Kids

American Museum of Natural History

200 Central Park West

212-769-5100

www.amnh.org

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is many things to many people, thank goodness— and thank its various founding personages, including naturalist Albert S. Bickmore, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and Andrew Haswell Green, among others, for that. Whether one favors herpetology, ichthyology, mammalogy, ornithology, or another, non-vertebrate field altogether, the AMNH has your back. For kids, that includes the popular monthly Night at the Museum sleepover, which takes its name from the 2006, AMNH-set movie of the same name. So dig this, like an archeologist: the night offers guided flashlight tours of the Museum’s third and fourth floor exhibition halls, including fossils, and self-guided wandering of the first and second floor galleries, including the dioramas of African Mammals and live insect displays in the Insectarium. There are also scavenger hunts, group games, snacks, a bedtime story and finally, breakfast. Do sleepover kids dream of T. Rex?

Museum of the City of New York

1220 Fifth Ave.

www.mcny.org

917-492-3333

In a time when everything, it seems, might be fake or “AI generated,” the study of tangible, documented history—material, written and oral— has never been so urgent or important. Enter the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), which fills the block between East 103rd and East 104th Streets, and where children under 18 are admitted free. In addition to a rich assortment of regular programs for kids and adults alike (check out its neighbor El Museo del Barrio also), two current exhibitions are must see events for all ages. One is a Semiquincentennial special, “The Occupied City: New York and the American Revolution,” the other is the mind-boggling “He Built This City,” a display of artist Joe Macken’s 21 years in the making model of Gotham. Words don’t do it justice but they’re a start. “I just started to build outwards from [Rockefeller Center]” Macken told Straus News. “And I just kept building more and more. And after 10 years I finished building Manhattan. And then when I was done building Manhattan, I figured the only thing I have left to do is the outer boroughs, and I thought ‘Let’s do it.’”

Hudson River Park Pier 51

West Side Highway and Jane Street

www.hudsonriverpark.org/activities/pier-51-play-area/

All of Hudson River Park’s playgrounds have their virtues so don’t hesitate to explore them all over time. Might as well throw in the hidden jewels that are the Battery Park City branch of NYPL and nearby Teardrop Park too. While one can’t overlook the two giant sturgeon at the Pier 26 Science Playground, Pier 51 has its own layers of resonant history in addition to a fine playground and sprinklers. One inspired touch is a replica Minetta Brook (or Creek), one of Manhattan’s largest natural waterways until it was gradually covered in the 19th century. Fed by two tributaries that joined in the area bound by today’s Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 11th and 12th Streets, Minetta Creek flowed southward—towards where Pier 51 is today; amazing! The Pier 51 jungle gym also pays homage to the “White Fort” once located on nearby Gansevoort Peninsula (“Gansevoort” means “white fort” in Dutch), that was an important feature of New York’s defense in the War of 1812.

Third Street Music School Settlement

235 E. 11th St.

www.thirdstreet.nyc

212-777-3240

Music lovers know Third Street Music School Settlement for its year-round mission of making music education accessible to as many people as desire it, regardless of their finances. Founded in 1894 by musician and social worker Emilie Wagner, the school began in Chatham Square but by 1901, it relocated to Third Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, where it remained until moving to its present location in 1974. Such was its great reputation, the Third Street name stuck. Bop over to East 11th Street over the last two weeks in July and you might hear young people ages 12-18 practicing in the Summer 2026 Jazz Workshop. Week one is titled Blues and Roots—also the name of a 1960 Charles Mingus album on Atlantic Records— and week two titled New York is Now—which, with an added exclamation point, is the name of the 1968 Ornette Coleman album on Blue Note. From mid-July to early August, there’s the Musical Theatre Production workshops for kids 6-16 that will culminate in a one-hour adaption of “Willa Wonka Jr.” If these and other structured programs don’t work out, there are always packages of summer music lessons available.

Hamiton Fish Pool

Pitt and Houston Streets

www.nycgovparks.org/parks/hamilton-fish-park

212-387-7691

Go Hamilton Fish! Uh... who? It’s a fair question and one not many people can answer right away. Hamilton Fish, he’s a bit elusive, despite having been an antebellum New York congressman, governor and senator (as a Whig) and later U.S. Secretary of State under President Ulysses S. Grant (as a Republican). With the landmarked Hamilton Fish House still standing at 21 Stuyvesant St., it’s apt that Hamilton Fish Park, including an Olympic size pool opened in 1936, is nearby; thank you, then NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Also known by locals as the Pitt Street pool, fond recollections of the facility abound on social media. “My grandfather was a lifeguard here in the 40’s and I take my kids here now,” wrote one man. “My greatest memories at Pitt Street pool, summer 1987,” offered a woman. “My beautiful mom would take my friends and I to the pool in the late nights when it was closed, and we would jump the fence and play in the pool all night! Best days!!! The innocence was real!”