Throughout New York City, there are restroom facilities you can use while you’re out and about sightseeing. A few tips:
You can find a full list of New York City parks with public restrooms at the Parks Department website. The public restrooms in Bryant Park—replete with attendants, Toto toilets and fixtures, a classical-music soundtrack and fresh flowers—are perhaps the most notable in the City.
Other popular public restrooms include those at transportation hubs like Grand Central Terminal. And, if you ask, you can use the bathrooms at New York City Police Department stations.
The City contracted more than a decade ago to build 20 automatic public toilets; most remain in a warehouse in Queens. So far, there is one facility in Madison Square Park and another at Plaza de Las Americas (at Wadsworth Avenue and West 175th Street) in Manhattan; one in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza; one at Corona Plaza in Queens; and one at Fordham Plaza in the Bronx. Each costs 25 cents for 15 minutes of use. The New York City Department of Transportation says that additional ones will be installed at Valentino Park and Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and in downtown Far Rockaway, Queens, by mid-2019; plans, or at least assessments, for more locations are in the works.
Lastly, most sizable department stores, large-chain bookstores and restaurants offer restroom facilities for their customers.