Best New York City Webcams: Times Square to Coney Island

The best New York City webcams to watch right now are EarthCam’s view over Times Square, the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt camera looking north across Central Park, the Bryant Park lawn cam, the Red Hook harbor cam facing the Statue of Liberty, the Coney Island cam over Luna Park and the LaGuardia plane tracker. Here’s what each one shows, when it looks best, and what to do when New York weather gets in the way.

Times Square From the Ball Drop Building

Inside One Times Square, the building the New Year’s Eve ball drops from, EarthCam runs the Times Square webcam, looking north up the square. Its main shot covers Duffy Square, the TKTS red steps and the traffic on Seventh Avenue, and the page carries extra tabs aimed straight at the giant screens.

It isn’t a fixed shot. The camera cycles through presets, so within a few minutes the picture moves from the wide view over the red steps to a long look up Broadway, a close-up of the clock and globe on top of the Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway, and the billboards over Seventh Avenue.

The red steps are the anchor. The TKTS booth underneath has sold discounted same-day Broadway tickets since 1973, and the 27 red steps on its roof are free to sit on. Rain doesn’t kill the view either: on a wet day the screens throw red light across the pavement and the steps turn into a field of umbrellas.

New Year’s Eve needs a different angle. Because the main camera sits in the ball’s own building, it shows the crowd packed toward Duffy Square rather than the ball itself. Switch to the 1560 Broadway tab, which looks south at One Times Square and the year numerals on its roof.

Tempted to go and sit on those steps yourself? Start with hotels near Times Square; the Times Square-42nd Street subway station under the square is served by the 1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R and W trains.

Midtown From Above: SUMMIT One Vanderbilt and Bryant Park

Two cameras cover the heart of Midtown. The SUMMIT One Vanderbilt webcam sits at the top of a 1,401-foot (427 m) tower beside Grand Central and looks north over Central Park, while the Bryant Park cam, a block from Times Square, watches the park’s lawn turn into an ice rink each winter.

SUMMIT One Vanderbilt

Open the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt webcam when you want the whole city in one frame. Central Park is a long green rectangle in the middle distance, pencil-thin supertall towers rise at its southern edge on the left, and on a clear day the Hudson River runs off to the left while the East River and Queens fill the right.

This is also the cam most at the mercy of the weather. One Vanderbilt is tall enough that low cloud swallows the lens, so on a wet day the screen can stay white for hours before the towers reappear one by one. Check it when the forecast says clear, and try the last hour before sunset, when the light comes in low from the left and the park turns gold.

Want the view without a screen in the way? The deck itself is known for its mirrored rooms and glass skyboxes, and you can compare SUMMIT One Vanderbilt tickets before you go.

Bryant Park

The Bryant Park webcam looks west down the length of the central lawn from the library end, with the stone terrace in the foreground, London plane trees down both sides and the office towers of Sixth Avenue closing off the view.

Through the summer it’s open grass. In October the lawn becomes a building site of forklifts, timber pallets and rink panels, and from late October to the end of February it holds the Winter Village ice rink, where admission is free but skate times have to be reserved. No other cam in the city shows the holiday season arriving quite so literally.

The Upper East Side

For a quieter corner of Manhattan, the Upper East Side webcam looks west-northwest from Lexington Avenue and East 77th Street toward the Lenox Hill Hospital area. It’s a neighborhood view rather than a landmark one, and our city and town webcams have plenty more like it.

Where Can You Watch New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty Live?

The New York Harbor webcam, run by StreamTime Live from the Waterfront Museum’s homeport in Red Hook, Brooklyn, covers Red Hook Channel in Upper New York Bay from the Verrazano Bridge to the mouth of Buttermilk Channel. The Statue of Liberty sits across the water, and the camera pans and zooms between the bay and the Red Hook shore.

Night is when this one earns its place. The statue is floodlit, so long after dark you still get a small pale-green figure on the horizon above a string of harbor lights. In daylight the camera can swing toward the waterfront, where an old brick warehouse with arched windows lines the channel and One World Trade Center rises behind it.

Two overlays help. The bar across the top stamps the date and time in Eastern Time, and the numbers in the top-right corner are the camera’s pan, tilt and zoom readings, so you can tell when it has moved. The stream’s description also links to a live ship-tracking map, handy when something large slides past.

If the statue on the horizon isn’t close enough, compare Statue of Liberty tours.

Coney Island’s Rides and Beach

The Coney Island webcam is an EarthCam view over Luna Park in Brooklyn, taking in the Cyclone roller coaster, the Wonder Wheel, the red Parachute Jump tower, the beach and the Atlantic beyond. It’s the city’s summer cam, and on a clear day the ocean horizon runs almost the full width of the frame.

Look right for the Parachute Jump, a 250-foot (76 m) open-frame steel tower that first carried riders at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It’s no longer a working ride, but it’s the easiest landmark to find in the shot. Along the bottom of the frame the subway runs on a viaduct, so trains roll through the foreground while the coasters run behind them.

EarthCam pitches this one as a peak-summer view, when the sand fills and the rides spin. Off season it’s quieter, though the coaster tracks against the Atlantic still make a good dusk check. You’ll find more rides on camera among our amusement park webcams.

Plane Spotting at LaGuardia

The LaGuardia Airport webcam, streamed by Flightradar24, looks across the water at the airport in northern Queens and follows aircraft on its own. A tracking system fed with ADS-B data steers the camera onto whichever plane is moving, and an overlay names the flight, the aircraft type and its route.

Clear days are the reason to come here. The Manhattan skyline stands about 6 miles (10 km) behind the airfield, and a departure climbing past the Empire State Building is the shot worth waiting for. Grey days are another story: haze and rain wash the skyline out, leaving a jet against flat white.

Expect mostly narrowbody and regional jets. A perimeter rule from 1984 limits most nonstop flights at LaGuardia to 1,500 miles (2,400 km), so intercontinental services use Kennedy and Newark instead. The operator credits views of runways 13 and 31. For more runways, see our pick of the best airport webcams for plane spotting.

Worth Knowing Before You Tune In

New York runs on Eastern Time, five hours behind the UK for most of the year and three hours ahead of California. Daylight is the main limit: the sun sets around 4:30 p.m. in late December and about 8:30 p.m. in late June, so evening viewers in London catch the city in its afternoon.

• Night isn’t a write-off. Times Square stays lit around the clock because zoning rules since 1987 require building owners there to display illuminated signs, and the harbor cam keeps the floodlit statue in view.
• Weather hits the high cameras hardest. Rain beads on the lens and low cloud can blank out SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, while the Times Square cam, far lower down, usually keeps going.
• Several of these cameras move. Times Square cycles through presets, the harbor cam pans, and LaGuardia chases aircraft, so give a cam a few minutes before deciding it’s stuck.
• Streams restart now and then. Most of the New York City webcams here stream through YouTube, so if a player shows an error or a black frame, wait a minute and reload the page.
• For the city long before any of these cameras existed, watch our remastered 1911 street film of New York City.
• Planning a wider trip? Our top 10 webcams in the United States covers the rest of the country.

New York City Webcam FAQ

What are the best New York City webcams to watch right now?

Start with the Times Square webcam inside One Times Square for crowds and screens, then the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt camera for the skyline over Central Park. Add the Red Hook harbor cam for the Statue of Liberty, the Coney Island cam for the rides and beach, and the LaGuardia tracker if you like watching planes land.

Can you watch the Times Square ball drop on a webcam?

Yes. The ball drops from the roof of One Times Square, which is where EarthCam’s main Times Square camera sits, so that view shows the crowd rather than the ball. On our Times Square page, switch to the 1560 Broadway tab, which looks south at One Times Square and the year numerals on its roof.

Is there a live webcam of the Statue of Liberty?

There is. The New York Harbor webcam in Red Hook, Brooklyn, looks across Upper New York Bay with the Statue of Liberty on the horizon. It’s a pan-and-zoom camera, so the statue isn’t in every shot, and it’s easiest to spot after dark, when it’s floodlit above a line of harbor lights.

Why does a New York webcam look dark or blurry?

Usually it’s night, weather or a restarting stream. Rain beads on the lens, and low cloud can hide the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt view for hours at a time. If the player shows an error or a frozen picture, wait a minute and reload, because live streams on YouTube restart from time to time.

Start in Times Square, Finish at the Beach

Those are the New York City webcams we’d open first: Times Square for the energy and SUMMIT for the scale, then south to the harbor and Coney Island as the light changes. When you’ve seen the city, our New York webcams page carries the rest of the state, from Adirondack lakes to Long Island’s beaches.