You do not need a guided tour to see the best street art in New York City. You need a MetroCard, comfortable shoes, and about six hours. The murals are out there, free, hanging on warehouse walls and rolling steel gates and the sides of bodegas, and on a Sunday in late April — when the light is finally good and the city is not yet sweating — there is no better way to spend a day.
This is a self-guided NYC street art tour through three neighborhoods that anchor the city’s mural scene: Welling Court in Astoria, Queens, the Bushwick Collective in Brooklyn, and the High Line on Manhattan’s West Side. You can do all three in a single day if you are committed, or split it into two outings if you actually want to enjoy your lunch.
Don’t Miss: Welling Court Mural Project, Astoria
If you only have time for one stop, make it Welling Court. The Welling Court Mural Project is an annual, multi-block art beautification event tucked into a residential corner of Astoria, Queens, and it is one of the most underrated street art destinations in the city. Where Bushwick is loud and well-Instagrammed, Welling Court is quiet — you walk down a side street, turn a corner, and suddenly every wall, every garage door, every fence post is painted.
Where: Welling Court, between 30th Avenue and Main Avenue, Astoria, Queens
How to get there: N/W to Astoria Boulevard, then walk west toward the East River
Time you’ll spend: 60–90 minutes if you walk slowly and read the artist tags
Cost: Free
The project is a celebration of art alongside the culture and diversity of the neighborhood, and the murals rotate frequently — pieces you saw last summer may already be painted over. Show up with a camera and an open afternoon.
Stop Two: The Bushwick Collective
The Bushwick Collective is the most famous street art destination in New York City, and for good reason. Founded in 2012 by Joseph Ficalora to beautify gritty industrial streets with vibrant aerosol art, the Collective now anchors a multi-block stretch of warehouses around the Jefferson Street L stop in Bushwick. Roughly 60% of the murals turn over each year — the prior artwork is replaced by new pieces — so even if you came two months ago, half of what you see today will be different.
Where: Centered around Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
How to get there: L train to Jefferson Street, then walk one block south
Time you’ll spend: 90 minutes to two hours if you wander
Cost: Free
What’s coming: The 2026 Bushwick Collective Block Party is on the calendar for early June — the annual weekend festival with live music, food, and live mural painting that brings new artists to Bushwick every year. In the weeks leading up to the block party there is heightened artist activity in the area, which means if you go in May you will see scaffolding, half-finished walls, and the rare chance to actually watch a mural being painted in real time. Today (late April) is a good “before” visit if you want to come back in June and see what changed.
Stop Three: The High Line
If Welling Court and Bushwick are the gritty, neighborhood-driven side of NYC street art, the High Line is the curated, fine-art version. The High Line Art program is one of the most cutting-edge public art programs in the country, with rotating murals, sculptures, billboard pieces, and large-scale installations placed along the elevated park’s 1.45-mile run from Gansevoort Street up to 34th Street.
Where: West Side of Manhattan, Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street
How to get there: A/C/E to 14th Street and walk west, or 7 train to Hudson Yards
Time you’ll spend: Two hours if you walk the full length and stop for everything
Cost: Free
The advantage of the High Line on a Sunday is that it pairs naturally with Chelsea — get off, walk through the galleries on West 24th Street and West 25th Street (most are open Sunday afternoon, free), and then end at the river for the sunset.
Bonus Stop: NYC DOT Public Art Installations
If you want a full belt-and-suspenders street art day, build in detours for NYC DOT Art installations. The NYC DOT public art program partners with community organizations and professional artists to present temporary public artwork on infrastructure citywide — asphalt, bridges, fences, jersey barriers, medians, plazas, and sidewalks all serve as canvases. The agency has permitted over 500 temporary public art installations across the five boroughs, which means there is usually something painted on a barrier or pedestrian plaza wherever you happen to be.
The DOT Art installations are the kind of thing you will not specifically travel for, but if you build awareness of them into your normal walking, you start noticing public art in places you used to walk past on autopilot. It is a small mental shift that makes the city more interesting.
The All-Day Itinerary
If you want to do all three in a single Sunday, here is the route that works:
- 10:00 a.m. — N/W to Astoria Boulevard, walk to Welling Court. Spend 90 minutes.
- 12:00 p.m. — Lunch on Steinway Street (and if it’s April 26, 2026, you walk straight into the Astoria Cultural Fair as a bonus).
- 1:30 p.m. — N/W back to Manhattan, transfer to the L at Union Square, ride out to Jefferson Street. Bushwick Collective until 4:00 p.m.
- 4:30 p.m. — L back to Manhattan, walk down to the High Line entrance at 14th Street. Walk south to north, end at Hudson Yards or the West 30s for dinner.
That is roughly five miles of walking, three boroughs, and somewhere north of 200 individual pieces of street art seen, all for the cost of two subway swipes and a lunch. NYC is one of the great walkable cities in the world specifically because of weekends like this one.
What to Bring
- A real camera or your phone with plenty of storage — you will take more photos than you think.
- Water. Most of these neighborhoods are warehouse-heavy and bodegas can be sparse on a Sunday.
- Flat shoes. Welling Court has some uneven sidewalks. Bushwick has some genuinely broken ones.
- An open afternoon. The point of this is that you do not rush.
Street art in NYC is a moving target by design — the pieces you photograph today may be gone by Memorial Day, and that is the entire point. Go see them while they are up.
