{"id":214907,"date":"2026-04-30T01:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/214907\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:19:09","slug":"british-royals-crisscross-manhattan-in-brief-visit-packed-with-photo-ops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/214907\/","title":{"rendered":"British Royals Crisscross Manhattan in Brief Visit Packed With Photo Ops"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Charles III of Britain fed chickens in Harlem. His wife, Queen Camilla, visited with Winnie-the-Pooh at the New York Public Library. In the morning, the royal couple laid a bouquet at the Sept. 11 memorial, and by evening, they were hobnobbing with the city\u2019s cultural and artistic elite at Rockefeller Center.<\/p>\n

After a day of politics and diplomacy in Washington, the king and queen spent Wednesday taking in different parts of what New York City has to offer.<\/p>\n

It was the third day of a four-day visit to celebrate America\u2019s 250th birthday, and the royal couple escaped the politically awkward moments from their trip to the nation\u2019s capital and returned to tightly choreographed photo opportunities, keeping reporters at bay.<\/p>\n

In Harlem, the king met with young people at an urban farm run by Harlem Grown, a nonprofit that provides youth development programming. Four schoolchildren greeted him at the chicken coops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like your hair,\u201d one of the children told the king.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you? Good,\u201d King Charles replied.<\/p>\n

The king was asked if he wanted to feed the chickens.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, please,\u201d he said enthusiastically, before dropping some greens into the coop.<\/p>\n

Besides chicken coops, Harlem Grown\u2019s farm features raised beds, a greenhouse, a tool shed, a composting station, beehives and a covered patio with tables and chairs where the children ate snacks as they waited for the king.<\/p>\n

The king has long been an avid environmentalist, advocating on behalf of sustainability and the need to find \u201charmony\u201d to prevent the worst effects of climate change and ecological destruction. He tends an organic garden at Highgrove House, a longtime family home in southwestern England.<\/p>\n

In a speech to Congress a day earlier, the king spoke of \u201cour shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.\u201d He told lawmakers that \u201cour generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before leaving the Harlem farm, the king presented its founder with a brown box tied with a red bow, containing honey from bees at Highgrove.<\/p>\n

While the king was uptown, the queen spent the afternoon at the New York Public Library\u2019s main branch in Midtown Manhattan, where she promoted her literary charity, the Queen\u2019s Reading Room<\/a>, and visited a small, carefully preserved stuffed animal that the library\u2019s president and chief executive, Anthony Marx, called \u201cthe world\u2019s most famous teddy bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

That would be Winnie-the-Pooh, a toy bought from Harrods department store in the 1920s and given by A.A. Milne, author of the \u201cPooh\u201d books, to his 1-year-old son, Christopher Robin.<\/p>\n

Along with the other stuffed animals that inspired the books \u2014 Kanga, Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger \u2014 Pooh resides in pride of place in a climate-controlled case in the library. Kanga\u2019s baby, Roo, was lost by Christopher Robin somewhere in an English apple orchard in the 1930s. But the queen on Wednesday came bearing a gift: a bespoke replica of Roo, presented on a Union Jack cushion.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, children,\u201d Queen Camilla said, greeting a group of schoolchildren seated in front of the \u201cWinnie-the-Pooh\u201d exhibit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, Your Majesty,\u201d they replied in unison. The queen then read from one of the \u201cPooh\u201d books, along with Jim Cummings, the actor who has been Pooh\u2019s official voice on film since the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

In remarks at the library, the queen spoke of the magic and power of reading and praised the library as a place that \u201chas the power to change its visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first Americans I met in life were the characters I met in my treasured childhood novels,\u201d Queen Camilla said. \u201cI knew even then: The books are best friends you can have, in good times and bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that the audience for her book club had grown beyond her \u201cwildest dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

The royal couple had begun their day in New York with a more somber event: a trip to the 9\/11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan. It was the first time that a British monarch had visited the memorial since it opened in 2014.<\/p>\n

Accompanied by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is chairman of the museum, the royal couple laid a bouquet of white lilacs, sweet peas, peonies and white daffodils at the memorial to commemorate the lives lost during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 67 of whom were British.<\/p>\n

They set the flowers alongside one of two reflecting pools, etched with the names of victims, that feature waterfalls pouring down into a square chasm. Standing nearby were firefighters and officers from the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department and the New York Fire Department, in dress uniforms. The royal couple then greeted families of victims of the attacks and those who responded on that day.<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended the event, and he and the king spoke briefly, but they did not have a separate meeting. The mayor had sought to distance himself from King Charles ahead of the king\u2019s visit to the city.<\/p>\n

When asked before the event what he would tell the king if they spoke, Mr. Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist and New York\u2019s first mayor of South Asian heritage, said that he \u201cwould probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.\u201d The 105.6-carat diamond<\/a> was taken from an 11-year-old Indian prince in the 1840s and presented to Queen Victoria. India has long lobbied for its return.<\/p>\n

The royal visit to the Sept. 11 memorial was a subtle reminder of one of the last times Britain fought alongside the United States in a war. When NATO invoked its Article 5 collective defense clause after Sept. 11, many of its member states, including Britain, sent troops to Afghanistan and, later, Iraq.<\/p>\n

Charles made a reference to the attacks during his address to Congress on Tuesday. \u201cWe stood with you then,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Wednesday evening, the king had made his way to Midtown for a reception at Rockefeller Center. On the 65th floor, he talked with about 15 of the biggest names in American business as the group was served four kinds of canap\u00e9s: vegetable spring rolls with balsamic glaze, spring pea empanadas, fish and chips with herbal tartar sauce served in a cone, and beef Wellington bites with B\u00e9arnaise sauce.<\/p>\n

The couple ended their day with a gala at Christie\u2019s Auction House. The event\u2019s co-chair, Lionel Richie, was present, along with celebrities including Anna Wintour, Iman, Martha Stewart, Donatella Versace, Karlie Kloss, Meghann Fahy and Leo Woodall.<\/p>\n

In his remarks at the gala, the king thanked Mr. Richie and praised his singing ability by musing that \u201che must gargle with port or something.\u201d He then returned to the broader themes of his trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful opportunity, if I may say, apart from anything else, that at this reception we can celebrate both my King\u2019s Trust and the enduring cultural bond between the people of the United Kingdom and the United States,\u201d Charles told the crowd.<\/p>\n

That bond, he said, was \u201ca relationship rooted in shared creativity, enterprise and values, reminding us that we are truly greater together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remy Tumin contributed reporting from New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Charles III of Britain fed chickens in Harlem. His wife, Queen Camilla, visited with Winnie-the-Pooh at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36197,49124,73612,41269,84829,59471,83236,43405,9,24,55,54,56,84479,83344,84830,54333,79268,84741],"class_list":["post-214907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-books-and-literature","tag-camilla","tag-charles-iii","tag-financial-district-manhattan","tag-funerals-and-memorials","tag-harlem-manhattan","tag-king-of-the-united-kingdom","tag-midtown-area-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-parties-social","tag-queen-consort-of-the-united-kingdom","tag-rockefeller-center-manhattan","tag-royal-families","tag-united-states-semiquincentennial-2026","tag-winnie-the-pooh-fictional-character"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}