Find Nolita's Hidden Sculpture Garden on a Bagel-and-Gelato Walk
Start around 10 AM with a wood-fired bagel, eat it in a sculpture garden, then gelato and the city's first Catholic cathedral.
🗺️ Four Stops, Two Streets
🥯 Start: Black Seed Bagels
Aim to start around 9:30 or 10:00 AM, just before the garden up the block opens. Black Seed Bagels on Elizabeth Street hand-rolls its bagels and bakes them in a wood-fired oven, a cross between the Montreal and New York styles. Order one to go and walk two minutes north. Plan on an hour and a half to two hours for the whole stroll, with the garden free and food paid as you go.
🌿 Then: Elizabeth Street Garden
A gate halfway up the block opens onto Elizabeth Street Garden, a jumble of gravel paths, flower beds and old stone statuary, including a lion stretched along a balustrade. Volunteers keep it open and free, and in the fall it runs from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM when the weather allows. After years of fighting over plans to build housing here, a 2026 settlement kept the garden in place and moved the affordable homes to a lot on Suffolk Street. Find a bench and eat the bagel.
🍨 Next: Gelateria Gentile
Near the corner of Prince, Gelateria Gentile traces its recipes to a family gelato kiosk that opened in Bari, Italy, in 1880. The Nolita shop scoops gelato alongside Italian coffee and pastries. Seating is limited, and a cone is easier on a walk anyway.
⛪ Finish: Old St. Patrick's on Mott
Walk west on Prince one block to Mott, and the long brick wall ahead belongs to the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, finished in 1815 as the city's first Catholic cathedral. Turn right up Mott to the front entrance for the full facade, and look inside at the vaulted nave and old pipe organ when the doors are open. The two walled graveyards behind the brick wall and the catacombs below are only open on a separate paid guided tour of about 90 minutes, with its own tickets.
