Manhattan - museum/used bookstore/upscale consignment recommendations
 

Hello all. It's time for me to start planning my annual day trip into Manhattan. Two years I started going up to the city for the day and visiting a museum and the Strand and doing some shopping. Two years ago I revisted the awesome Metropolitan Museum, and last year I toured the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, which was fascinating. This year I'm thinking of revisiting the Frick, which I haven't been to in about a dozen years. Does anyone care to give me another museum suggestion? I've already been to the National History Museum and am not interested in that again. The only other qualification is that the museum must be in Manhattan, not Harlem or the boroughs. Since I'm only there for the day I don't want to spend too much time trying to get around.

I loooove the Strand and can spend easily over an hour in there. I visited a few used bookstores around 17th St., I believe, and was unimpressed. Any other great used bookstores I should try? (I love travel books, cookbooks, American history, sociology and mysteries).

During my last visit I discovered what was called an upscale thrift store on I think it was 17th St. I found some really nice clothes are really great prices. Any other upscale consignment shops you can recommend?

Many thanks, Karen

well,once we get your geography straightened out (Harlem IS in Manhattan), we can make lots of suggestion :)

I happen to like some of the 'smaller' museums, though I find myself at the Met every other week anyway. In the same neighborhood, I love the Cooper Hewitt (a museum of design--and that subject is taken pretty broadly) . Take a look at their website and see if the current exhibit is to your liking. There's no permanent exhibit of the main collection since the place is small--2 floors of a beautiful Carnegie masnion.
The Neue Gallerie, also on 5th avenue is fairly new and very popular, though I haven't made it there yet! It covers mostly German and Austrian art.

I'm also a fan of the New-York Historical Society, on Central Park West. There are usualy several small exhibits (anything from old board games, to The artwork oF Jules Feiffer to currently an exhibit about Pets in the city) and a permanent collection that includes many exquisite Tiffany lamps. It's a big buiding, but almost never crowded and the exhibits themselves are intimate and not overwhelming.

As far as bookstore, one that comes to mind is Kitchen Arts and Letters at Lexington Avenue and 93rd street--pretty close to the Cooper Hewitt and the rest of the area called "Museum Mile" The store is well known for its cookbooks,both contemporary and many rare and old items

I would recommend the Asia Sociey at Park & 70th.

http://www.asiasociety.org/

Janie's info is excellent. I can add The Forbes Museum (lower 5th ave) for their collection of Faberge eggs.

Here's a link to some thrift shop recos

http://www.laurasnyctales.com/nycguide/thrift.html

There are a number of resale shops on Madison Ave from the 60's to the 80's (where the ladies who consign live) but unfortunately can't remember any names. These places are usually on the 2nd floor (one flight up).

Here's a nice website for book stores.

http://www.ny.com/shopping/bookstores/

Argosy Book Store on E 59th is worth a look. It's been around long enough to have a properly-aged inventory. Don't plan on spending just an hour, though....

The International Center of Photography is great. It's right on 43rd St. and 6th Ave in midtown.
http://64.94.245.222/index.htm

But it is a shame that you're limiting yourself to Manhattan. The Brooklyn Museum of Art is well worth a visit. It has a huge Ancient Egypt Collection and a great Rodin collection, among other things.
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/

Also, if you venture not far into Queens, the Museum of Modern Art is having an Ansel Adams exhibit.
http://www.moma.org/

The newly renovated Museum of American Folk Art should be worth a visit--I can't wait. Argosy Book Store mentioned before is wonderful. We started our antique map collection there--when it was affordable. By the way, "folk art" can be very modern.

FYI: The thrift shopsite mclaurie kindly posted contains address errors so you best call before schlepping.

To wit: Housing Works (one of 4 in city) is on West 17 Street (Not 18) between 6 & 7 aves & one block east
(6th &5th) is UJA on same side of street. Both carry nice wares & you might have been to one of these 2
on your earlier trip.
Happy Culture & shopping!

If you go to the Neue Gallerie, don't miss their cafe. Someone here pointed me to it and I wasn't sorry. Not cheap but very very good, and pretty.

karens, the Dahash museum just moved to a new "home" at Madison & 56th St. Through Nov. 2 they have an exhibit called French Artists in Rome: Ingres to Degas, 1803-1873. Thought you would be interested. I read about it in the Fri NY Times.

Many thanks, all! I really appreciate all your helpful suggestions. The websites were great - and thanks for pointing out the street address errors.

I just read in New York for Dummies that the Museum of New York (I don't think that's the correct name and I don't have the book in front of me) is scheduled to move from uptown to downtown in the Fall of 2003. The website they gave didn't mention anything about a move. Does anyone know anything about this? And McLaurie - thanks for the info on the Dahesh Museum - I hadn't heard of it before! Karen

I heard talk a couple years ago about the Museum of the City of New York moving downtown, but nothing ever came of it. I thihk that the site they were considering (maybe the Tweed courthouse) was promised to something else. Museum is still on Fifth Avenue, around 104th street. The New-York HistoricaL Society that I Mentioned before is a separate museum, though there's often talk about combining the 2--hasn't happened yet...

I'm going to check out consignment shops soon so if I do I'll post more info here

Meanwhile: one of them is called Encore. Wherever it is -- somewhere on Madison above 70th St -- there are three more right near it, all one flight up. So if you find Encore you can find some more!!

Visits to these shops combine well with museum visits as to location.

They have great reputations. If I really get off the stick, you may have a chance to buy some of my old clothes, including an amazingly weird robin's egg blue courreges suit from the 80s in a style making reference to the safari jacket.