Tudor City Overpass

Tudor City Place crosses 42nd Street on a small stone bridge, and from its railing you look straight down the canyon of 42nd — the Chrysler Building rising on the left, traffic streaming below, the street running west in one unbroken line. It is the photograph of Manhattanhenge: on the two evenings each year when the setting sun aligns with the street grid, this railing becomes the most contested tripod real estate in the city.

The other 363 days it's simply a wonderful, quiet overlook attached to a 1920s middle-class utopia — Tudor City's brick towers and their incongruous half-timbered crowns around two small private-feeling parks. Come at dusk, let the taillights trace 42nd Street for you, and you'll get most of the famous shot with none of the elbows.