The 7 train, from Flushing to Hudson Yards

The 7 train starts at Flushing-Main Street in Queens and ends at 34 St-Hudson Yards in Manhattan. In between it makes twenty-two stops, goes under the East River and ends at one of the newest stations in the city. Most of what is worth seeing in Queens is within a few blocks of the elevated track.

Flushing and the fairgrounds

Flushing Town Hall is the red-brick Romanesque Revival building that was the seat of government when Flushing was its own town. It went up in 1862, survived a threatened demolition in the 1960s and is now a nonprofit arts center with jazz concerts and gallery shows.

The next stop is Mets-Willets Point, where the Unisphere stands directly across from Citi Field. The twelve-story stainless-steel globe was the centerpiece of the 1964-65 World's Fair, and its three rings stand for the paths of the first satellites. The ballpark has been the home of the New York Mets since 2009, and the station was renamed when it opened.

At 111 St, the New York Hall of Science is another fair relic, a curved brick pavilion from 1964 that is now a hands-on science museum for families.

Corona, Jackson Heights and Sunnyside

Louis Armstrong lived in a modest brick house in Corona from 1943 until he died in 1971, even after he was famous around the world. The house is preserved largely as he and his wife Lucille left it, and it is a museum now. A stop later, at Junction Boulevard, the Lemon Ice King of Corona has been selling Italian ice from a walk-up window since 1944. It appeared in the opening credits of The King of Queens, and the lines still form on warm days.

At 74 St-Broadway, Diversity Plaza sits in the shadow of the elevated train. It was carved out of a closed street segment in 2012, next to the busy Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue hub, and the city council made the name official in 2016. Farther west, at 46 St-Bliss St, a steel gantry spelling out "Sunnyside" spans Queens Boulevard. It went up in 1983 and is still what locals point to when they give directions.

Long Island City and the river

Court Square is the stop for MoMA PS1, a contemporary art museum in a converted public school from 1893. Two stops later, at Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue, Gantry Plaza State Park runs along the East River on a former rail-barge site, with two preserved black transfer gantries and the Manhattan skyline behind them. The 50-foot Pepsi-Cola sign beside them dates from 1940 and was moved there when the bottling plant closed in 2003.

Midtown and the end of the line

The train goes under the river and stops at Grand Central, a Beaux-Arts landmark completed in 1913 that has the subway station directly under its Main Concourse. A stop later, on Fifth Avenue, the New York Public Library Main Branch has two marble lions called Patience and Fortitude at its entrance. At Times Square, the New Amsterdam Theatre opened in 1903 and was restored by Disney in the 1990s.

The last stop is 34 St-Hudson Yards, where Vessel stands in the public square. It was designed by Thomas Heatherwick and opened in 2019, a honeycomb of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps and 80 landings. It reopened in 2024 with glass barriers along its landings after a period of closures for safety reasons.

Ride it yourself

The 7 train in the game starts at Flushing and ends at Hudson Yards, in the same order as above.