Self Guided Tours

Focus On Fifth

Latino Lexington

Focus on Fifth

This tour highlights two of the city’s major Fifth Avenue museums, the Museum of the City of New York and El Museo del Barrio, as well as the lively neighborhood that surrounds them.

After you emerge from the subway station at Lexington Avenue and East 103rd Street, walk north one block and head west on East 104th Street. On the north side, at 134 East 104th Street, is Justo Botanica. Established in 1930, it is one of the neighborhood’s oldest emporiums of religious and spiritual articles for practitioners of Afro-Cuban Santeria and Brazilian Candoble (212.534.9140).

As you walk the three blocks west to Fifth Avenue, you will pass under the Park Avenue viaduct. The huge stone arches undergirding the Metro North tracks from East 102nd to East 110th Streets date to the 1840s and are among the oldest structures in the area. The housing projects on either side of East 104th Street between Park and Madison Avenues are Governor DeWitt Clinton Houses and George Washington Carver Houses, completed in the middle 1960s and the late 1950s, respectively. Unlike public housing in many other cities, these complexes have been well maintained, as the tended lawns, bright playground equipment, and community feeling in the plaza’s attest. At Madison Avenue between East 103rd and East 104th Streets is the former Patrick Henry Public School 171. Among its many illustrious alumni is Herman Badillo, the first Congressman born in Puerto Rico to represent a district (21st Congressional District in the South Bronx) in the continental United States.

Having reached Fifth Avenue, you will see on your left the Museum of the City of New York, the first museum in the country to be devoted to the history of a single city. It was founded in 1923 and opened in this red brick Colonial Georgian structure designed by Joseph H. Freedlander in 1932. MCNY embraces the past, present, and future of New York City and celebrates its cultural diversity. Its five floors of gallery spaces feature a variety of major changing exhibitions as well as permanent installations of toys, New York theater history, period rooms, ship models and figureheads, and historical firefighting equipment. Call or visit the website for hours and admission fees: 212.534.1672; www.mcny.org.

For lunch or a snack, there is takeout fare at Blimpie’s (212.722.1572) and on the other side of East 104th Street, toward Madison Avenue, and Sun Deli on Madison Avenue between East 104th and East 105th Streets (212.427.4392). In warm weather, the Friendly Snack Bar is open just inside the entrance to Central Park at East 106th Street. If weather permits, don’t miss the opportunity to picnic in the glorious Conservatory Gardens, accessible via the grandly ornate Vanderbilt Gate (taken from the former Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue) on the park side of Fifth Avenue between East 104th and East 105th Streets.

El Museo del Barrio is located on Fifth Avenue directly across from the Conservatory Gardens. The Museum, whose name attests to its location in the spiritual home of Puerto Rican New Yorkers, was founded in 1969 and moved to this stately building in 1977. The only museum in the city devoted to Puerto Rican and Latino art and culture, it offers vibrant changing exhibitions as well as selections from its permanent collections of Taino (Pre-Columbian) through contemporary art. Call or visit the website for hours, admission fees, and a schedule of Latino dance, music, film and multi-media performances at Teatro Heckscher: 212.831.7272; www.elmuseo.org.

The Heckscher Building in which El Museo is located opened in 1923 as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The building also houses the Raíces Latin Music Museum Collection of Harbor Conservatory (of Boys and Girls Harbor) and La Casa de la Herencia Cultural Puertorriqueña, dedicated to the history and culture of Puerto Rico, in addition to the Central Park Conservancy and the Urban Park Rangers.

On your way back to the subway, if it’s late afternoon Wednesday–Sunday, stop at Jake’s Saloon, a friendly neighborhood spot that serves up beer, wine, and good conversation (143 East 103rd Street, 212.348.5629).

Please come back soon for another unique tour of a very special neighborhood—East Harlem. It’s closer than you think!