Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch

Housed in a striking 1941 Art Deco building designed to look like an open book, the library is Brooklyn's largest; about a million people visit it each year. The renovated plaza overlooking Grand Army Plaza, with WiFi, landscaped gardens and an outdoor performance space that hosts live concerts, is a buzzing summer gathering place for Brooklynites. Among the library's strongest suits is its first-floor Youth Wing, with designated spaces for toddlers, grade-schoolers, tweens and teens to read, work on homework and use game-equipped computers. Opened in 2007, the state-of-the-art performance space S. Stevan Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture puts on more than a hundred events per month, many of which are aimed squarely at kids.