Tudor City is a one-block neighborhood in the East 40s that almost nobody ends up in by accident. It sits on a sliver of bedrock above 1st Avenue, reached by two flights of stone stairs from the United Nations side. The buildings are pre-war, the elms are old, and the street-level wind comes off the East River.
Between 11 AM and 4 PM — peak sun in Midtown — Tudor City Place stays mostly shaded by the buildings on its own west side. The two small parks (North and South) extend that cover with mature canopy. The result is a continuous corridor of six benches that you can rotate through in an hour, all of which read cool through the early afternoon.
Each pick below routes you from the nearest subway stop to a specific bench. The shade percentages are computed against the actual building geometry — which means the south-facing benches in Tudor City North Park drop sharply after 2:30 when the western shoulder of 100 Tudor City Place falls behind the building line. We re-route those for the late afternoon.