Summer: free outdoor film nights on the lawn — arrive early, the lawn fills hours ahead — plus free fitness classes, juggling, and a full programme of live performance.
- Winter: the Winter Village market, and an ice rink that is free to use if you bring your own skates. That is unusual in New York and worth knowing.
- All year: free ping-pong, pétanque, chess and backgammon, with equipment lent out at the kiosks. Also a carousel, which charges a small fare.
The park has free public Wi-Fi across the whole site, which makes it a decent place to sort your phone out mid-day.
The library behind it
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — the New York Public Library's main branch, the one with the lions — fronts the park on Fifth Avenue and is free to walk into.
Go up to the Rose Main Reading Room: 78 feet long, painted ceiling, and still a working public reading room where anyone can sit down. There's a permanent free exhibition of treasures from the collection on the ground floor.
Free guided tours run daily. It is one of the great free experiences in Midtown and thousands of people walk past it every hour.
Why it's here
The park sits on top of the library's stacks, and before that it was a reservoir. By the 1970s it was notorious enough that a full redesign in the 1980s deliberately removed the hedges and raised walls that had made it invisible from the street.
It worked, and it is now used as the textbook example of how to fix a failed public space.
Getting there
The B, D, F or M to 42nd Street–Bryant Park, or the 7 to Fifth Avenue. It's a five-minute walk from Times Square and from Grand Central.
Basically unavoidable if you're in Midtown at all.
Getting around once you're there
Flat, paved and step-free throughout, with accessible restrooms that are — genuinely — among the best public restrooms in the city. 42nd Street–Bryant Park is accessible.