Things to Do in Battery Park: What's Actually Worth Your Time at the Bottom of Manhattan
By 17John Hotel ·
Quick answer
Battery Park, officially The Battery, is the 25-acre park at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the five things worth your time there are the SeaGlass Carousel (tickets $6, or ten for $55), Castle Clinton National Monument, the 135,000 square feet of perennial gardens, the Battery Urban Farm, and the harbor esplanade where you get a free long view of the Statue of Liberty. It's also where the ferries leave: Statue Cruises boats to Liberty and Ellis Islands run from Castle Clinton, and the free Staten Island Ferry goes from the Whitehall terminal right next door. From our door on John Street it's about a twenty-minute walk south, or a few stops on the 4/5 from Fulton Street to Bowling Green.
Battery Park and the bottom of Manhattan, seen from the harbor. · Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash
Battery Park is the piece of Lower Manhattan we send guests to when they've done the big-ticket stuff and want an hour outside without getting on a train. Its real name is The Battery, it runs 25 acres along the southern tip of the island at State Street and Battery Place, and it does more jobs than most parks: it's the ferry landing for Liberty and Ellis Islands, it's a working garden, and it's where you get the free long view across the harbor that people pay for elsewhere.
It's about a twenty-minute walk south from us on John Street, straight down Broadway past Bowling Green, or a few stops on the 4/5 from Fulton Street if it's raining. Here's what we'd actually stop for, and what we'd skip.
One practical note before you go: the park has three public restrooms, outside the View at Battery Park Restaurant, at Castle Clinton, and by the Battery Bikeway on Battery Place, and they run 9:00am to 4:30pm. Worth knowing if you're down there with kids late in the afternoon.
SeaGlass Carousel
· About a 20-minute walk south of us · $6 a ticket, or 10 for $55
This is the one thing in the park we'd tell an adult to ride without a kid as cover. You sit inside a huge illuminated fish rather than on a horse, and the whole car circles, oscillates and rises, so it feels like being underwater rather than on a carousel. It's a nod to the New York Aquarium that used to sit in the park. Tickets are $6, and if there are four of you the ten-ticket block at $55 is the better buy since everyone will want a second go. Hours shift with the season and with the weather, so check seaglasscarousel.nyc the morning you go rather than trusting a listing. The entrance is across from 17 State Street.
Castle Clinton National Monument
· In the park, right by the water · Free to walk into
The squat round fort in the middle of the park has had more careers than anyone you know: military fort, opera house, aquarium, and from 1855 to 1890 the immigration depot that processed arrivals before Ellis Island opened. Eleven million people came through here, Tesla and Houdini among them. You can walk in free and be done in fifteen minutes, which is the right amount of time. It's also the practical stop, because the Statue Cruises ticket booth is inside, so if you're doing Liberty Island this is where your day starts.
The gardens and the Oval lawn
· Spread through the park · Free
There are 135,000 square feet of perennial gardens here, which is a strange amount of planting to find at the bottom of the Financial District and the reason the park doesn't feel like a plaza. Come in late spring or September and the beds are the point of the visit. The Battery Oval is the open lawn at the centre, and it's where we'd sit with a coffee rather than trying to find a bench on the crowded esplanade side.
The Battery Urban Farm
· Reachable from Battery Place or State Street · Free to look at
A working educational farm inside the park, used mostly for school field trips. You're not going to spend an hour here, but if you're walking past with kids it's a genuinely odd thing to show them: rows of vegetables with the harbor behind. Field trips run at 32 students a group, so on a weekday morning expect it to be busy with school groups and keep moving.
The harbor esplanade and the Statue of Liberty view
· The water's edge, on the south side of the park · Free
Stand at the railing on the harbor side and the Statue of Liberty is out there across the water. It's distant, but it's free and it's the view that makes the walk down worth it even if you never board a boat. Go at the end of the afternoon when the light is behind you rather than in your eyes. The park sits next to the Whitehall Ferry Terminal, so this is also the spot to end up if you're catching the Staten Island Ferry, which is free and gets you far closer to the statue than the railing does.
