Tours by guides who not only know the history but talk about daily life in Harlem and other Black communities of the city.
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From genteel townhouses to flamboyant skyscrapers, neo-classical temples to post-modern towers, New York boasts a dazzling array of architectural landmarks. A knowledgeable guide can take you to the most important structures, point out key details, and arrange visits to interiors. A tour might focus on Midtown Manhattan, Wall Street, one or more of the city’s historic districts, or a specific building. For example, the Merchant’s House Museum is a 19th-century house virtually unchanged for a century, inside and out. The first classical-style bank, designed by Stanford White, still stands. The Yacht Club, with its wave-shaped windows, is a marvelous example of mimetic design, even if the America’s Cup no longer resides there
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A genuine adventure in visiting New York. Enjoy a ride along well-paved paths in Central Park or Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Follow the continuous 15-mile path along the Hudson River from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge. Cycle through quiet residential areas in the Bronx or Queens. Make an intimate visit to many of New York’s ethnic neighborhoods where you’ll find it easy to stop and sample international foods. Your tour guides may also help you rent bikes and helmets, give you safety tips and steer you through a creative itinerary.
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The only part of New York City that’s not on an island, the Bronx also boasts the highest proportion of park land per inhabitant. Attractions include Riverdale, with sweeping views of the Hudson Valley and a vast estate whose gardens are open to the public; Belmont, whose shops and restaurants preserve traditional Italian-American culture; Woodlawn Cemetery, the permanent home of many celebrities; the picturesque campus of Fordham University; the New York Botanical Gardens, with its year-round attractions; and of course, the world-famous Bronx Zoo (a.k.a. New York Wildlife Conservancy).
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If Brooklyn were still an independent city – as it was until 1898 – it would be the fifth largest city in America. A tour might visit Williamsburg, the new home of avant garde artists, Brighton Beach, which Russian immigrants have re-made as “Odessa-by-the-Bay,” Coney Island, the working people’s Riveria, Flatbush, with its handsome Victorian houses, historic Green Wood Cemetery, The Brooklyn Museum of Art and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, both world-class institutions, and Brooklyn Heights, with its rows of 1840’s townhouses and spectacular views across the Harbor.
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A "name-dropper's tour" specializing in showing you the homes and haunts of the jet-set and celebrity crowd that makes New York City buzz with excitement. Seeing where Tom Hanks, Mary Tyler Moore, Madonna, and dozens more live and party and hearing all about the "gilded age" stories of New York's high society past and present. Also: famous movie locations...where some of your favorite movies filmed classic scenes
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New York's 843 acres of pastoral sanctuary designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Bethesda Terrace, Belvedere Castle, Delecorte Theatre, Sheep Meadow, Strawberry Fields, Victorian Gardens and the Resevoir.
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A taste of Italy right here in New York City.
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In depth tour of Ellis Island and its history
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This tour takes an intimate look at the once largest industry in The City, a business that dressed three out of four American Citizens all over this great country. Participants learn how immigrants from Ireland, Eastern Europe and Italy, gained a foothold in America, hunting for streets paved with gold and ending up in sweatshops working their fingers to the bone. Some tours include visits to showrooms and/or factories to see today's version of this fascinating industry and will be able to get a chance to purchase real bargains at showroom sample sales.
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From the hot spots of Chelsea, the center of New York's lesbian and gay community, to the sites of Victorian-era gay bars to the legendary Stonewall, these tours visit neighborhoods like the West Village, East Village, Brooklyn Heights, and other parts of the city where lesbians and gay men have created distinctive communities and helped shape the history and culture of the city. Visits to bars and restaurants may be included in evening and night tours.
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Long known for its crooked streets and colorful characters, Greenwich Village today is an attractive residential neighborhood, a college campus, and a lively center for night life: Off-Broadway theatres, legendary night clubs, popular bars, and intimate restaurants. A visit might include the picturesque streets and elegant antique shops of the West Village, history-rich Washington Square, home of New York University, the clubs and coffee houses of Bleecker Street, and the East Village, whose tenements, lofts, and studios house some of the city’s best young creative artists.
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Harlem - perhaps the best known neighborhood in the world! Nestled above Central Park, Harlem is a vibrant, lively and thriving community rich in history, entertainment, shopping and many delicious dining possibilities. From its first Native American inhabitants, to its days as a Dutch settlement, to its setting as a battleground during the American Revolution and ultimately being the mecca for many African Americans 'coming north' in the early 20th century, Harlem is a 'must-see' neighborhood and a unforgetable place to visit.
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Guides will assist you to staff an exhibit booth at a trade show or your sports or cultural events.
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This tour includes Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, then can travel to Chinatown, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, or other immigrant/ethnic enclave depending on interest of Group.
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Join us as we explore the hidden Harlem jazz haunts and renownd Village jazz joints in the city that boasts several living legends performing every night of the week. Catch saxophone cutting contests, big band swing concerts, tap dancing solos, late night jam sessions that last until 4 AM (or later if you know where to go). See the sites associated with jazz history: Minton's Playhouse where bebop was born; 52nd Street where a "Walk of Fame" is disappearing daily; Slugs where Lee Morgan was shot to death; Charlie Parker Place and Duke Ellington Blvd. Inquire about our special Grave Line Tour to famous jazz cemetery plots.
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This neighborhood was the first stop for most of the two million immigrants who poured into New York between 1880 and World War I. They came from all over the world, but the largest numbers were Italians and East European Jews. Today, it’s still home to recent immigrants – Asian, Latino, and Jewish, as well – and it retains much of its unique character. A tour can include a museum of tenement life, visits to historic synagogues, dining in a wide range of restaurants, and bargain hunting among the neighborhood’s celebrated shops.
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Visit a curious neighborhood in the West Harlem valley steeped in Revolutionary War history. Manhattanville is the home of the landmarked St. Mary’s P.E. Church, founded in 1823, the city’s first “free pew” Episcopal church whose congregants included veteran patriots & Tories, Alexander Hamilton’s widow, African-American abolitionists and Mayor Daniel F. Tiemann. It is also where Old Broadway Synagogue, the last affiliated Jewish synagogue in Harlem, is still active. The surrounding town, wrought by the Industrial Revolution, is highlighted by steel viaducts opening gateways to the Hudson, and the uptown Fairway market.
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Come along for a walking tour of old New York and handle remnants of the American Revolution, walk through the site of PT Barnum's first great success with The Swedish Nightingale, peer into the New Amsterdam beer hall that became the first city hall and seek the park bench where Rudolph Valentino spent the night. Walk up the Broad Way (with a few detours), from The Bowling Green to City Hall and visit America's first saint, several ghosts, The Dimestore King and his Cathedral of Commerce and at least one robber baron along with George Washington, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Greta Garbo and Boss Tweed as we travelling through time in a place that has more resonance for America's history than any other site in the country. See the last surviving house from Eustace Tilley's time, the scars of an anarchist's bomb on JP Morgan's doorstep, the world's oldest artist's model atop the Municipal Building and the porch of the country church where the first president greeted well wishers on the first inauguration day. With both tall and true tales we'll examine the rich layers of the history and architecture of old New York.
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Guides who offer private tours fill diverse needs of visitors travelling alone or in a small group. These visitors may seek a quick tour of a particular neighborhood, a knowledgable shopping companion for wholesale outlets, specialty boutiques or manufacturers' showrooms or assistance with visiting a distant or hard-to-find area in the City.
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Queens is the new New York "Melting Pot." Pick a culture or pick them all. By taking you to Queens, a guide can almost take you to India, Pakistan, Greece, Korea, China, Mexico, Columbia, Porto Rico, or the West Indies. The street signs may say "ONE WAY" and the police are in NYPD blues, but Queens neighborhoods can look and sound like they are from far far away. On your tour, you can buy clothes, shop in food markets, dine, go to entertainment.
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For some runners, a marathon is always just around the corner - but training and doing your long runs around the corners of New York City can be more fun if you go with a Guide. Runs can be custom-designed, up the West Side, down the East Side, across virtually any of the bridges to any borough - even to New Jersey. Experience just how close different worlds are when you run New York, and realize how accessible interesting people and places really are when you run with a friendly, knowledgeable Guide.
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New York has wonderful gardens that would surprise many life-long New Yorkers. The Secret Garden in Central Park; the Japanese Garden of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi in the middle of a gritty industrial area in Queens; a Heather Garden overlooking the dramatic Palisades on the Hudson River and an authentic Chinese Scholar's Garden on Staten Island are just a few of these surprises.
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Visit SoHo's treasure, the largest surviving collection of cast iron architecture anywhere. Starting in NoLita, exploring the first St. Patricks Cathedral and its fortified cemetery, then visiting New York's first pizza oven and calling on Emma Goldman, the celebrated radical publisher of the 1910's. Visit some unusual art galleries and find the well where Elma Sands, the "Ghost of Spring Street", was drowned in 1799. The itinerary also includes the store where Mrs. Lincoln shopped for White House China, an intact nineteenth century working man's saloon and the notorious Civil War-period red-light district along Mercer and Green Streets, finishing just in time for a late lunch at any of a number of wonderful SoHo and NoLita restaurants. Don't miss some secret spots SOuth of HOuston - the SoHo you didn't know.
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A walking tour of the Lower Manhattan area around South street and City Hall Park to Ground Zero.
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The least populous and most suburban of the city’s five boroughs, Staten Island offers open spaces, hilltop views, and, of course, a famous ferry ride. Leaving the ferry landing, visitors might head for Richmondtown Restoration, where early American life is brought to life in a historic setting, the Alice Austen House, home of a pioneering photojournalist now a museum with spectacular views, or the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, the finest collection of art from the Himalayan kingdom in the US.
Snug Harbor Cultural Center is one of SI's centerpieces. It is truly unique! And soon, the SI Museum will call it home in addition to the Chinese Scholar's Garden, SI Botanic Gardens, Music Hall, Art Galleries, Art Lab, Children's Museum, Firefighter's Memorial, etc. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit it, please feel free to contact me and I shall give you a personal tour.
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Most of the students who come to New York are on class trips, traveling with schoolmates in order to see as much of the city as possible in two or three days. Guides who seek this work know the most efficient way to see famous sights, like the Statue of Liberty, are familiar with sites of interest to teens, like the MTV studios, and enjoy the challenges and rewards of spending time with young people. Fees are usually negotiated on a per-itinerary basis, but guides expect fees which reflect the substantial time demands of the work.
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By yourself and up to three others, see all of New York City. Dine in different parts of NYC. See the Bronx's Riverdale, Grand Concourse, Pelham Bay, City Island and the South Bronx and the historic St Ann's Episcobel Church. Brooklyn's Park Slope, Eastern Parkway, Ocean Parkway Coney Island, Sheephead Bay. Queens' #7 the international route, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Flushing, Bayside, Little Neck, Jamaica Estates, Forest Hills Gardens, Kew Gardens, St Albans, the Irish community of Woodside. Staten Island Tottenville, Willowbrook, Stapleton, Fort George, The Arthur Kill, The Landfill. and of course Manhattan above midtown you'll see El Bario(East Harlem) Central and West Harlem including Sugar Hill, Hamilton Heights and CCNY, Washington Heights, Inwood.
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A trained and experienced person of demonstrated ability who accompanies a tour (on land or at sea), sees that all services are provided, and gives the clients the historical and cultural background of the areas visited.
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Take a journey through 250 years of the amazing history and the inspiring architecture of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Follow Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady as they peddle gold-plated bicycles along Riverside Drive and Washington's army as they retreat from the British in 1776. Visit one of the last forests of American Elms and the rock summit where Poe composed The Raven. Remember the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, the night Mae West was busted and the afternoon Two-Gun Crowley shot it out with the cops. A walking tour of the birthplace of Hellman's Mayonnaise and Humphrey Bogart with splendid churches and the city's grandest apartment buildings along with bordellos and speakeasies, two great parks and the mighty Hudson.
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Explore a neighborhood at eye-level! Over the course of a two or three hour stroll, your guide will show you the landmarks – remarkable buildings, homes of famous figures, popular gathering spots – and evoke the history and culture that give the neighborhood its distinctive character. Many guides use historic photos, literary quotations, and even songs to enhance their tours. Walking tour guides usually specialize in the neighborhoods they know personally. If you request a custom walking tour, you must allow additional time for research and scouting.
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