The best playgrounds in New York

Heckscher Playground

Central Park

The biggest playground in Central Park, 1.8 acres on the west side between 61st and 63rd, and the oldest: it opened in 1927, got its adventure-style pieces from Richard Dattner in the 1960s and 70s, and the Conservancy rebuilt it in 2006. The climber is maze-like, a natural rock outcropping is part of the play space, and the water feature is a big one, with a view of midtown over the top.

Restrooms are in the Heckscher Building. The Central Park Carousel is about three minutes' walk, and the Central Park Zoo under half a kilometer.

The main way in is the breezeway through the middle of the Heckscher Building.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Billy Johnson Playground

Central Park

Two granite slides set into a hill, one of them 45 feet long, with a kid-size copy of Gapstow Bridge, a wooden shelter and rustic structures laid out like a miniature Central Park. M. Paul Friedberg designed it with custom pieces instead of standard equipment, and the 2018 renovation kept that character. It sits at 67th on the east side, about 250 meters north of the Central Park Zoo.

Bucket and tire swings, a sandbox and sand table, and an amphitheater spray feature round it out.

Restroom

No

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Ancient Playground

Central Park

Pyramids, an obelisk and a sundial, because Richard Dattner designed it in 1973 around the Egyptian collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art next door, with the Temple of Dendur as the model. The Conservancy rebuilt it in 2009 and kept the forms, so kids still climb an ancient city, with a sandbox, swings, water features and a ramped play structure. The bronze Osborn Gates at the entrance show scenes from Aesop's fables.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Wheelchair access

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Chelsea Waterside Playground

Chelsea

A 64-foot wooden slide shaped like a pipefish, one of the fish that actually lives in the park's water, built by a Danish playground company as its first themed structure in the northeastern US. This was Hudson River Park's first playground, opened in 2000 and enlarged in 2018, with several water features. Limestone cattle heads from a demolished Hell's Kitchen slaughterhouse and granite blocks from the old elevated West Side Highway are built into it.

The High Line at West 23rd Street and the Pier 62 Carousel are each a few minutes' walk, and Little Island about ten.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Pier 25 Playground

Tribeca

Swings, climbing structures and water features out on the pier, with shaded seating for whoever is on watch. The rest of Pier 25 keeps a kid going after the playground: a turf field, a mini golf course, a historic vessel to look over and two concessions for ice cream.

Washington Market Park, with three playgrounds of its own, a lawn, a butterfly garden and comfort stations, is about five minutes' walk inland.

Shade

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Pier 26 Science Playground

Tribeca

Next door to Pier 25, and 4,000 square feet of play built around two sturgeon, the Atlantic and the shortnose, both endangered and both native to the Hudson. Kids climb inside the fish to find the anatomy and the other marine play pieces, with climbing nets and trees around them. OLIN designed it to match Pier 26, which opened in 2020, and Monstrum, the Danish firm, built the fish. The play pieces are built for all ages.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Rockefeller Park Playground

Battery Park City

Battery Park City's large playground, rebuilt top to bottom in 2020 with all new equipment and a new play surface, in the park that holds most of the neighborhood's wide lawns. Teardrop Park is across River Terrace, under two hundred meters away, with a children's slide, sandboxes, water play and rocks to hop across, and the public restrooms are at its entrance.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Battery Playscape

The Battery

Opened in December 2021 at the bottom of Manhattan, 1.4 acres laid out as five landscapes. The Bluff has five granite slides, one of them 18 feet high. The Riverbed sends water into a sand basin with a 4-foot octopus hidden in it. The Marsh is seven playhouses, some up ladders, joined by a footbridge and a tunnel, and the Dune has a 9-foot climbing wall and ShowBox, a stainless steel cube with a stage and a hand-puppet nook (the first improv theater in a New York playground).

The whole thing was designed after Hurricane Sandy to flood and recover. The SeaGlass Carousel, a ride inside a glass pavilion shaped after a nautilus, is right beside it.

The entrance is at State Street and Battery Place.

Restroom

Yes

Shade

Yes

Water play

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Minetta Playground

Greenwich Village

A quarter mile from Washington Square Park and its own toddler playground, this small gated playground at Minetta Lane and Sixth Avenue is built for climbing, with equipment sized for younger kids, a pair of low swings and a spray shower in summer.

Restroom

No

Fenced

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Catbird Playground

Upper East Side

At the end of Carl Schurz Park, the East River park with Gracie Mansion, the mayor's house, inside it and a promenade along the water looking out at the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse. The playground has ramps and transfer points onto the equipment, accessible swings for under-fives, water play and sensory-friendly spaces, and the Peter Pan statue is in the park too.

Restroom

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Hippo Playground

Upper West Side

Riverside Park's playground at West 91st, with wooden play equipment and slides, swings, a sand pit and a spray shower under honey locust trees. The Hippo Parkhouse has a public restroom and can be rented for a party of up to 30. The Children's Museum of Manhattan is about ten minutes' walk, and the hill on the east side is where the neighborhood sleds in winter.

Restroom

Yes

Shade

Yes

Water play

Yes

Swings

Yes

Picnic tables

Yes

Accessible play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Slide Mountain at Pier 6

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Two-story slides and jungle gyms at the south end of Brooklyn Bridge Park, with three more playgrounds within two minutes of it: Sandbox Village, which may be the largest sandbox in New York City and works for toddlers as well as older kids, Swing Valley with its rope swings, and the Water Lab, a splash pad that runs once summer days are reliably in the 80s.

Restrooms are in Quay Tower across from Sandbox Village and at Fornino, the wood-fired pizzeria on Pier 6. The ferry dock at the pier's southern edge goes to Governors Island, and Jane's Carousel is about a mile north along the park.

The B63 bus stops just outside 360 Furman Street.

Restroom

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Domino Park Playground

Williamsburg

Built to look like pieces of the Domino Sugar Refinery that stood here: the Sugar Cane Cabin, the Sweetwater Silo and the Sugarcube Centrifuge, made with wood reclaimed from the refinery walls and aluminum molds from salvaged valve wheels, the graphics based on the old factory signage. Go down one slide and you come out as syrup, down the other as sugar.

The park around it is five acres on the East River, with a fountain of water jets kids play in and viewing steps down to it.

Water play

Yes

Ages

Ages 3 and up

Prospect Park

Prospect Park

A ring of playgrounds around the edge of Brooklyn's big park, Harmony Playground, Vanderbilt Playground and Lincoln Road Playground among them. Inside the loop, the Prospect Park Carousel dates from 1912 and the Prospect Park Zoo has nearly 400 animals, with the sea lions, baboons and red pandas as the favorites. Lefferts Historic House is an 18th-century farmhouse with a working garden and hands-on exhibits, and the LeFrak Center at Lakeside has water play in the warm months and ice skating in winter.

Restroom

Yes