Fordham University Guide: Best Restaurants, Bars & Hotels (2026)
Where to eat, drink and stay around Fordham's Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, from Arthur Avenue to Lincoln Square.
Whether you're a Fordham student still working out your regular spots, a first-year learning the Bronx, a parent in town for move-in or Family Weekend, an alum back for Homecoming, or a prospective student seeing the place for the first time, this guide covers the restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, and campus landmarks worth knowing near Fordham University.
Fordham is really two schools, and the difference shapes everything below. It opened in 1841 as St. John's College, founded by Bishop John Hughes on the Rose Hill estate he had bought two years earlier; the Jesuits took it over in 1846, and the name changed to Fordham University in 1907. It now runs about 9,900 undergraduates and roughly 17,000 students in total. Rose Hill is 85 gated acres in the Bronx, Collegiate Gothic and green, with the New York Botanical Garden pressed against its eastern edge and Belmont, the city's other Little Italy, starting a few blocks south of the gates. Lincoln Center is eight acres of Manhattan between West 60th and 62nd Streets, one block west of Columbus Circle, where the campus is a plaza on a roof deck and a 22-storey tower with student housing stacked above a law school. The two sit about thirty minutes apart on the D train. Practically, that means the Rose Hill half of this list is Arthur Avenue and the Lincoln Center half is the Upper West Side and Hell's Kitchen, and almost nothing overlaps.
Best restaurants near Fordham University
Fordham has the best eating geography of any campus in New York, and most students only use half of it. At Rose Hill, Arthur Avenue begins a few blocks off the gates and is the genuine article: delis making mozzarella by hand several times a day, a restaurant that has never really had a menu, pastry counters older than most of the buildings around them. It is also no longer only Italian, and the Mexican, Dominican and Chinese places nearby are where a lot of the actual weeknight eating happens. At Lincoln Center the map inverts. The 1900 Broadway block directly across from Lincoln Center holds the pre-theater restaurants parents book, and Ninth Avenue down in Hell's Kitchen holds the cheap, late and dependable ones. Everything below is on the map, Bronx first and then Manhattan, running roughly from the everyday end to the occasions.
Featured restaurants to check out
Pugsley Pizza
590 E 191st St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
A block off the Rose Hill gates and family-run since the mid-1980s, when Salvatore Natale, a Sicilian immigrant who arrived in 1967, opened it on Pugsley Avenue and later moved to this site, which was a junkyard at the time. The name came with him. Sal has been known to play saxophone for the room, there is a gong customers strike on the way in, and the walls disappeared years ago under photographs, newspaper clippings and student graffiti. Beyond slices, the house pies are the argument: heart-shaped pizzas, a penne alla vodka pizza, and a tri-color pie striped with vodka, marinara and pesto sauces. It takes cards, despite the rumour that follows every pizza counter near a campus.
Estrella Azteca
2328 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The Mexican kitchen in the middle of the Arthur Avenue restaurant row, and the useful counterweight to four Italian dinners in a week. It opens at ten every day and runs to ten or eleven, which makes it one of the few places on the strip that covers breakfast and a late dinner. The birria special is the thing to order, three Mexico City-style tacos with consomme and an agua fresca for around $17, and there is barbacoa de chivo and arrachera poblana for a bigger plate. Worth noting that this address traded for years as Estrellita Poblana III, so older lists and reviews still carry the old name.
Zhongzhong Noodles - Bronx
657 E 189th St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
A Sichuan-leaning noodle shop a couple of minutes from campus, and much bigger inside than the storefront suggests. Braised beef noodle and the tomato and sliced beef noodle are the orders people repeat, and there are signs in the room instructing you to mix the bowl well before you start, which tells you the kitchen cares how the thing arrives at your mouth. Cheap, generous and open late enough to be useful. There are sister locations in Brooklyn and on Roosevelt Island.
Ajo y Orégano
621 Crescent Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Dominican cooking a block off Arthur Avenue, opened here in early 2020 as the second location of a Parkchester original that had outgrown its twelve tables. The room is built to look like a country house: a false zinc roof, worn pink shutters, drinks in metal cups and food arriving in small ollas. Mofongo and mofonguitos are the headline, with pernil, pollo guisado, chicharron de pollo, arepitas de yuca and passion fruit juice around them. It does not open until 12:30, so it is a lunch-onward plan rather than a breakfast one.
Tino's Delicatessen
2410 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The Paciullo family have run this deli for more than twenty years, and it recently moved off East 187th Street into the renovated former Belmont Community Center, so any older listing has the wrong address. Mozzarella is made in house daily, the heroes have names (the God Father, the God Mother, the chicken cutlet parmigiana), and there is a brick-oven Pizza Salernitana and Rosa's eggplant parmesan if you want to sit. It opens before seven and runs seven days, which makes it the best grab-and-go on the avenue, and it ships nationwide through Goldbelly if a parent gets attached.
Casa Della Mozzarella
604 E 187th St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Orazio Carciotto arrived from Sicily in 1986 with no English and opened this in 1993; he runs it now with his son Carlo, and years of pulling curd out of near-boiling water burned the fingerprints off his hands. Mozzarella comes out fresh every twenty or thirty minutes, roughly 3,000 pounds a week, with burrata and bocconcini alongside and scamorza hung from the ceiling for four hours to firm up. Order the Casa: prosciutto di Parma, that morning's mozzarella, sun-dried peppers, oil and balsamic on a hero. It is a standing-room counter with a line down the block, not a restaurant, and it shuts by six and by one on Sundays.
Enzo's of Arthur Avenue
2339 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Enzo and Maria Di Rende opened this in 2005 as a small cafe and expanded it to roughly 200 seats across four dining rooms; Enzo died about a year after the expansion and Maria has run it since. The block-level roots are unusually deep, even here: the kitchen sits in what was once her great-grandmother's apartment, and her father owns the pork store directly across the street. Bucatini alla carbonara, cavatelli with broccoli rabe and sausage, and fried meatballs with hot peppers are the plates to know. The real argument for it is space, though. This is the one that absorbs a table of twelve after commencement without anyone giving you a look for laughing too loudly.
Dominick's
2335 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
In business since 1962 under Charlie DiPaolo, and the closest thing Arthur Avenue has to a rite of passage. Historically there was no menu at all; a waiter told you what was being made and the bill was tallied out loud at the end. A single printed menu now hangs in the dining room as a concession to visitors, but you still order by asking. You will eat at long communal pinewood tables next to strangers, and the veal parmigiana, mussels marinara and linguine with white clam sauce are what people order. Two firm warnings: it is cash only, and published hours vary wildly between sources, so call before you build an evening around it.
Zero Otto Nove Bronx
2357 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Roberto Paciullo came to New York from Salerno in 1970 at seventeen, opened Roberto's on this street in 1989, and named this one for 089, his hometown's telephone code. A narrow passage opens into a room painted as a trompe l'oeil Italian courtyard with a wood-fired oven at its centre, and it is the one Arthur Avenue dining room that feels like an occasion. Order the Riccardo pizza with butternut squash puree, smoked mozzarella and spicy pancetta, or the pasta al forno, or the bistecca alla Salernitana with eggplant and sweet cherry peppers. The mozzarella comes from Casa Della Mozzarella a few doors down. It is closed Mondays and shuts between about 2:30 and 4:30, which catches visiting families out constantly.
El Burrito Box
885 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA
A small Tex-Mex counter in Hell's Kitchen, and the practical answer for a Lincoln Center student with fifteen minutes. Steak and chicken are grilled over charcoal, the carnitas are braised for six hours, and there are whole wheat tortillas, brown rice, tofu and soy cheese if you want them. Burritos run roughly $15 to $18. The detail that matters: it delivers from Central Park West to Riverside and from 44th up to 76th Street, which covers the Lincoln Center dorms.
The Flame Diner
893 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA
Open 24 hours, seven days, with a full bar. That is most of what you need to know, and it is the single most useful fact in the Lincoln Center half of this guide. Pancakes, the Alpine Burger, club sandwiches and a fish and chips platter, with most of the menu between about $5 and $30. There is no founding-year mythology attached to it and it does not need one; it is the place that is open when a rehearsal, a shift or a night out has gone longer than planned.
Kashkaval Garden
852 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA
A Ninth Avenue fixture with roots in a 1990s cheese shop run by a Turkish owner known locally as the Cheese Man; it is now run by Corey Samuels and Daniel Assaf, with Hilary Johnston, who developed the menu and married Assaf in the restaurant. Cheese fondue is the signature and comes in five variations, including a single-serving size, which is a genuinely rare and student-friendly thing in Manhattan. The kale salad with dried figs and walnuts and the feta-stuffed peppadews are the other regulars. There is a back room that is quiet without being oppressively romantic, a year-round patio, and a happy hour every day before seven.
The Smith
1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, USA
The Lincoln Square branch of a group that started in the East Village in 2007, open here since November 2012, with a Rockwell Group interior of reclaimed wood, blackened steel and subway tile built around a 50-foot zinc bar. The room seats 170 with another hundred outside in warm weather. Its Lincoln Center awareness is baked in: the opening cocktail list was deliberately low in alcohol so people could get to a performance afterwards. It opens at 8am on weekdays, which makes it one of very few real breakfasts on this block, and it takes private groups up to 25 for a graduation table.
Cafe Fiorello
1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, USA
Shelly Fireman opened this across from Lincoln Center in 1974 and, in the restaurant's own words, has been getting guests to the opera, the philharmonic and the ballet on time ever since. Fireman died in October 2025 at 93 and his group continues to run it. The antipasto bar is the thing, more than fifty hot and cold dishes, with thin-crust pizzas as the other signature. It serves from 7:30 on weekdays and runs to midnight, so it covers a pre-theater dinner, a post-performance one, and a breakfast the morning of a campus tour.
Best bars near Fordham University
Fordham's drinking geography splits the way everything else does, and it's short on one side. Rose Hill has three places within a couple of blocks of the gates and that is genuinely most of it, which is why the same names come up in every conversation about a night out. Lincoln Center has the opposite problem: it's surrounded by Manhattan, so the useful distinction is between the two rooms directly across from campus that parents book and the ones a walk north or south that students actually use. Nothing here is a stadium bar, because Fordham doesn't have one.
Featured bars to check out
Howl At The Moon Grill & Bar
585 E 189th St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The late one, a block from campus, running to 2am on weekdays and 3am from Friday through Sunday. The room is an odd and cheerful mash-up: artificial palm trees, dive-bar fittings and murals of Fordham athletes on the walls. There is Guinness on tap, a weekday happy hour from four, and a full menu of burgers and wings, though the food is not the reason anyone goes. Expect a cover on busy nights. Take it for what it is, which is the default Rose Hill night out rather than a place to eat well.
Clinton Hall
601 E 189th St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Opened in March 2017 a block from the gates, and the roomiest of the Rose Hill options by some distance, which makes it the one that works for a group. Around twenty taps run through a rotating rare-beer program with an in-house Chief Beer Officer picking them, leaning on independent New York brewers including Bronx Brewery. The kitchen does fifteen or so burger variations, and the Double Smashed won Best Burger in NYC at Food Network's Burger Bash; there is also a doughnut grilled cheese served with tomato soup, if that is the evening. Oversized Jenga and Connect 4, TVs throughout, and a weekend brunch with ninety minutes of bottomless cocktails. It does not open until 4pm on weekdays.
The Bronx Beer Hall
2344 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Brothers Anthony and Paul Ramirez opened this inside the Arthur Avenue Retail Market in 2013, which is the detail that makes it worth the walk: you are drinking at long communal tables under the market's skylit ceiling, surrounded by the cheese, meat and fish stalls that supply the food. The market itself opened in October 1940, built under Mayor La Guardia to move pushcart vendors indoors. Every tap is a New York State beer, roughly ten of them rotating, with half-pints if you want to work through a few, and Mike's Deli next door handles the eggplant parm and arancini. Because it lives inside the market building, the hours are early: closed Mondays, and Sundays it shuts at six.
Alfie's Kitchen & Craft Beer Bar
800 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA
A Hell's Kitchen bar and kitchen going since 2012, with twenty rotating local craft taps, a dedicated old fashioned menu and open doors until 4am from Tuesday through Saturday. It also runs a second happy hour from 11pm to close, which is a fairly clear signal about who it is for. Bottomless brunch at weekends from ten. It is a real walk south of the Lincoln Center campus, and that distance is exactly why students end up here rather than at the rooms across from Lincoln Center. Older listings call it Alfie's Kitchen & Craft Beer Bar.
Vanguard Wine Bar (Upper West Side)
189 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10023, USA
Stefan Mailvaganam's Upper West Side room, a few blocks north of campus in about a thousand square feet, and the quiet option on this list. The wine list is organised by colour, body and taste rather than by region, which is a deliberate kindness to people who do not already know what they like, and dessert is a champagne float served in a coupe with vanilla ice cream. It also screens horror films, which is not what anyone expects from a wine bar. No reservations, open from five, kitchen to midnight. Check the Amsterdam Avenue address, because there are three other Vanguards in Manhattan, including a second Upper West Side one at the Ansonia.
Gebhard's Beer Culture
228 W 72nd St, New York, NY 10023, USA
Matt Gebhard opened this in June 2016 in the old Mike's Bistro space, as the Upper West Side sister to Beer Culture in Hell's Kitchen. Sixteen rotating taps and a bottle shop, plus non-alcoholic and gluten-free beer, which is rarer than it should be. The real hook is twelve pinball machines and an IFPA-sanctioned tournament every Tuesday at 7:30. The kitchen's B|C Burger comes with pimento cheese, and happy hour runs Monday to Friday until six with $3 drafts. It is genuinely uptown rather than near campus, so treat it as a trip.
The Empire Rooftop
44 W 63rd St, New York, NY 10023, USA
Twelve floors up at the Empire Hotel and more than 8,000 square feet, split between a west terrace under a retractable roof, a seasonal east terrace and sun deck, and an interior lounge with two bars and a working fireplace. The views take in Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle and Central Park, and it is the obvious graduation-drink booking. Two things to plan around: it is smart casual, and under-21 guests are only admitted before 8pm and only with a parent or guardian. Seating reservations open a week ahead, and it runs a Gossip Girl afternoon tea at $60 a head on select weekend dates.
Brasserie Boulud
1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, USA
Daniel Boulud closed three of his Upper West Side restaurants at this corner in June 2025, Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud and Epicerie Boulud, to consolidate them into one big brasserie. Rockwell Group designed it across two floors with a 27-seat central bar, a dining room of around 170 and a speakeasy downstairs, and the plan is all-day service with express menus for pre- and post-theater. One caveat, and it is a real one: it was announced for autumn 2025 and had still not confirmed an opening as of August 2026, so check before you make a plan around it. Bar Boulud itself is permanently closed.
Best cafes near Fordham University
At Rose Hill, the coffee is really Arthur Avenue's pastry, and the century-old shops there are a different proposition from a laptop cafe: espresso standing at the counter, cannoli in a box, done. Two of them keep long enough hours to work as a study stop, and one place on the strip is set up for actually sitting. At Lincoln Center both picks are effectively on campus, and one of them is inside a Lincoln Center building that runs free concerts and sells discount theater tickets. The Botanical Garden option is the outlier here, and it's worth the ticket.
Featured cafes to check out
Prince Coffee House New York
2306 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The one cafe on Arthur Avenue built for staying rather than standing, and the most unexpected business on the street: it opened in 2016 as the first Prince Coffee House outside Kosovo, and the espresso and Turkish coffee are roasted there and shipped here. Tin mugs and vintage bulbs hang from the ceiling over a reclaimed-wood counter, there is a communal table in back and a dim basement room that fills with students. Turkish coffee is the signature, the Viennese cappuccino comes in a small cup, and there are crepes and waffles if the coffee needs company. Drinks run about $5, the wifi is free and reliable, and it is open 7am to 11pm every day, the longest hours on the strip.
Morrone Pastry Shop & Cafè
2349 Arthur Ave #176, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Ermanno Morrone was born in the Bronx to Calabrian parents, worked on Arthur Avenue as a boy and trained as a pastry chef at the French Culinary Institute, which is a slightly unusual pedigree for this block. Cannoli and mini cannoli, French and Italian Napoleons, hazelnut and double-chocolate biscotti, and custom cakes if a graduation needs one. The practical advantage over its neighbours is hours: it opens at 6:30 in the morning and runs to eight or nine at night, seven days, with seating indoors and out.
Delillo Pastry Shop
610 E 187th St, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Open since 1925, when brothers Joe and Rocco DeLillo arrived from Calabria, though it is the Florio family, from the Amalfi Coast, who run it now; Josephine Florio has been behind the counter since 1984. Cannoli made daily including espresso and chocolate versions, rainbow cookies, sfogliatelle, pignoli cookies and lobster tails filled with mascarpone cream. It works as a cafe rather than just a counter, with gelato in warm months and seating outside in summer. Around St. Joseph's Day in March it makes sfingi and zeppole, which is the best time of year to walk in.
The Pine Tree Café
2900 Southern Blvd, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Inside the New York Botanical Garden, which starts at the eastern edge of Rose Hill, and run by Stephen Starr's restaurant group rather than an institutional caterer. It opened in 2014 in the Leon Levy Visitor Center, sitting beneath the Ross Conifer Arboretum, where some of the pines run close to a hundred feet. Neapolitan-style pizza from an on-site oven, panini and seasonal salads, with plenty of patio seating. You need Garden admission to reach it and the Garden is closed Mondays. If you want a proper sit-down lunch with visiting family instead, the Hudson Garden Grill is the other option inside the grounds.
Breads Bakery - Upper West Side
1890 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, USA
A block up Broadway from the Lincoln Center campus, and the chocolate babka is the reason: New York magazine named it the best in the city, and there is a tower of them by the entrance, baked through the day. The brand began in 2013 under Israeli baker Uri Scheft and partner Gadi Peleg, itself descended from Scheft's Tel Aviv bakery Lehamim. This branch has a story of its own. Peleg opened it partly as an homage to Soutine, the West 70th Street bakery that closed in 2012, and recreates its Concord Cake from Madge Rosenberg's own recipe; she declined payment, so the proceeds go to the local YMCA where she sits on the board. It is a 1,100 square foot room with about twenty seats, breakfast and lunch rather than dinner.
The Independent Cafe
The David Rubenstein, Atrium at Lincoln Center, 61 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023, USA
Effectively across the street from Fordham Law and McKeon Hall, inside Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium. Sarah McLane was the general manager of Indie Food + Wine, the previous Lincoln Center cafe, and when its owner retired and it closed in January 2023 she reopened it here under a new name a few months later, keeping the entire original staff. Her line was that the owner was done but they were not. Made-to-order salads and sandwiches, coffee, and an all-female wine list where every bottle is owned or made by women. Two things worth knowing before you plan around it: the cafe is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9 to 5 only, and the Atrium it sits in is a 2009 Tod Williams Billie Tsien building with sixteen oculi in a gold ceiling, free weekly performances, and a TKTS booth selling Broadway tickets at 20 to 50 percent off, Tuesday to Saturday.
Best hotels near Fordham University
Which campus you're visiting decides everything here, so this list runs Lincoln Center first, then Rose Hill. For Lincoln Center, the Empire is across the street and everything else is a short ride on Broadway, so the real questions are budget and whether you want a kitchen. For Rose Hill, be honest with yourself: there is no hotel you can walk to from the gates. The Zoo Area Holiday Inn Express is the closest at about a mile, the Residence Inn on Eastchester Road is the family-sized option a short drive out, and the other two involve a car. Commencement is the hard weekend. Fordham drew more than 20,000 people to Edwards Parade in May 2026 and told everyone that parking was scarce and to take the train, so book early and plan not to drive.
Featured hotels to check out
The Empire Hotel
44 W 63rd St, New York, NY 10023, USA
Opened on 5 December 1923, fifteen storeys and 426 rooms including 50 suites, and still carrying the red rooftop neon sign that went up the day it opened. That sign has done more cultural work than most hotels manage: it is said to be the inspiration for the red glow through Kramer's window on Seinfeld, and the hotel was Chuck Bass's in Gossip Girl, which produced a measurable bump in bookings when the show was at its peak. There is a bi-level rooftop pool deck, the Empire Rooftop bar upstairs, and since September 2025 a 400-seat Rosa Mexicano on the second floor, relocated from the Lincoln Center home it held for more than 25 years. It is the closest full-service hotel to the campus and the first to sell out for graduation.
Residence Inn by Marriott New York Manhattan/Central Park
1717 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, USA
It occupies the upper half of the tallest hotel building in North America, 750 feet and 68 floors, designed by Nobutaka Ashihara and opened in January 2014; a Courtyard fills the floors below and the Residence Inn's 261 suites sit above the 35th. Every suite has a kitchenette and the full hot breakfast is included, which is the combination that matters when a two-night visit becomes five. There is a restaurant and bar called The Central and a 24-hour gym on the 34th floor. One warning: parking is off-site valet at $65 a day with no in-and-out privileges, so do not bring a car you plan to use.
Le Méridien New York, Central Park
120 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019, USA
Built in 2013 and opened as the Viceroy New York, with interiors by Roman and Williams, before rebranding to Le Meridien in 2019; roughly 240 rooms across 28 floors. The food and drink here changed recently and most third-party listings have not caught up: it is now Paris Bar at street level, a French brasserie that was one of Shelly Fireman's last openings before he died, and Le Jardin on the roof with Central Park views, open Tuesday to Saturday. It is Midtown near Carnegie Hall rather than Lincoln Square, so it suits a trip that is half campus and half city. Valet parking is $85 a day.
Hotel Belleclaire
2175 Broadway, New York, NY 10024, USA
Emery Roth's first major commission, opened in January 1903 and designed in an Art Nouveau and Secession style deliberately unlike the Beaux-Arts buildings around it; a New York City landmark since 1987. Mark Twain, Maxim Gorky and Babe Ruth all stayed, and the house history is better than most: Gorky was evicted in 1906 when management discovered the woman he was travelling with was not his wife, and a guest once smuggled a pet lion in through the service entrance inside a piano crate. It fell to single-room occupancy by the 1970s, was rescued in 1999 and renovated again in 2023. Now 262 rooms with kitchenettes in some, a French bakery cafe and a cocktail lounge downstairs, and 1pm checkout if you book direct. At 77th Street it is a couple of subway stops north of campus.
Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bronx - Zoo Area by IHG
4477 3rd Ave, Bronx, NY 10457, USA
The closest hotel to Rose Hill on this list. IHG's own figure puts it 1.2 miles from Fordham, the same from the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Garden, and under three from Yankee Stadium, and it sits beside St. Barnabas Hospital. Breakfast is included, there is a 24-hour gym, and the building is smoke-free. The one thing to plan around, and it is a significant one in the Bronx: there is no hotel parking at all, so it is street parking or a garage nearby.
Residence Inn by Marriott New York The Bronx at Metro Center Atrium
1776 Eastchester Rd, Bronx, NY 10461, USA
The move-in and commencement booking for a family that needs space. Every unit is a suite with a full kitchen, oven and stovetop included, breakfast is free, and it is pet friendly. It sits out by Morris Park near Montefiore rather than near campus, so a car genuinely helps, and parking runs $25 a day. There is no pool, which catches people out. If a visit is longer than a weekend or involves cooking for a group, this is the obvious choice on the Bronx side.
Opera House Hotel
436 E 149th St, Bronx, NY 10455, USA
Built into the Bronx Opera House, which opened on 30 August 1913 with a production of Fine Feathers, was designed by the theater architect George Keister, and was developed by the Broadway producers George M. Cohan and Sam Harris. The auditorium behind the hotel still holds its original three-level, 1,920-seat configuration with Corinthian columns and a crystal chandelier. NYC Tourism calls it the Bronx's first boutique hotel. It is in Mott Haven, roughly four miles south of Rose Hill, so pick it for the building and the South Bronx rather than for campus access.
Hyatt Place New York/Yonkers
7000 Mall Walk, Yonkers, NY 10704, USA
Attached to the Cross County Center in Yonkers, which makes it the simplest of these for a family driving in from out of state and the easiest parking situation by a distance. Pet friendly, up to two. It is also the farthest from campus, so it is a straight trade: comfort and a car park in exchange for a drive to Rose Hill. Worth knowing it is Cross County, not Ridge Hill, since the two Yonkers centers get mixed up constantly.
Fordham University campus landmarks
Rose Hill is 85 gated acres and the parts a visitor wants sit within a few minutes of one another around the central green: start at Keating, cross Edwards Parade, look into the church, and finish in the library, which holds a free antiquities museum that most visitors never find out about. Lincoln Center is two blocks and takes about twenty minutes, but it's worth doing if you're choosing between the two campuses, because the contrast is the whole point of Fordham. On commencement and other big event days the university itself tells people to take the train rather than drive.
Featured campus landmarks to check out
Keating Hall
Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The Collegiate Gothic centerpiece, built in 1936 to a design by Robert J. Reiley, and the building behind essentially every photograph ever taken of Fordham. It holds three auditoriums, the Blue Chapel on the third floor, and WFUV, the university's public radio station. The front steps are the Terrace of the Presidents, engraved with the names of national leaders who took Fordham degrees, and the tower served as an official air-raid lookout for the northeast Bronx during the Second World War. If you only stand in one place at Rose Hill, stand here.
Edwards Parade
Bronx, NY 10458, USA
The broad central green in front of Keating, and the heart of Rose Hill in the ordinary daily sense: people study on it, throw things across it, and sit out on it the moment the weather turns. It is also where University Commencement happens, outdoors, with the academic procession stepping off at the sound of the Victory Bell. The May 2026 ceremony drew more than 20,000 people onto this lawn, which is worth picturing if you are planning to attend one.
Fordham University Church
441 E Fordham Rd, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Built in 1845 as the seminary chapel and parish church, absorbed into the university when the Jesuits took over the college, and a New York City landmark since 1970. The stained glass is the reason to go in. The windows were made in Sevres and given by King Louis Philippe of France to Archbishop John Hughes for Old St. Patrick's Cathedral downtown; they did not fit, so they came up to Fordham instead. They show the four Evangelists and Saints Peter and Paul.
William D. Walsh Family Library
441 E Fordham Rd, Bronx, NY 10458, USA
Rose Hill's main library, opened in 1997 across five floors and more than 240,000 square feet, holding over a million volumes. The reason to walk in as a visitor is on the main floor: the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, 4,000 square feet of it, free and open to the public, built around more than 260 objects given by the Walsh family plus 732 ancient coins, spanning the fourth millennium BC to the third century AD. It is almost always quiet. Bring photo ID, which is required to get in, and check hours in summer, since they differ from term time.
Robert Moses Plaza
113 W 60th St, New York, NY 10023, USA
The Lincoln Center campus in a single space: 2.2 acres of elevated plaza designed by the landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg and opened in 1994, built over what had been a paved roof deck connecting two academic buildings, with Fordham's Sculpture Walk running through it. Raising it above street level is what makes eight acres in Manhattan read as a campus at all rather than as a few buildings on a block. It is university property rather than a public park, so treat it as part of a visit rather than somewhere to wander into.
Fordham University School of Law
150 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023, USA
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners designed this and it finished in 2014: 22 storeys and 468,000 square feet in one building, wrapped in a checkerboard curtain wall with an S-curve that answers Broadway's diagonal. The law school occupies the base, with a 90,000-volume library, moot and trial courtrooms, a legal clinic and a skylit atrium, and McKeon Hall's 430 undergraduate beds fill floors 11 through 22, along with a dance studio and a dining hall. It is LEED Silver and won an International Architecture Award and an AIA New York State Excelsior Award in 2016. Stand under it and the Fordham housing model makes immediate sense.
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Where do Fordham students go out?
What is game day like at Fordham?
Where should parents stay when visiting Fordham?
Is the area around Fordham walkable?
How do you get between Fordham's two campuses?
How far ahead should I book a hotel for Fordham weekends?
What should visitors see on Fordham's campus?
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