New York City With Kids: Five More Fun Family Activities

Thank you to One World Trade Center Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial Museum for hosting our visits to those attractions.  All opinions are my own. 

New York City is one of our favorite cities to visit.  The “City That Never Sleeps” is the largest metropolitan area in the US and boasts Broadway and Wall Street, along with world-famous landmarks and museums.  Nancy previously covered Five Fun Family Activities, but because this is one city that has a seemingly never-ending list of great tourist attractions, I have a few more to add. With so much to see and do, traveling to New York City with kids is a great family vacation.

Visiting New York City With Kids

I’ve enjoyed New York City as a tourist and while visiting friends.  My mom and I had a whirlwind weekend in 2005 where we made it to most of the stops on her mile-long must-see list.  My husband and I used to travel to the Big Apple each summer before kids, but we generally spent most of our time with friends and relaxing at the Long Island Beach.  We have visited New York City several times with our kids, most recently in October 2016 as part of a trip to Princeton, New Haven, Amherst and Chautauqua and look forward to future visits to Manhattan as a family.

Checking out the view of Midtown from Bloomberg’s employee snack bar

For families who need a break, there are some amazing playgrounds in New York City for kids to explore.  It’s hard to pass up the opportunity to see a Broadway show, and there are options to score cheap Broadway tickets at the last minute.

Accommodations in New York City With Kids

While in NYC, I have stayed several times at the Millennium Hilton New York Downtown in the Financial District.  The guest rooms are very comfortable, and the hotel also offers an indoor pool.  But, the highlight for me is the view of One World Trade Center and the Oculus, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub that opened in 2016 with retail and restaurants.  The Millennium Hilton is conveniently located for both business and pleasure.

Millennium Hilton guest room with view of Oculus

View of One World Trade Center and Oculus from my room

Restaurants in New York City With Kids

New York is also known for amazing restaurants.  Eataly is one of my favorites.  This Italian marketplace includes several restaurants, food and beverage counters and retail stores.  The food counters offer very reasonable but delicious meals, and the retail sections are beautifully curated.

Eataly’s higher end restaurant, Osteria della Pace is also a great option for lunch or dinner.

Osteria della Pace

I also enjoy Casa Lever, an Italian Restaurant that features original Andy Warhol paintings to complement its ultramodern décor.  Casa Lever does not offer a kids’ menu and is not particularly child-friendly in the evening, but the food is superb, and the original Warhol paintings alone are a reason to make me want to go back.

Original Warhol paintings at Casa Lever

For breakfast, Stage Door Deli offers overstuffed sandwiches and a classic New York deli experience.  We stopped for coffee and bagels after an early morning flight, and our wrapped bagels were thrown from the back of the store to the register for added flair.  Stage Door is one of only two businesses to reopen on Vesey Street after September 11.

Here are my five fun family activities in New York City:

#1:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art With Kids

The Metropolitan Museum of Art boasts a permanent collection of over two million works and is the largest art museum in the US and the fourth largest in the world.  The Met’s main location is on Fifth Avenue, and we were a few of the Met’s over 7 million visitors in 2016.  Admission to the permanent collection was previously by suggested contribution only, but the Met announced in January 2018 that it would begin charging a fixed admission of $25 for visitors who do not live in New York State.  General admission gives visitors free entry at The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer and The Met Cloisters for three consecutive days.   It would probably take that long to get through all the exhibits, but we did an abbreviated visit with our three kids, aged 2, 6 and 8.

The Met has one of the most impressive impressionist collections that we have seen.  Our boys loved Bathers at Asnières at National Gallery, London and were especially excited to find Seurat’s final study for his similar A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  

We are also fans of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and were thrilled to see Irises.  I’ve seen his similar Irises still life paintings on display at the Van Gogh Museum, and my kids have seen Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at National Gallery, London and Irises at the Getty Center.We also love Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, so the Met’s Water Lilies, a smaller version than many others we have seen in this series, was a real treat.  We are fortunate to frequently visit Water Lilies (Agapanthus) at the Cleveland Museum of Art and have also seen paintings in this series on display as part of the Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse special exhibit at the Cleveland Museum in 2015 and also at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery, London, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Monet’s Water Lilies

• Kid Facts:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is ranked as the second most visited art museum in the world, behind the Louvre.

#2:  Times Square With Kids

Times Square is the world’s most visited location with about 360,000 pedestrian visitors daily and over 130 million visitors each year.  Excluding residents from the count makes Times Square the second most popular tourist attraction behind the Las Vegas Strip with almost 40 million annual tourists.  The Broadway Theater District is located in Times Square, which is especially known for its billboards.

Over the years, I’ve visited Times Square a number of times, but until my recent visit, my last photographs were from 2005.  Even before the rise of digital screens, it was still a sensory overload experience.

Times Square – Summer 2005

I was absolutely blown away with the transformation of the Square since the development of digital screens on my recent evening visit.  The largest billboard in Times Square was completed in 2014, spans an entire block and features almost 24 million LED pixels.  A pedestrian plaza completed in 2016 offers tiered viewing of the Square, including the humongous new billboard pictured on the right below.  Find out more about things to do in Times Square.

Times Square – 2018

• Kid Facts:  The New Year’s Eve ball drop at Times Square has been an annual tradition since December 31, 1907.  However, it was placed on hiatus in 1942 and 1943 because of World War II lighting restrictions.  Over a million visitors celebrate each New Year in Times Square.  The new energy-efficient LED ball installed for the centennial celebration is now a permanent fixture in the Square.

#3:  National September 11 Memorial & Museum With Kids

While I am familiar with tragic events like the World Wars, the Pearl Harbor attacks and the Vietnam War from history books, September 11 is one day that is burned in my memory. I had visited NYC for the first time only a few months earlier and spent an entire day exploring the Financial District in the shadows of the famous towers.  On the morning of the terrorist attacks, I was numb as I sat glued to my television and watched the World Trade Center crash to the ground.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum is a very somber museum that chronicles the World Trade Center’s 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks.  The Museum honors both the victims of these attacks and also the first responders.  The Museum’s collection includes more than 40,000 images, 14,000 artifacts, 3,500 oral recordings and 500 hours of video.  It may not seem like a family friendly attraction due to its content, and I noticed on my recent Monday morning visit that there were not any young visitors.  I happened to be in the Financial District on business without my children when I visited, but I would not hesitate to take them to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

My boys learned about the September 11 terrorist attacks by reading Lauren Tarshis‘ I Survived the Attacks September 11th, 2001.  Tarshis’ series of historical fiction books is brilliant because they tell stories of some of the world’s worst disasters  through the eyes of a pre-teen boy (except one book featuring a female main character) experiencing the situation first-hand.  In I Survived the Attacks of September 11th, 2001, the narrator is Lucas, the son of a New York City fire fighter who happens to visit his dad at work on the morning of the attacks.  My boys are familiar with the events of September 11 because of Tarshis’ book, and a visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum with them would definitely be meaningful, but might be a quicker overview than the lingering visit I had with my colleague.  The Museum offers a seasonal Youth & Family Tour with an interactive activity and the Art Memorial Cart, which offers age-appropriate self-guided explorations and art activities.

The Historical Exhibition chronicles the events of September 11, the events leading up to September 11 and the immediate aftermath.  This exhibit includes first-hand accounts, television footage and a variety of items on display.  Photography is not permitted in this exhibit, but is allowed in other areas of the Museum that feature items damaged on September 11, such as a fire engine from Ladder 3.  All 11 firefighters who traveled from in this engine died in the World Trade Center.  Also displayed is a segment of the radio and television antenna on top of the North Tower and the Last Column, which was the last piece of steel to be removed from Ground Zero and is now considered as a symbol of resilience.

Fire engine destroyed on September 11

Piece of the radio antenna from the North Tower

The Last Column

The National September 11 Memorial located outside the Museum includes two large, recessed pools with cascading waterfalls that are set within the footprints of the original North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.  The bronze parapets that surround the pools are inscribed with the names of those who lost their lives in the attacks.

September 11 Museum and Memorial

• Kid Facts:  The Memorial opened to the public on September 12, 2011, and the Museum, which is largely underground, opened on May 15, 2014.  Roses are placed by victims’ names to commemorate their birthdays.

#4: One World Trade Center Observatory With Kids

New York City has no shortage of skyscrapers, but One World Trade Center towers over all of them as the tallest in the Western Hemisphere and sixth tallest in the world at 1,776 feet (a reference to the year the Declaration of Independence was signed).  This new structure has the same name as the North Tower of the original World Trade Center and is located on the site of Six World Trade Center, an eight-story office building that was destroyed when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.   The building opened in November 2014, and the Observatory,  located on floors 100-102, opened in May 2015 and offers visitors a view of NYC from 1,250 feet in the air.

The experience begins at the Global Welcome Center where visitors are greeted in their native language.  A live counter shows stats related to number of visitors and country of origin.  The next stop is a walk-through montage, which includes personal stories of all the people who helped build One World Trade Center.  The elevator ride to the 102nd floor is a special treat.  Visitors travel 1,250 feet in less than a minute while watching a high-definition time-lapse video on the elevator walls.   After a quick 3D film on NYC, visitors have the chance to check out the real highlight of the Observatory, the 360 degree views.

View of Midtown from One World Trade Center

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

We did not have time to eat at ONE Restaurant (which requires admission to the Observatory).  Our visit to the Observatory concluded with the high-tech and super-fast elevator ride down, which is as exciting as the ride up.

• Kid Facts:  The top floor of One World Trade Center is the 104th floor, but the tower actually has only 93 stories, and 103 and 104 are mechanical floors.

#5:  Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island With Kids

Liberty Enlightening the World (aka the Statue of Liberty) was a gift from France to the US and is an icon representing opportunity and freedom.  The Statue of Liberty is a 151 foot copper statue located on Liberty Island.  It was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886.  It has been maintained by the National Park Service since 1933.

The statue’s pedestal and base were closed for major renovations in October 2011 and reopened on October 28, 2012, one day before Hurricane Sandy.  The statue did not sustain direct damage due to Hurricane Sandy, but the storm did destroy the ferry dock.  As a result, Liberty Island remained closed until July 4, 2013 for repairs.

The Statue of Liberty

Nearby Ellis Island was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the US from 1892 to 1954 and was the gateway to over 12 million immigrants.  The descendants those immigrants now make up almost half of the US population.  After sustaining major damage during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Ellis Island was closed for one year for extensive renovation.  The Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration is located in the main building on Ellis Island.  About 5,000 immigrants filed into the Registry Room each day for medical and legal examinations.

Registry Room

The view of lower Manhattan from Ellis Island is pretty spectacular.

View of Manhattan from Ellis Island

•  Kid Facts:  While Ellis Island had been considered part of New York, a 1998 Supreme Court case determined that about 90% of the Island is in New Jersey.  While the land originally given to New York by an 1834 interstate compact remains under the control of New York, land later reclaimed is now under control of New Jersey.

Find Out More About New York City With Kids

New York City is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the US but is not just for adults.  This traveler’s mecca offers many wonderful opportunities for families. Make sure to check out all of our posts on NYC before your next trip.