How to Spend 6 Hours in New York: Little Red Lighthouse to the High Bridge
Updated October 3, 2026
Six hours in New York explores Washington Heights: the Little Red Lighthouse, Bennett Park at Manhattan's highest point, a Dominican lunch at Malecon, the High Bridge and Sylvan Terrace.
Washington Heights is the center of Dominican New York, a hilly neighborhood of Art Deco apartment blocks and corner bakeries. It's the barrio Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote into In the Heights, and the 2021 film was shot on these streets. It's also full of history, from Revolutionary War forts to what NYC Parks calls the oldest bridge in the city. This walk starts at the river beneath the George Washington Bridge and climbs to the highest natural ground on the island. Then it refuels on mofongo and finishes by crossing the Harlem River on a footbridge built for an aqueduct. The hills here are steep, so leave any suitcase at a Bounce shop first. As of October 2026, it costs from $2.90 a day.
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The 6 hour plan, stop by stop
Stops and travel: 3 hr 1 min to 4 hr 11 min of 6 hours
This forty-foot tower first stood at Sandy Hook in New Jersey in 1880 and was rebuilt here on Jeffrey's Hook in 1921 to guide barges on the Hudson. Ten years later the George Washington Bridge opened overhead and its lights made the lighthouse obsolete. The grounds are free, and the inside opens only for occasional tours. The Coast Guard later tried to auction it off. Readers of the 1942 children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, by Hildegarde Swift and Lynd Ward, wrote letters and sent money to save it. It passed to the city in 1951.
Tip: Follow the greenway path down from the bridge to the riverbank, and look straight up at the bridge's steel deck from beside the lighthouse.
- Time here
- 20 to 35 min
- Website
- nycgovparks.org
NaviTime to head out from Little Red Lighthouse for Bennett Park. It's a 24 minute walk if you leave now. Here's the link
A plaque on a bare outcrop of Manhattan schist marks the island's highest natural point, about 265 feet above sea level. In 1776 this hill held Fort Washington, the last American stronghold on Manhattan, which British and Hessian troops captured in a crushing defeat that November. Bluestone and granite paving in the park still traces the outline of its walls. The land later belonged to newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett, and it opened as a park in 1929.
Tip: Find the paving lines at the south end that trace the fort's walls, then touch the rock at the summit marker.
- Time here
- 10 to 20 min
- Website
- nycgovparks.org
NaviTime to head out from Bennett Park for Malecon Restaurant. It's a 12 minute walk if you leave now. Here's the link
Serving Washington Heights since 1987, Malecon is a Dominican standby named for the seafront promenades of the Caribbean. It's open daily from breakfast to late at night, and the room is casual and busy with families. Golden rotisserie chickens turn in the window, and the plates are big. Expect mofongo of mashed green plantain with garlic and shrimp, rice and beans, seafood rice, stews, fried sweet plantains and tres leches cake, with tropical juices to drink.
Tip: Order the half chicken with rice and beans, and ask for extra garlic sauce on the side.
- Time here
- 45 min to 1 hr 10 min
- Website
- maleconnyc.com
NaviTime to head out from Malecon Restaurant for High Bridge. It's a 15 minute walk if you leave now. Here's the link
Opened in 1848 to carry the Croton Aqueduct's water across the Harlem River from Westchester to Manhattan, the High Bridge is, NYC Parks says, the oldest standing bridge in the city. Its original pipe still lies beneath the walkway. In the nineteenth century it was a fashionable promenade, a sort of High Line of its day, but it closed to the public in the 1970s. After a long community campaign, it reopened for walkers and cyclists in June 2015. The granite Highbridge Water Tower stands at the Manhattan end.
Tip: Walk to the middle of the bridge for views up and down the Harlem River, then cross to the Bronx side and back.
- Time here
- 25 to 40 min
- Website
- nycgovparks.org
NaviTime to head out from High Bridge for Sylvan Terrace. It's a 20 minute walk if you leave now. Here's the link
Tucked onto a one-block cobbled lane, these twenty wooden row houses were built in 1882 along the old carriage drive of the Morris-Jumel Mansion. That's the hilltop house where George Washington made his headquarters in 1776 and where Aaron Burr later married the widow Eliza Jumel. With their matching stoops, dark doors and pilasters, the houses look nothing like the apartment blocks around them, and a restoration around 1980 brought back their original appearance. The lane is public and part of the Jumel Terrace Historic District.
Tip: Every house is lived in, so keep your voice down, and take your photo from the stairs at the west end of the lane.
- Time here
- 10 to 15 min
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