Partly Cloudy 45° » 5-day

You are not logged in

New York Magazine

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Best Newfangled Toy Store

  • Kid O

    123 W. 10th St.; 212-366-5436

    The playthings here are certain to turn your children into creative, forward-thinking creatures with a sense of history and precision-tuned motor skills. Okay, so there are no guarantees. But when it comes to originality, selection, and quality—not to mention parental approval—this West Village toy shop gets raves on all counts. Toy stores today tend to diverge into two strains: so good for you they’re boring or so Disneyfied they’re depressing. Owner Lisa Mahar has assembled a collection that includes the cheap (a three-ball yo-yo with flashing lights, $12 to $15), the handmade (individually knitted dolls, $95), the classic (eighteenth-century blocks invented by Friedrich Froebel, the founder of kindergarten, $275), and, this being New York, the ridiculously expensive (Italian oak puzzles, $600). The store is as neat as a nunnery, owing to its adherence to the Montessori philosophy: A clean and inviting play space equals a buzzing brain lab.

Next: Birthday Parties

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine

Advertising
Order the Issue Today

Cover of New York Magazine's Best of New York issue

Order This Issue

Other Best Of Guides

Our mission this year: to hunt down not just the best but the best values in the eating, shopping, drinking, and general-consuming universe of New York. It’s quite the process, this, requiring eating and shopping and drinking (all in the name of research), followed by heated but civil discussion, and heated but less-civil discussion, until a winner emerges in each category.

Read More...