Places to Visit

Step onto 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan and you enter a world where handshakes close million-dollar deals and an ancient trust still runs the diamond trade — one of New York’s most extraordinary untold stories.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn was once one of New York’s most abandoned neighborhoods. Then artists arrived, the hipsters followed, and the whole world came running. Here’s how it all happened.

The Flatiron Building was called unsafe, ugly, and scandalous when it opened in 1902. Here’s how New York fell in love with the building it once wanted gone.

The Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night has made and broken music careers for 90 years. Ella Fitzgerald won here in 1934. The Jackson 5 played here. The Sandman is still sweeping performers off the stage.

Below Grand Central Terminal, a sealed presidential train platform, a whispering gallery, and a backwards star ceiling reveal secrets most visitors never know exist.

A hidden garden in Central Park has been growing every plant Shakespeare ever mentioned since 1916 — and most New Yorkers have never found it.

New York’s streets hold a secret: dozens of hidden courtyards, cobblestoned mews, and private lanes tucked away in plain sight. Here’s how to find them.

The Brooklyn Flea started with 50 vendors in a Fort Greene parking lot in 2008. Sixteen years later, it’s New York’s most beloved weekend ritual — and the reason thousands of New Yorkers take the subway somewhere on a Saturday morning.

On December 31, 1897, Brooklynites held a funeral procession as their city was absorbed into New York. The story of how Brooklyn lost its independence — and why its identity only grew stronger.

In 1983, a Manhattan church became the Limelight — New York’s wildest nightclub. The building is still there, and the story is extraordinary.