Turtle Bay: the United Nations and the quiet east side
The UN and the river, Tudor City on its bluff, the Ford Foundation's indoor garden, and Turtle Bay's hush. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Tudor City
Start on the bluff. The 1920s Gothic apartment enclave sits up above 42nd Street on its own bridge of land — turn into the two small private parks and look down the slope to the UN. Built deliberately facing inward, away from the slaughterhouses and gasworks that used to line the river.

2. United Nations headquarters
Down the steps to First Avenue and the line of flags — one per member state, in English alphabetical order. The Secretariat slab is Harrison's 1952 glass-and-marble. You're on international territory here, not New York. Sculptures dot the garden: the knotted gun barrel, the figure beating a sword into a ploughshare.

3. East River esplanade view
The garden walk runs along the river behind the complex — flags, lawns, the water, Queens across it and the Roosevelt Island tram cables to the north. Public access to the grounds varies with security; if the gate's shut, the view from the 1st Avenue railings still holds.

4. Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice
Walk back up 43rd to Kevin Roche's 1968 glass box — and step inside for the atrium. A third of an acre of indoor garden under a twelve-storey skylight, terraced and full of trees, free and almost always empty. The best room on this walk and the one nobody tells you about.

5. Turtle Bay Gardens / East 49th Street
North into Turtle Bay proper — the brownstone blocks between Second and Third where the back gardens were knocked together into one shared courtyard in the 1920s. Katharine Hepburn lived on the 49th Street row for decades. Quiet, leafy, residential; walk slowly and look at the doors.

6. Greenacre Park
End at the pocket waterfall on 51st between Second and Third — a single small lot with a wall of falling water that drowns the city out completely. Twenty-five feet of cascade, a few tables, a coffee counter. Sit until the traffic disappears, then it's two blocks to the 6 or the E/M.

Turtle Bay: the United Nations and the quiet east side