Where I live, I'm surrounded by museums and can't get overexcited at the thought of revisiting the Met or MOMA or...

But I loved the New York Tenement Museum. What other museums - or other sites - are there in New York that commemorate or celebrate how Americans lived - or even how they live?

New York museums of real people -- The Subway..

Err, yes. But we've got lots of those at home too.

Ellis Island - there's a museum showing what the immigrant's experience was like when they first arrived

Maybe the Museum of the City of New York?

http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/

Recently I went to the Merchant's House Museum which I thought was nice. It is a house so it takes less than an hour to see it. I had seen The Tenement Museum on my prior trip to New York, so it was interesting to contrast life in a tenement with life at the Merchant's House.

"The Merchant's House Museum is New York City's only family home preserved intact -- inside and out -- from the 19th century."
http://www.merchantshouse.com/

The Merchants House? How can anyone resist somewhere celebrating its terquasquicentennial?

Or the discovery that in all of New York there's only one family house preserved intact from the 19th century?

The things you learn on this site.

Keep 'em coming. This is good.

There's something like that for Chinatown.

The Merchant House is definitely worth a visit, and it is best to combine it with the Tenement Museum for its contrast.

A day visiting the NY Subway art is definitely worthwhile. Some smplaes are posted here:

http://tinyurl.com/2hv2lw

A related property is the Mount Vernon Hotel, on E 61st Street. See how New Yorkers in the early 19th century relaxed when the area around Bloomies was "the countryside":

http://www.mvhm.org/

The one in Chinatown is the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas
http://www.moca-nyc.org

I have to second the recommendation for Ellis Island. Even at age 19, when I was decidedly uninterested in museums (it was a short-lived phase I went through rebelling against a family full of teachers, historians, etc. LOL) I couldn't help but be engaged by the history presented there.

Both the New York Historical Society (right next to the Museum of Natural History) and the main branch of the New York Public LIbrary usually have great exhibits.

Birthplace of Thoedore Roosevelt

http://www.nps.gov/thrb/

Yes, a reconstruction but still interesting if you're want to know about Victorian life in NYC or US Presidents

sorry, Theodore

Also this one, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's oldest house

http://www.morrisjumel.org/index.php?sec=home

and this one..


http://www.mvhm.org/

The Merchant's House on the west fringe of the East Village enchanted me many years ago: http://www.merchantshouse.com

Thank you all for some excellent suggestions.

Unfortunately, most of my free time is on a Sunday and a bit of Monday, when the Chinese Museum and Theodore Roosevelt's house is closed (much as I'd have loved to see the spiritual home of the teddy bear), getting out to Ellis Island is likely to eat up the whole day, and even getting up to 163rd St for the Morris-Jumel might knock more of a hole into my time than I'd planned

But, though I'd heard of the Museum of the City of New York, I'd always assumed it was the opposite number of the Museum of London. In fact, vjpblovesitaly's link showed it's actually a celebration of New York life, rather than a display of artefacts from the city's history. And that's precisely what I was looking for.

The Hudson River School exhibition now on at the Historical Society is exactly what I was hoping to find: an antidote to the Rembrandt wannabes and Ghiberti gates at the Met (I'm not averse to conventional museums: we've just got enough real Rembrandts round here and what's the point of wasting a morning on two Ghiberti gates when the whole baptistery's only a twenty quid Ryanair flight away?)

The Mount Vernon Hotel might be squeezable into bits of Monday - though it looks astonishingly gentrified on the web site, and not at all how Fanny Trollope described American hotels of the period.

Thanks above all for the references to the Merchants House. I might resist the temptation to see inside a Georgian townhouse with furniture of the period - but the website's account of the history of the area round Fourth Street is fascinating. I've always been mildly puzzled about how it's got to be the way it is, and the site's given me all I need for a morning's walk (and eating) round the area, and a flight over's background reading.

I will of course keep my eyes skinned for graffiti while on the subway back and forth to the airport.

Thanks to you all. And if the conference gets boring, you've given me a welter of escape options.