3 Best Sights in New York City, New York

Dominating the skyline here, the towering granite mausoleum (1897) is the final resting place of Civil War general and two-term U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia Dent Grant, who retired to NYC after the White House. The formal name is the General Grant National Memorial, but everybody except the National Park Service calls it Grant's Tomb. As the old joke goes, who's buried here? Nobody—they're entombed in a crypt beneath a domed rotunda, surrounded by photographs and Grant memorabilia. Once a more popular sight than the Statue of Liberty, this pillared Classical Revival edifice remains regal and timeless. The words engraved on the tomb, \"Let Us Have Peace,\" recall Grant's speech to the Republican convention upon his presidential nomination. Surrounding the memorial are the so-called rolling benches, covered with colorful mosaic tiles. Made in the 1970s as a public art project, they are now as beloved as they are incongruous with the grand memorial they surround. Stop by the visitor center (across the street from the tomb; check hours online) for a 20-minute film about Grant.

Located in Roosevelt Island Lighthouse Park, this intriguing and monumental sculpture honors Nelly Bly, the journalist who exposed the horrors of the island's Women’s Lunatic Asylum by going undercover as a patient. Simultaneously, it spotlights women who have endured—and overcome—hardship. Shown as sections of faces in silver for Bly, and bronze for the others, the pieces represent being both broken and repaired. Also on-site, just behind the sculpture, is the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse. The stone structure was built by the New York City government in 1872. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a New York City Landmark.

This memorial to John Lennon, who penned the classic 1967 song \"Strawberry Fields Forever,\" is sometimes called the \"international garden of peace.\" The curving paths, shrubs, trees, and flower beds create a deliberately informal landscape reminiscent of English parks. Every year on December 8, Beatles fans mark the anniversary of Lennon's death by gathering around the star-shape black-and-white \"Imagine\" mosaic set into the pavement. Lennon's 1980 murder took place across the street at The Dakota, which was home to Lennon and Yoko Ono and has been the residence of other celebrities from Boris Karloff to Leonard Bernstein. The building's elaborate exterior is best admired from Central Park West, as visitors are not welcome in the lobby, and there are no tours.