7. Tudor City Greens

The best word to describe Tudor City Greens? Charming. From the carefully manicured grounds to the flower gardens, bird baths, benches, street lamps, and location looking over East 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue, it feels almost like someone planted a small-town garden right in the middle of Turtle Bay. It’s an elevated park, accessible by steps on East 42nd Street.

Tudor City Greens is unique in that the founder of the Tudor City community, a twentieth-century real-estate developer Fred F. French, oriented the residential buildings around Tudor City Greens, rather than enclosing the gardens within a private courtyard, as seen in New York’s turn-of-the-century Astor courtyard buildings. During the 1920s when French implemented his plan, the idea of centering a neighborhood around a park while also making it accessible to the public rather than enclosing it inside a courtyard was new.

Run by a non-profit organization consisting of local Tudor City community members, the park is open to the public daily from 7AM to 10PM, free of charge.