There are freshly plucked ornamental grasses by the sink, and four gleaming toilets with sanitary seat covers that rotate between uses with the wave of a hand.
Black-and-white photos of old New York decorate the walls. Soothing classical music is piped in, along with heat on chilly days. A full-time attendant waits just outside for touch-ups and emergencies.
If you must go, there may be no better public restroom in all of New York City than the five-star experience now available in the heart of Manhattan.
“It’s very elegant,” marveled Yolanda Reyes, 53, a cleaning woman from Brooklyn who made a pit stop after getting off the subway. “It made me feel very comfortable.”
The well-appointed bathroom, which reopened recently after a two-and-a-half-year makeover that cost nearly $600,000, sits in Greeley Square Park, on Broadway between 32nd and 33rd Streets, a quick dash from a major subway stop and the New York terminus of the PATH train, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey.
Finding a decent place to go after long commutes and big cups of coffee has never been easy in New York. Public bathrooms in subway stations, if there are any, or transportation hubs are often dark, grimy and cramped. Toilets get clogged, and toilet paper and soap go missing. The worst are to be avoided at all costs. […]
