I Walked Manhattan From Top To Bottom In A Day. Here’s What I Learned.

Some casual observations from a 17-mile stroll through the city's west side neighborhoods.

Last weekend, my girlfriend and I decided to walk Manhattan from its very north at Inwood Hill Park to its southern tip at the Battery. We’d seen several other friends do the journey - typically going down the western side of the island - and thought it would be a great way to explore more of the city. Particularly the upper Manhattan neighborhoods that I rarely visit, living relatively far away as a resident of the Lower East Side.

I spent about a week researching the spots I wanted to see in each neighborhood as we journeyed our way south, focusing on parks, historical sites, old homes, and unique architecture. Much inspiration was taken from Keith Taillon’s recent book Walking New York, which I cannot recommend highly enough to any other urban enthusiasts. Google Maps says a straight shot from Inwood Hill Park to Battery Park, mostly sticking to Broadway, is about 12.4 miles and should take 4.5 hours. With our many added stops and occasional zigzagging across the island, we traveled about 17 miles and it took us closer to 9 hours.

Our route, courtesy of Strava.

In case anyone is interested in following my route, here’s a link to my itinerary with all the stops we made. Let me know if you do this walk yourself or if you have any recommendations for other neighborhoods, parks, or places to visit throughout the city!

We passed through Washington Heights, Harlem, Morningside Heights, Upper West Side, Riverside Park, Hell’s Kitchen, Hudson Yards, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Tribeca, and FiDi. All in all, it was an incredible experience that opened my eyes to the offerings of new neighborhoods and put the truly massive scale of Manhattan’s urban landscape into perspective.

Here are some my main learnings, takeaways, and thoughts from the day:

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1. Upper Manhattan is full of lush parks and wild-looking green spaces that makes you forget you’re in America’s biggest city.

2. Inwood Hill Park is a gem, with the last remaining natural forest in Manhattan

3. Fort Tryon Park, with The Met Cloisters and its heather garden and scenic views of the Hudson River, is another gem.

The beautiful parks of upper Manhattan

4. Washington Heights in general is an underrated neighborhood, with some of the most varied and eyecatching architecture of the whole walk. We were constantly impressed by the beauty of both apartment blocks and parks in this area.

5. Sylvan Terrace showcases the wonders of a no-car, townhouse style urban block

Sylvan Terrace - looking more like a historic European city center than a street in Manhattan!

6. On the flip side, the stretch from Zabar’s to Hudson Yards on Broadway and surrounding blocks can be an overcrowded hellscape. This area currently has very little Open Street programming and would benefit immensely from an expansion of it.

7. Some great places to explore around Washington Heights: Highbridge Park and water tower, Morris-Jumel Mansion (oldest house in all of Manhattan), Audubon Terrace

8. Sugar Hill is perhaps now the most beautiful neighborhood I’ve walked around in all of Manhattan. Such a wonderful blend of walkable streets, tree lined streets, and historical homes showcasing the best of NYC’s residential architecture!

   

   Wes Anderson fans might recognize the architecture of this neighborhood…

9. Morningside Park is another underrated park, designed by the creators of Central Park with similar style but squeezed into a much smaller and steeper space. The park was full of families and dog walkers but not nearly as packed as Central Park on any given day.

10. Riverside Park does not get talked about enough for how grand it is, with running paths and Hudson River views to rival any other park in the city. Manhattan’s east side could really use some revitalization to give it waterfront green space similar to what the west side is spoiled with.

11. The many memorials dotting Riverside Park - Grant’s Tomb, Firemen’s Memorial, Soldier and Sailor’s Monument, etc. - gave our stroll a certain air of gravitas and shared history with past New Yorkers. Why don’t we build as many memorials and statues in our public spaces anymore?

12. Lincoln Center is grand and a jewel of the city’s arts offerings, but knowing the story of the neighborhood destroyed and people displaced to create it somewhat taints the view.

13. On the other hand, Greenwich Village is a joy to walk around is packed with carefully preserved homes and gardens, making it an oasis of calm, especially compared to the chaos and density of Hell’s Kitchen. But that very preservation and fight against new development is what makes this neighborhood unattainable for the vast majority of New Yorkers. Displacement of potential future residents, in a much more invisible manner.

    

    A typical corner in Greenwich Village

14. The size of the Municipal Building is truly impressive, and standing at it’s base looking up at it is daunting. In fact most of the buildings surrounding City Hall Park are quite massive and grand, which makes it easy to overlook City Hall itself.

    

    I mean, just look at this beautiful behemoth.

15. Speaking of which, there needs to be better signage about accessing City Hall! Most of the park is gated off and there is little in the way of directions for how to enter the building, making the whole process of attending a public session of City Council (something I did earlier this year, for the first time) intimidating from the very start.