Upper West Side

Dakota Building

This massive apartment building has been and is! home to many celebrities. Probably best known was the former Beatle John Lennon, who was gunned down outside the building on December 8th, 1980 by a crazed fan named Mark Chapman. Lennon had been living at the Dakota with his second wife, Yoko Ono, who still resides in the building. A memorial to the former Beatle exists nearby in Central Park. The building has become a popular place of pilgrimage for many who admire Lennon.

Time Warner Center

Has the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for dining, drinks, and Chihuly chandeliers. It also has a small, ultra-high-end mall with luxury shops and Botero sculptures. In the basement is a large Whole Foods Market, and there is seating for eating their prepared food and salad bar items cheaper than eating in a restaurant. Or better yet, on nicer days, pick up a prepared meal to-go and venture across the street to Columbus Circle or Sheep's Meadow in Central Park for a nice outdoor meal.

Apthorp

A beautiful early 20th-century high-rise luxury apartment building, taking up the entire square block between 78th and 79th Sts. between Broadway and West End Avenue. Its companion, the Belnord, takes up the square block between 86th and 87th Sts. between Broadway and Amsterdam. Both buildings were completed in 1908, at a time when the Upper West Side was still full of wide open spaces.

General Grant National Memorial. General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife are buried in this imposing mausoleum, the largest tomb in North America.

Shinran Shonin

Staring pensively across Riverside Drive at the children playing in the park is the statue of Shinran Shonin, a 13th century Buddhist reformer. In another life, the statue stood in Hiroshima and witnessed the devastation caused by the bomb. His New York home is between two Riverside Drive buildings right next to the New York Buddhist Center (http://www.newyorkbuddhis...).

Soldiers and Sailors Monument

A memorial to the Civil War dead though, in typical New York fashion, it wasn't constructed till 1902, almost 40 years after the Civil War ended!.

A large and historically important Protestant church and center of progressive social activism.