1799:  Saint Marks Church on the Bowery

 is

consecrated on what was once the site of Governor Peter Stuyvesant's Dutch Reform Protestant chapel.  This Episcopal church was designed by John McComb, Jr., one of the architects of City Hall, which we see on Downtown walking tours.

St. Marks still stands at 10th Street and Second Avenue, and Stuyvesant still haunts it being uneasy with an Anglican takeover of his town, his chapel, and his intermarrying family. 

Learn all about Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost on a Dr. Phil's New York Ghosts of NY Tour, Peter Stuyvesant and his Ghostly Friends of the East Village. 

I no longer do Ghost tours because I was haunted at the nearby in Mass.


1940:  Director and Producer James L. Brooks born in Brooklyn. 

Let's go on a Brooklyn walking tour!


1951:  New Yorkers lined the streets welcoming Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.


1979:  Happy Birthday to Alphabet City's Actress
Rosario Dawson, who did not just play a squatter in Rent; she grew up in a squat. 

If you would like to know about the squats of the 1980s and 1990s when she was growing up in them, check out The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space.  Every weekend they give excellent tours of East Village / Alphabet City / Loisaida Community Gardens and Squats.  I give the New York City's Parks Department's East Village Community Gardens Tour and NYC Housing tours, and I recommend theirs as well, which offers some different perspectives.  All New York City tours should be unique, and so far that has been my experience giving and attending tours, so let's take more NYC walking tours.


2010:  New York City's

Lena Horne, singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer, died at 92. 

She is pictured here with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather singing the title song that became a signature for her.

Here's a quote that I want to work into my Harlem walking tours:

“My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”