9 Best Sights in New York City, New York

Rising real-estate prices inspired the construction of New York City's narrowest house—just 9½ feet wide and 32 feet deep—in 1873. Built on a lot that was originally a carriage entrance of the Isaacs-Hendricks House next door, this sliver of a building has illustrious past residents including actor John Barrymore and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Founding father Alexander Hamilton and his wife raised eight kids in this Federal-style country home, which he called his "sweet project." Once located on Hamilton's 32 acres, the Grange, named after his father's childhood home in Scotland, has moved three times since it was built in 1802. It now stands in St. Nicholas Park and gives a lesson in Hamilton's life, from his illegitimate birth in the West Indies and his appointment as the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury to his authorship of The Federalist Papers and his death following a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. The house's ground floor, formerly servants' quarters, hosts an interactive exhibit that includes a short film on Hamilton's life. Tours include views of the parlor, study, dining room, and two guest rooms. Note the beautiful piano, which belonged to his daughter, Angelica. 

A five-story cast-iron building from 1870, 101 Spring Street was the New York home and studio of minimalist artist Donald Judd. Although SoHo used to be home to many single-use cast-iron buildings, this designated historic building is one of the few that remain. Judd bought it in 1968, and today, guided 75-minute tours (book online, as early as possible, since tours sell out weeks in advance) explore his living and working spaces, offset with art installations arranged prior to his death in 1994. Note that climbing five flights of stairs is required and photos aren’t allowed.

For the last 28 years of his life, the famed jazz musician lived in this modest three-story house with his wife, Lucille. Take a 40-minute guided tour (reservations required in advance; departs on the hour, last tour at 3 pm), and note the difference between the rooms vividly decorated by Lucille in charming mid-century style and Louis's dark den, cluttered with phonographs and reel-to-reel tape recorders. 

Built in 1832, this redbrick house, combining Federal and Greek Revival styles, provides a glimpse into the domestic life of the period 30 years before the Civil War. Retired merchant Seabury Tredwell and his descendants lived here from 1835 until 1933. The home became a museum in 1936, with the original furnishings and architectural features preserved; family memorabilia are on display. The fourth-floor servants' bedroom, where the family's staff slept and did some of their work, offers a look at the lives of Irish domestics in the mid-1800s. Guided tours are at noon, cover all 5 floors and the rear garden, and last about 75 minutes.

During the Revolutionary War, General Washington used this wooden, pillared, 8,500-square-foot house (1765) as his headquarters, and when he visited as president in 1790, he brought along John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. Inside, rooms are furnished with period decorations; upstairs, keep an eye out for the hand-painted wallpaper (original to the house) and a "commode chair," stuck in a corner of the dressing room. Outside, behind the house, is a Colonial-era marker that says it's 11 miles to New York—a reminder of what a small sliver of Manhattan the city was at that time. West of the house is the block-long Sylvan Terrace, a row of crisp two-story clapboard houses built in 1882.

Manhattan's oldest surviving house was built in 1765 for the Morris family, on the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, and if walls could talk, this house would have stories. In fact, it has songs: Lin Manuel-Miranda composed part of Hamilton here. This National Historic Landmark once served as headquarters to General George Washington and then the British military and Hessian troops during the American Revolutionary War. It survived the Battle of Harlem Heights in 1776 and a few months later, its barn held American prisoners after the Battle of Fort Washington. At war's end, the house was confiscated, and for a while it lived a life as a tavern and rest stop for travelers. In the early 1800s, the house was owned by wealthy French merchant Stephen Jumel, who spent time restoring the house while living out of wedlock for several years before marrying a woman of no station who spent a lot of money trying to be accepted by New York society. The home welcomed such notable figures as Louis Philippe (King of France), Joseph Bonaparte (elder brother of Napoleon Bonaparte), and Henry Clay. When Jumel died and left everything to his wife, she married Aaron Burr. Yes, that Aaron Burr. She divorced him after four months after he made a dent in her bank account. Today the house is a museum with eight period rooms on display, fine furnishings and portraits, beautiful architecture, and all those stories to tell.