Rebecca Engel
Autumn in New York gets more press than any other season for a reason. The humidity breaks some time in late September, the parks turn every shade of orange there is, and the whole city stops hiding indoors from its own weather. It’s the stretch of the year when walking around is the entire activity.
The list below is seventeen cozy things to do in New York City between the first cool week and the end of November. Everything on it sits inside the five boroughs, so there’s no rental car and no drive up the Hudson. The city does autumn perfectly well on its own.
1. Row A Boat On The Central Park Lake
The Loeb Boathouse rents rowboats by the hour, and autumn is the only time of year the lake is both comfortable and gorgeous at once. In summer it’s too hot to row and in winter the boats are gone.
From the water you get the one angle on Central Park that almost nobody photographs, with Bow Bridge on one side and the towers of Central Park West rising over a wall of orange trees.
Go on a weekday if you can. Weekend afternoons in October have a queue, and the boats stop going out well before sunset.
2. Walk The Mall And Bethesda Terrace Under The Elms
The Mall is the straight tree lined promenade running through the middle of Central Park, and the elms arching over it form the largest stand of American elms left in North America.
In late October the whole tunnel goes gold at once. It’s the single most photographed autumn scene in the city and it earns it.
Keep walking north and the path drops you at Bethesda Terrace and the fountain, usually with a busker playing under the arcade where the sound carries. That arcade is also the best place in the park to stand when it rains.
3. See The Kiku Chrysanthemum Show At The New York Botanical Garden
The Botanical Garden up in the Bronx puts on Kiku every autumn, a display of Japanese chrysanthemums trained over months into domes, cascades and single stems carrying hundreds of blooms.
It’s a genuinely strange thing to see. Each plant is grown for a year to end up in one shape, and the technique goes back centuries.
The garden itself is 250 acres with a 50 acre patch of old growth forest in the middle of it, which is the closest thing New York has to what stood here before the city did. The foliage in there is better than anything in Manhattan.
4. Take The A Train To The Cloisters
Way up at the top of Manhattan, the Cloisters is a museum of medieval art built out of pieces of actual French monasteries shipped over and reassembled on a hill above the Hudson.
It shouldn’t work and it completely does. The courtyards and covered walkways are cold stone and quiet, and in autumn the gardens are still going while the trees outside turn.
Fort Tryon Park around it has the best river view in Manhattan and a fraction of the crowds of Central Park. Give yourself the walk from the subway rather than taking the bus up.
It’s about an hour from midtown on the A train, which puts a lot of people off. That’s exactly why it’s calm on an October Saturday.
5. Walk The High Line From Gansevoort To Hudson Yards
The High Line is planted with prairie grasses rather than flowers, and autumn is when that choice pays off. The whole line goes copper and straw colored and stays that way into December.
Summer crowds are gone by October and the light in the late afternoon comes straight down the cross streets at you.
Start at the Gansevoort Street end and walk north. It’s about a mile and a half and drops you at Hudson Yards, or you can bail into Chelsea Market halfway for lunch.
6. Buy Cider Donuts At The Union Square Greenmarket
The Greenmarket runs four days a week in Union Square and autumn is its best season by a mile. Apples come down from the Hudson Valley by the crate, along with cider, squash, and the donuts that are the real reason to go.
Some of the apple varieties on those tables are ones you’ll never see in a supermarket. The growers are usually happy to tell you which ones to eat now and which to keep.
It’s also the cheapest thing on this list. You can walk the whole market, eat a warm donut, and spend under ten dollars.
7. Watch The Village Halloween Parade Go Up Sixth Avenue
On Halloween night the Village Halloween Parade runs up Sixth Avenue and anybody in a costume can join it. That’s the part people don’t realize. There’s no ticket and no application, you just turn up in costume at the start and walk.
It pulls tens of thousands of participants and around a million people watching, with giant puppets, bands, and costumes that took somebody a full year.
If you’d rather watch than walk, get to the route well before the start. The good stretches fill up early and it’s shoulder to shoulder by the time the front of the parade reaches midtown.
8. See The Costumes At The Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade
In the East Village, Tompkins Square Park hosts what’s usually called the largest dog costume parade in the world, on a weekend afternoon in late October.
The commitment level is remarkable. People build entire sets for their dogs. There are hot dogs, lobsters, dogs dressed as other dogs, and every year a handful that are genuinely inspired.
It’s free, it’s outdoors, and it’s about as pure a New York afternoon as exists. Go early if you want to actually see anything, because the crowd around the ring gets deep fast.
9. Wander Green-Wood Cemetery In Brooklyn
Green-Wood is 478 acres of hills, ponds and Victorian monuments in Brooklyn, and it was a tourist attraction before Central Park existed. In the 1860s it was one of the most visited places in the country.
It’s also one of the best foliage spots in the city and one of the quietest. The high ground near the entrance looks straight back at the Manhattan skyline over the treetops.
Wild parrots have nested in the Gothic front gate for decades, which is a genuinely odd thing to run into on your way in. The cemetery runs tours through autumn if you want the history rather than just the walk.
10. Ride The Staten Island Ferry For Free
The ferry runs around the clock, costs nothing, and passes close enough to the Statue of Liberty to make every harbor cruise ticket look like a poor decision.
In autumn the light over the harbor in the last hour before sunset is the best it gets all year, and the deck isn’t packed the way it is in July.
Stay outside on the back deck for the trip out and you’ll watch lower Manhattan shrink behind you. Then walk off at St George, walk straight back on, and do it again in the other direction.
11. Get The Foliage View From Top Of The Rock
Of the observation decks, Top of the Rock is the one to pick in autumn, because it’s the only one that looks straight up the length of Central Park.
From up there the park reads as a solid rectangle of orange and red dropped into the middle of the grey city, with the Empire State Building behind you for the other direction.
Book a slot around an hour before sunset. You get the park in daylight, the sunset itself, and the whole skyline lighting up, all on one ticket.
12. Have Governors Island To Yourself
Governors Island is a car free island in the harbor, eight minutes on a ferry from lower Manhattan, and it stays open all year now rather than closing at the end of summer.
Autumn is the best time to go and almost nobody does. The summer crowds are gone, the hammocks in Hammock Grove are empty, and you get the skyline view across the water without queuing for it.
The hills on the south end were built out of construction fill and they’re the highest ground in the harbor. Climb Outlook Hill and you can see the Statue of Liberty, the Verrazzano bridge and the whole of lower Manhattan at once.
Bring a jacket. There’s nothing between that island and the wind.
13. Warm Up With Two Ales At McSorley’s Old Ale House
McSorley’s has been pouring in the East Village since 1854 and the inside hasn’t been redecorated since roughly then. Sawdust on the floor, a coal stove, and a century of newspaper clippings and wishbones nobody is allowed to dust.
There are two things on the menu, light ale and dark ale, and they come two mugs at a time whether you wanted two or not.
It’s a tourist stop and it’s also still a real bar, which is a hard combination to pull off. On a cold afternoon in November with the stove going, it’s the coziest room in New York.
14. Catch A Premiere At The New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival runs at Lincoln Center from late September into October, and it isn’t an industry only affair. Tickets go on public sale and a lot of the films are having their first American screening.
Directors turn up for talks after the screenings more often than you’d expect for a festival this size.
Even if the films aren’t the draw, Lincoln Center on an autumn evening with the fountain lit and the plaza full is worth the walk over.
15. Get Inside A Closed Building During Open House New York
For one weekend in October, Open House New York opens several hundred buildings that are normally shut to the public. Working infrastructure, private clubs, engine rooms, towers, buildings you’ve walked past for years without knowing what’s inside.
Most sites are free. The popular ones need a reservation and those go within minutes of release, so it pays to look at the list the day it goes up rather than the week of.
Plenty of sites are open access with no booking at all, so it’s still worth doing even if you miss the reservation window entirely.
16. Watch The Balloons Get Inflated The Night Before Thanksgiving
Everyone knows about the Macy’s parade. Far fewer people go to the inflation the evening before, which is arguably the better event.
The balloons are laid out on the streets around the Museum of Natural History and filled through the evening while you walk past them. Seeing a character the size of a building slowly come up off the pavement is stranger and more fun than watching it float by the next morning.
It’s free and it runs for several hours, so there’s no dawn start and no staking out a spot at six in the morning. Dress warmly and expect to move slowly with the crowd.
17. Take A Lap Of Bryant Park’s Winter Village
The Winter Village opens in Bryant Park at the end of October, well before anything else in the city turns festive, which makes it the natural end point for an autumn trip.
There are a couple of hundred glass kiosks selling food and gifts, and the rink in the middle is free to skate if you bring your own skates.
Come on a weekday evening. On a December weekend it’s genuinely hard to move, but in early November it’s still pleasant and you can actually get to the stalls.
More Things To Do In New York City When The Leaves Turn
A few more that didn’t need their own spot but are worth the trip if you have the time.
Wave Hill in the Bronx is a public garden on a bluff over the Hudson with views across to the Palisades, and it’s one of the quietest beautiful places in the city. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is smaller than the one in the Bronx and easier to fit into an afternoon.
Little Island on the Hudson is worth twenty minutes if you’re already on the High Line, and Smorgasburg keeps running outdoors in Prospect Park and Williamsburg until the weather finally turns.
And Coney Island out of season is its own thing entirely. The boardwalk is nearly empty, Nathan’s is still open, and the light off the water in November is worth the ride out on the Q.
When The Leaves Actually Peak In New York City
The city runs later than most people expect. Upstate peaks in early October, but New York City is usually at its best from the last week of October into the middle of November.
All that concrete holds heat and pushes the turn back, so a trip planned for the first weekend in October often lands on trees that are still green.
If foliage is the main reason you’re coming, aim for the first week of November. If you want the parades and the markets instead, late October gives you both Halloween and the start of the Winter Village.
What To Wear In New York City In Autumn
September is still warm and can hit the eighties. By late November it’s near freezing in the mornings. Those are two different trips, so check the forecast rather than the calendar.
The thing that catches visitors out is how much walking a normal day here involves. Ten to fifteen thousand steps is an ordinary day in New York, and boots you haven’t broken in will end the trip early.
Layers, a jacket that handles rain, and shoes you’ve already walked a long way in. The wind between tall buildings makes it feel colder than the number on your phone, especially near the water.
Final Thoughts
The best things to do in New York City in autumn aren’t the expensive ones. Most of this list is a park, a ferry, a market or a walk, and the two or three that cost real money are the ones you could drop without hurting the trip.
What makes the season here is that the city is briefly comfortable to be outside in, and everybody knows it, so the streets and the parks fill up with people in a good mood.
Pick a couple of the big set pieces, leave the afternoons loose, and let the walking be the point.
