Summer of Hamilton Tours
Posted: Sep 20, 2016 | 8:27 PM
by Jared Goldstein
What a wonderful boon to history and historic walking tours of NYC: HAMILTON!
It is great to see how the show, HAMILTON: An American Musical has brought families together around American history. There has never been anything like this.
It has been my pleasure to lead Alexander Hamilton walking tours of Downtown Lower Manhattan this summer, as well as a custom tour with a driver that included Hamilton Heights, Weehawken, New Jersey, where the Hamilton-Burr duel was waged, with the tour concluding in the colonial early American area around Wall Street where the American financial, government and legal systems were born. The tours, all customized, have ranged from two to four hours, but we can go longer!
I integrate the musical a bit into my tours, but I'm still working on that! It is hard to play the soundtrack while standing around or walking. And it is hard to summarize the lyrics because they are so packed!
Most of the families on my Hamilton tours were going or recently went to the musical, but one family of fans was not able to get tickets, so their Hamilton tour was the next best thing.
I've been integrating Alexander Hamilton's remarkable life in New York City into my tours since around 2009, so it has been wonderful creating tours based around him.
I have about 60 pages of material, including many illustrations, that support the tour.
Thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda for making history come alive for new audiences, and making this history nerd's life as a Tour Guide more interesting! And thank you, Alexander Hamilton, one of the first true Americans to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude.
