It’s true that parents cannot choose their children’s loves. We know. Our daughter loves New York.
At first we thought: “Maybe it’s a phase, an innocent wrong turn of childhood, some passing youthful fascination with the bizarre, the grotesque, the alien.” We thought: “Maybe it’s like Barbie.”
We were wrong. New York is still a magic kingdom to her, though she’s not much beyond 4, when we first took her there. What’s changed is our view. After bringing our daughter on several visits, we’ve found unexpected pleasure in rediscovering the city through a child’s eyes. It’s a big world, after all, New York says. Nowhere else is so much of it in one place.
Daughter Alejandra, her mother, Monica, and I went there for the weekend. They were two of those splendid fall days when Manhattan seems suspended in light. We grabbed a weekend discount at a Midtown hotel and set out to enumerate our favorite things to do.
Anyone visiting New York with children will find dozens of detailed listings of activities for different ages and interests. The Central Park Conservancy has a fall calendar of events for children (phone 212-794-6564); New York magazine runs a monthly schedule of events for children. The Weekend section in each Friday’s New York Times includes a column of recommendations “For Children.”
Here are ours:
1. Hans Christian Andersen Statue: We walked to the statue on Saturday morning for an outdoor reading of children’s stories written by the author. The monument is among trees and next to a pond near 72nd Street and 5th Avenue. Model sailboats raced across the pond, their white sails in the sunlight like butterfly wings.
There is free storytelling for children all over the city, often in spectacular settings. Performances are weekly at the Andersen statue. A monthly calendar of similar events for children is available at branches of the New York Public Library (212-340-0849). There are readings for young children Sunday mornings at Books of Wonder, a fine children’s bookstore at 7th Avenue and 18th Street (call 212-989-3270).
2. American Museum of Natural History: The place that “invented” dinosaurs and put them in a hall engraved with quotes by Theodore Roosevelt. This is also a wonderful spot to introduce a child to an extraordinary, dying art form, the diorama. These still-lifes remain utterly transfixing: There is some mysterious power in their combination of real objects and painted landscapes, framed behind a picture window in a darkened hall, that draws you inside, onto the plains.
The museum is too large for a single visit, but children can drag their parents toward what interests them. There is a Discovery Room of exhibits that children can handle. Some younger children seem partial to the gems and mineral rooms. We were partial to fellow mammals; the halls of African and Asian Peoples and Northwest Coast Indians were big hits. The museum’s information number is 212-769-5100.
3. South Street Seaport/Fulton Fish Market: The largest and oldest fish market in the country is open weekdays only; for most children, a visit seems reward or punishment for waking up before sunrise. Early on Sunday we started at the tamer but interesting seaport development, a few blocks to the south.
The marketplace is a twin of Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace; among its notable distinctions is a stunning view of the Brooklyn Bridge. There are scores of shops and restaurants overlooking the harbor on Pier 17 and restored 19th Century buildings that once were ship chandleries, printing shops, bars. There is a small museum for children (call 212-669-9424) adjacent to a larger exhibit area with model ships. There are several ships anchored on Pier 16, including the four-masted, 347-foot Peking, for children to explore.
4. Chinatown: It is a short cab ride from the seaport to Chinatown, a world away. Sunday mornings, the sidewalks are wet with the melting ice of the fish vendors, with crazy-eyed, improbable fish alongside carp swimming in tanks. Every other inch seems crowded with produce and products equally exotic, equally inexpensive.
Many New York restaurants are surprisingly accommodating of children (call first), but nowhere do they seem more welcoming than in Chinatown. We went for dim sum at the Golden Unicorn on East Broadway. After a wait, we shared a table with a Chinese family. Alejandra was fawned over as the carts of food were wheeled by endlessly: pastries and noodles, crab cakes, shrimp, ribs.
Dim sum is the way the world would eat if the world were ruled by children.
Afterward, we waded through the chaos of Mott Street toward what remains of Little Italy (Littler Italy, it should be called). Vast and foreign, self-contained in its grimy, gaudy, abundant appeal, Chinatown swept up our little girl until, in the midst of browsing for a parasol, she put her head on my arm and went to sleep.
5. The buildings: During years of visits to New York, I had not been moved to venture to the top of the Empire State Building. But vertigo, I can report, is not a hereditary condition. Ignoring the guy in the gorilla suit, Alejandra stuck her face in the wind, leaned toward the horizon and said, “Where’s California?”
But more than specific buildings, it is the overall effect of walking through the city that most dazzles children. It is the architecture of the Village and the lofts of SoHo, the apartment houses on 5th Avenue, the brownstones that address something that children want most to know: People live like this.
6. The A Train, et al.: “I don’t know if you can recommend this in a family newspaper, but my kids love to ride on the subway,” says the mother of four young children who are growing up in New York. But who doubts the appeal? It’s as memorable as any ride in Orlando, and you don’t end up where you started. And it’s cheaper.
The New York subway system is not recommended for loitering. It is a terrible place in which to feel lost. It seems a good idea to know where you are going and how to get there.
7. The “toy museum”: I have no idea if there actually is a “toy museum” in New York; in a desperate moment, I told Alejandra that this was what F.A.O. Schwarz was. “We just look here, honey.” It worked for a while, but now we concede one brief visit to the 5th Avenue shrine.
8. Ellis Island: Battery Park, where the ferry departs for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, is a beautiful stop on a clear fall day.
Seeing New York from the water is an essential view of the city. It’s a view filled with history-history reconstituted to great effect at the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island.
9. Central Park Zoo: Almost everything about the renovated zoo seems perfect. Its size is manageable, the vantage points are intimate but unobtrusive and a ticket is 50 cents for children. If you ever ask yourself where all the children might be in Central Park, come here.
Several areas of the zoo are breathtaking: the underwater viewing area of polar bears in the zoo’s arctic zone; the transparent, above-ground seal tanks; the enclosed rain forest where birds flit past in a steamy, fragrant wooden pavilion.
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The Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities publishes a free brochure on getting around in New York, “Access Guide for People with Disabilities.” Call 212-788-2830 to order. Also, a similar free booklet on access to many cultural institutions such as museums, ballparks and concert halls is offered by Hospital Audiences Inc., 212-575-7676.
