840 Best Sights in New York, USA

"New York's Thunder Road" rumbles from June to September. The season's highlight is the NASCAR Series, in mid-August. On a Thunder Road Tour ($25; May–October, most days at noon), you drive the track in your own vehicle behind a pace car. Call for schedules and prices. You can get tickets, souvenirs, and merchandise at The Shop, at 4 North Franklin Street, downtown.

With views of the Hudson River and New Jersey's dramatic Palisades cliffs, Wave Hill is a former 19th-century estate with residents that have included Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. Today it's a renowned 28-acre public garden and cultural center that attracts visitors from all over the world, with exquisite theme gardens, from an aquatic garden to a shade border. Grand beech and oak trees tower above wide lawns, an elegant pergola overlooks the majestic river view, and benches on curving pathways provide quiet respite. The 1843 Wave Hill House is home to The Café and hosts workshops, talks, and concerts. Exhibitions in the Glyndor Gallery take place spring through fall each year. On the grounds, visitors enjoy a wide range of gardening and wellness programs and walks year-round.

Honoring the history of the 19th-century Black community of Weeksville, one of the first communities of free Blacks in New York (founded by James Weeks), this Crown Heights museum with an industrial-modern building by Caples Jefferson Architects has rotating exhibitions, botanical gardens, and three preserved houses on gravely Hunterfly Road in the back, dating back to 1838. Tours inside these structures depicting life in the 1860s, 1900s, and 1930s can be booked through their website.

The gathering of 300 women and men at the Wesleyan Chapel in 1848 produced the Declaration of Sentiments, the bedrock document of the modern women's rights movement. It proclaimed—audaciously, at the time—"that all men and women are created equal." Today the document's words are etched on a 140-foot-long wall between the national park's visitor center and the adjacent Wesleyan Chapel Declaration Park, which encompasses a steel structure housing remnants of the chapel. Tours are given daily at 10:30 and 1:30 and more frequently in summer.

The ruins of a 19th-century iron foundry stand here amid a babbling brook and 87 acres of preserved marshland and woodland. Scenic trails and interpretive features recount how the foundry once buzzed with activity as the original commercial hub of Cold Spring village. Its employees manufactured Civil War cannons, cannon balls, and guns, as well as cast-iron facades for SoHo warehouses and even the nation's first domestically made locomotive. Today there's also a replica of a historic gun platform. To get here from Main Street, turn south onto Kemble Avenue and take it to the end, proceed through the gate, turn left, and follow the path to the site. The preserve is accessible from the Cold Spring Metro-North train station.

Exhibits in this early-19th-century house depict life in the area from the 1700s through 1850. Photographs of early Westhampton Beach are on display, as are several spinning wheels and a turn-of-the-20th-century peanut-roasting machine used at the local general store. Special events include walking tours and lectures.

The late owner, philanthropist Chauncey Stillman, envisioned his property as a grand European estate and fully realized his dream. The Georgian-style brick mansion surveys formal gardens inspired by the Italian Renaissance, complete with resident peacocks, fountains, a sculpture garden, and a dramatic view of the Catskills. The house has an important collection of paintings assembled by the owner. The stable block houses the carriage museum and a collection of coaching memorabilia.

From this park 2 mi north of Niagara Falls you get great views of the giant whirlpool that occurs in this part of the Niagara River. A sharp turn in the river is responsible for the swirling waters. Steps and trails lead down 300 feet into the gorge, where you may fish. It's a nice place for a picnic while watching the cable car from the Canadian side glide hundreds of feet above the whirlpool.

President Calvin Coolidge used this great camp on Lake Osgood as his "summer White House" in 1926. Although built in 1907 and expanded in 1911 by William Massarene and Addison Mizner, the camp is noted for blending rustic architecture with a rather modern sensibility. If you're not staying at one of the guest cabins here, you may see the camp only as part of a guided tour. The tours (1½ to 2 hours) take in the bowling alley, tennis house, dining and great rooms, boathouse, and guest cabins. A Japanese teahouse on a small island is accessed by an arched stone bridge. The camp is 12 mi northwest of Saranac Lake.

Though only the fifth-highest in the region, Whiteface Mountain is one of the best-known mountains in the Adirondacks. Veterans Memorial Highway twists and climbs 8 mi to the top of the mountain. Close to the peak is a parking lot; from here you can ride an elevator or hike the rest of the way up. Scenic gondola rides are available in the summer.

After President William McKinley was assassinated at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as the nation's 26th president in the library of this Greek Revival mansion. You can take guided tours and view exhibits and gardens. Architectural walking tours are also available. The site underwent a major yearlong renovation in 2008 to rebuild the carriage house and to update and add exhibits.

The grand, Queen Anne–style Victorian home with a dramatic five-story circular tower was owned by the Suckley family for more than 140 years. The last family member to occupy the estate was Margaret "Daisy" Suckley, a distant cousin and close confidant of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (The movie Hyde Park on Hudson was based on their relationship). The main floor interiors were designed by New York City decorator Joseph Burr Tiffany, a cousin of the famed stained glass artist. Noted landscape architect Calvert Vaux designed the grounds, which have Hudson River views. There are weekend house tours around Christmas.

Fourteen brilliant stained-glass windows are the centerpiece of the chapel interior, a Louis Comfort Tiffany creation with mosaic-inlay floors and nine leaded-glass chandeliers. It's the only known Tiffany-designed chapel interior still intact. A lunchtime music series is held here in July and August.

This 613-acre site includes the ancestral home of William Floyd, a politician, general, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and prominent Long Island plantation owner. Over a 250-year period, eight generations of his family occupied the estate, a satellite property of the Fire Island National Seashore 18 miles east of Sayville. The house began as a two-story wood-frame structure in 1724, and saw several renovations, including one in 1857 in which the house took on a Greek Revival style and another in the 1920s that expanded the mansion to its current 25 rooms. Tours of the property are available; leave plenty of time to explore the Old Mastic House, it's artifacts, and the grounds, which include several outbuildings and a cemetery.

Be prepared for mosquitoes and ticks in spring and summer.

Sample up to 10 wines on a spacious deck overlooking the nearby mountains at the highest vineyard and winery in the Northeast. Cornerstone wines include a Riesling, Chardonnay, and a variety of sweet and dessert wines. Tastings and tours are offered throughout the year; hours vary by season, so it's best to call ahead. The vineyard is about 5 miles northwest of Windham.

The artist owners of this European-inspired castle have spent 45 years building their multi-towered stone pile using 85% recycled materials, including carved doors from a French chalet, salvaged stones, and old tools which are incorporated into the wrought-iron fence. It also has a small B&B with three antique-filled guest rooms, and three additional bedrooms across the street at the Tudor cottage. Be sure to check out the miniature Stonehenge with panoramic views of the Catskills and the Millbrook Winery vineyard.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and a handful of other pioneers in the women's rights movement organized the first Women's Rights Convention in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls in 1848. Today, the park incorporates the site of the convention (the Wesleyan Chapel Declaration Park), a visitor center, and several off-site historic homes of key convention participants. Exhibits and an orientation film at the visitor center explore the development of the women's rights movement in the United States.

Mark Twain rests in the Langdon family plot, with his daughter Clara and son-in-law, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, at his feet. A 12-foot-tall monument marks the spot (12 feet, in river terminology, is 2 fathoms, or "mark twain," the derivation of Clemens' pen name).

Dead artists of all kinds reside here: poets, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers, and bon vivants. Many of the stones, in keeping with the wishes of their buried subjects, tell artfully rendered stories. Look for the grassy knoll behind the Evergreen Cemetery to commune with the spirits of Woodstock.

The juried fair, held Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, showcases potters, photographers, jewelry designers, and other artisans from across the nation. The food is better than usual fair fare, with many vegetarian and other innovative dishes.

Until 40 Wall Street stole the title in 1930, the 792-foot, neo-Gothic Woolworth Building, opened in 1913, was the world's tallest building. For security in the now-residential building, the spectacular lobby is no longer open to the public on a daily basis, though exclusive-access architecture tours are sometimes available through Open House New York ( ohny.org). The lobby is home to a stained-glass skylight and carved wooden sculptures set into the portals to the left and right: one represents retail-giant namesake F. W. Woolworth counting his nickels and dimes; another depicts the architect, Cass Gilbert, cradling in his arms a model of his creation. But even if you don't make it inside, the tower's exterior is exquisite, too—its facade details so ornate the building was nicknamed the "cathedral of commerce." 

Artists, writers, and musicians from all over the United States come to this highly regarded artists' colony to work. The estate was built in 1899 by philanthropist Spencer Trask as a gift to his wife, Katrina. Although you can't visit the house, you can tour the grounds, which include a formal rose garden with fountains and an informal rock garden.

Antiques and memorabilia depicting life in the 1850s fill the former Greek Revival summer home of Prattsville's namesake. A tireless entrepreneur, Zadock Pratt—who outlived five wives—made his initial money in tanning but went on to develop a variety of industries, including several mills, factories, a general store, and a printing plant. The museum includes a cultural and educational center with changing exhibits related to the history of the Catskills.

This monastery resides in a four-story bluestone–and–white-oak church on 230 acres bordered by the Beaverkill and Esopus rivers. The building, constructed by Norwegian craftsmen at the turn of the 20th century, includes a 150-person meditation hall, a dining hall, and resident and guest quarters. The only way to visit is to partake in introductory Zen instruction—offered Wednesday evenings and as weekend retreats—or in the Sunday session of services, zazen (or sitting) meditation, and lunch.