Where to See Street Art in New York

New York invented modern graffiti, then spent twenty years trying to scrub it off the trains. Now the city has murals on its tourism brochures. That arc is the story of street art here, and you can still walk through every chapter of it: the legal walls writers fought for in the 1980s, the Keith Haring pieces that survived, the curated mural districts that followed, and the stickers and tags that keep showing up on top of all of it anyway.

The best thing about street art is that it is free and always open. The worst thing is that it moves. Walls get painted over, buildings come down, whole blocks change in a summer. So this guide sticks to places that are reliable in 2026, the spots with a steady rotation, a caretaker or a history strong enough to keep them standing. Specific murals will change. The places will not.

A note on manners: these are people's homes and businesses. Do not block doorways for photos, do not climb anything, and if someone is painting, give them room.

Brooklyn

The Bushwick Collective

Bushwick · Troutman St and St. Nicholas Ave · Free

The biggest outdoor gallery in the city, founded in 2012 by a Bushwick native who started inviting artists to paint the warehouse walls on the blocks where he grew up. The core is the intersection of Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, and the murals spread out for several blocks in every direction, especially along Troutman, Jefferson Street and St. Nicholas. Walls rotate constantly and the work ranges from local writers to big international names.

Go for: a weekend morning walk, when the light is good and the streets are empty. Know before you go: the annual Bushwick Collective Block Party, with live painting, music and food, was held May 30 in 2026; watch for next year's date in spring. Pair the walk with our Bushwick guide.

Coney Island

Coney Island · Around Stillwell Ave and Bowery St · Free

Coney Art Walls, a curated outdoor mural space near the boardwalk organized by Jeffrey Deitch and Joseph Sitt, has brought in graffiti pioneers like Lady Pink and Daze alongside newer names. The rest of Coney Island is its own gallery of hand painted signs and ride facades.

Go for: a summer day combined with the beach. Know before you go: the art walls are seasonal, usually spring through early fall; confirm they are open before you make the trip.

Manhattan: downtown

Freeman Alley

Lower East Side · Off Rivington St, between Bowery and Chrystie St · Free

A short dead-end alley that has been layered with graffiti, paste ups and stickers for two decades. Nothing here is curated and nothing lasts, which is the point. It is a visual archive of whatever the city is angry or excited about this month.

Go for: the density; there is not a clean inch. Know before you go: construction on the surrounding blocks has changed the alley's edges, and the expanded New Museum now backs onto it. Our Lower East Side guide has what to do next.

The Houston Bowery Wall

NoHo · Northwest corner of Houston St and Bowery · Free

The most famous single wall in New York street art. Keith Haring painted it in 1982, and since 2008 the owner, Goldman Properties, has run it as a rotating mural commission through its arts program, Goldman Global Arts. The wall has hosted a long list of major artists, and a new piece usually goes up every few months.

Go for: whatever is up now. Know before you go: it faces Houston Street, so the best view is from the south side of Houston.

The L.I.S.A. Project

Little Italy · Mulberry St and nearby blocks · Free

The Little Italy Street Art Project, a nonprofit, has spent more than a decade turning the side walls of Mulberry Street into a mural district, with pieces spreading into Nolita, Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The best known is Tristan Eaton's Audrey Hepburn portrait at 176 Mulberry Street.

Go for: a walk up Mulberry from Canal to Houston. Know before you go: murals rotate, so check the project's map for what is currently up. Keep walking into our Chinatown guide.

East Village side streets

East Village · Avenues A to C, 2nd to 10th Streets · Free

There is no single wall here, but the side streets between Avenues A and C are thick with murals, memorial walls, stencils and community garden art. It is the neighborhood where a lot of this started.

Go for: a loose wander with coffee. Know before you go: community gardens keep limited public hours, usually on weekends. Our East Village guide maps the area.

Keith Haring in New York

Haring died in 1990, and most of his street work, the chalk drawings in empty subway ad frames, is gone. A few major pieces survive.

Crack Is Wack

East Harlem · Handball court at E 128th St and Harlem River Drive · Free

Haring painted this anti-drug mural on a handball court in 1986, without permission, during the crack epidemic. He was arrested; the city later embraced it, and the Parks Department has restored it several times. It is one of the few Haring murals still in its original place and still in public view.

Go for: seeing it from the Harlem River Drive side and up close. Know before you go: it sits beside the Harlem River Drive near Second Avenue; the playground around it is named for the mural.

Once Upon a Time

Greenwich Village · The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th St · Free

In 1989, months before he died, Haring covered the walls of the Center's second floor men's room with a frank, joyful mural about sex before AIDS. The room is now used for meetings.

Go for: one of Haring's most personal works. Know before you go: the room can be in use; ask at the front desk during the Center's hours.

The Carmine Street pool mural

West Village · Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, Clarkson St and Seventh Ave South · Closed

Haring's 1987 aquatic mural stretches along the outdoor pool wall. The recreation center has been closed for years, and the city's plan for the site calls for the mural to be preserved in a rebuilt pool.

Go for: a look through the fence. Know before you go: the pool is not currently open.

Uptown

The Graffiti Hall of Fame

East Harlem · E 106th St and Park Ave · Free

A schoolyard wall founded in 1980 as a legal space for writers, and still repainted by generations of graffiti artists every summer. This is the lineage that runs straight back to the subway era, and the lettering is the real thing, not a mural district's idea of graffiti.

Go for: classic wildstyle letters. Know before you go: it is on school grounds, so plan a weekend or summer visit when school is out.

The Audubon Mural Project

Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights · Broadway and side streets, roughly W 140s to W 190s · Free

A project of the National Audubon Society that has put more than 140 murals of climate threatened birds on walls, gates and storefront shutters, mostly in northern Manhattan. Some are whole building sides; some are painted on the roll down gates of bodegas and only visible when they are closed.

Go for: a walk up Broadway on a Sunday morning, when the gates are down. Know before you go: Audubon publishes a map of every mural.

Queens and the Bronx

Welling Court Mural Project

Astoria · Welling Ct, 12th St and 30th Ave · Free

A residential block near the Astoria waterfront that has hosted an annual mural project since 2009, with more than 100 pieces by local and international artists. New walls usually go up in early summer.

Go for: the mix of big names and neighborhood painters on one small block. Know before you go: it is a residential street; keep it low key.

Hunts Point and Boone Avenue

Hunts Point and West Farms · Bronx · Free

The Bronx, where writing culture took shape, has an active mural scene around Hunts Point and along Boone Avenue, where the Boone Avenue Walls festival brings artists together each summer (its 11th edition ran in August 2025). The murals often carry neighborhood history and environmental justice themes.

Go for: the late summer festival. Know before you go: these are industrial areas; go in daylight and plan your route.

How to find what is new

Street art moves faster than any guide can, so learn where the updates live. Most mural programs post new walls on Instagram before anywhere else, and the artists do too. The Audubon Mural Project and the L.I.S.A. Project both publish maps of current murals. The Bushwick Collective announces its block party each spring. Summer is when most new walls go up, so the best months to walk are June through October, when the paint is fresh and the light lasts.

A word on the law. Painting a wall without the owner's permission is illegal in New York, and the city still removes unauthorized graffiti. Every spot in this guide is either commissioned, permitted or long tolerated. That distinction matters to the artists, too: the legal walls are where writers get to spend a whole day on a piece instead of ninety seconds. If you want to paint, the route in is through the programs, not a spray can at 3am.

A note on 5Pointz

For years the most famous graffiti site in the world was a warehouse complex in Long Island City called 5Pointz. The owner whitewashed it overnight in 2013 and demolished it in 2014 for luxury towers. Artists sued, and a federal court awarded them $6.75 million under the Visual Artists Rights Act, a ruling upheld on appeal. There is nothing to see there now except the towers. It is worth knowing, because it explains why so much New York street art is now commissioned and managed: the walls that last are the ones someone protects.

How to use this guide

Pick one neighborhood per outing. Bushwick takes two hours on foot. The Lower East Side and Little Italy can be done together in an afternoon, ending at the Houston Bowery Wall. Harlem works as a day: the Graffiti Hall of Fame, Crack Is Wack and a walk up Broadway for the Audubon birds. Go early, bring a transit card and comfortable shoes, and treat every wall like it might be gone next week, because it might. Take photos, but also take a minute to actually look. The best pieces reward it: the brushwork in a mural, the layers under a tag, the way a wall talks back to the block around it.