Posted: Apr 29, 2013 | 12:29 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1863: Publisher William Randolph Hearst born. He died 8/14/1951.
Midtown walking tour, Columbus Circle tour.
1899: Harlem's great jazz musician and big band bandleader "Duke" Ellington born in Washington, D.C.
Harlem tours.
1936: Zubin Mehta, Conductor (New York Philharmonic's, for a record 13 years, 1978-1991) born in India.
Lincoln Center walking tour, Upper West Side tour.
1939: The Whitestone Bridge opened, connecting the Bronx and Queens.
1954: Happy Birthday to Brooklyn's, Queens' and Long Island's Jerry Seinfeld.
Columbia tours, Upper West Side tours, Uptown tours.
1970: Happy Birthday to actress Uma Thurman.
Columbia tours.
1996: The musical "Rent" opened on Broadway at the Nederlander Theater.
East Village tours, East Village Community Garden Tour, Community Gardens of the East Village tour, self-help housing solutions tour, Broadway tour, Times Square tour.
Posted: Apr 28, 2013 | 12:47 AM
1858: Frederick Law Olmsted, the first landscape architect and architect Calvert Vaux'
plan for Central Park selected, transforming 843 acres of rocks and wetland of upper Manhattan.
Central Park tours, Central Park tour, Central Park walking tour, Central Park walking tours, John Lennon's NYC tour, John Lennon the NYC Tour, John Lennon's New York City.
1878: Character actor extraordinaire of the early 20th century Lionel Barrymore born. He died 1954
1968: The Public Theater's pioneering rock musical "Hair" opened on Broadway.
1990: The Public Theater's lovesong to dancing, "A Chorus Line," closed after 6,137 performances on Broadway.
2004: CBS's "60 Minutes II" showed the first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Posted: Apr 27, 2013 | 7:03 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1791: Telegraph inventor and painter Samuel Morse born. He died in 1872.
1822: Permanent New Yorker Ulysses Grant, President and Civil War General, born in Ohio.
Harlem Tour, Columbia Tour, uptown tours.
1892: The cornerstone for Grant's Tomb was laid. The monument is dedicated exactly five years later, on the 75th anniversary of Grant's birth. Grant is the only U.S. president to be entombed or buried in New York City.
Harlem Tour, Columbia Tour, uptown tours.
1942: Happy Birthday to drummer Jim Keltner, who played for three of the four ex-Beatles.
John Lennon the NYC Tour.
1947: "Babe Ruth Day" at Yankee Stadium honoring the ailing baseball hero who died August 16, 1948.
1965: Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow died at 57.
2000: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced his prostate cancer without telling his wife. His girlfriend was invited to the hospital instead, which led to a scandal. Three weeks later he resigned from his Senate campaign citing health issues.
2006: Construction began on the new World Trade Center's Tower One, a 1,776-foot building sometimes called "Freedom Tower."
World Trade Center walking tour, Heroes of the World Trade Center and its Memorial, World Trade Center Deep History Tour, World Trade Center 360 Tour, The World Trade Center Tour, WTC tour, Experiencing and Interpreting the World Trade Center Tour.
no ny1
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Posted: Apr 25, 2013 | 5:52 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1785: Naturalist, ornithologist, and artist John James Audubon born in Haiti.
1822: Frederick Law Olmsted father of landscape architecture and co-designer of Central Park born. He died 1905.
Central Park walking tours.
1859: Businessman, inventor, and philanthropist
Peter Cooper established
Cooper Union with the goal of educating all regardless of race, gender or religion.
East Village walking tours. 8th Street walking tours.
1961: Roger Maris, Yankee outfielder, hit the first of what will be a record 61 home runs in a season. The record will stand for 37 years.
1914, Bernard Malamud, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, was born in Brooklyn. He died 1986.
Lower East Side walking tours. Jewish heritage tours.
1989: Actress-comedian-producer Lucille Ball died at 77.
Posted: Apr 25, 2013 | 12:25 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1664: The Duke of York dispatched a fleet to capture New Netherlands from the Dutch. When that worked out for him, he renamed the city after his namesake.
April 25, 1795, the cornerstone of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery was laid over the Dutch Reform Protestant Chapel of the last Nieuw Amsterdam Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.
1901: New York became the first state to require automobile license plates.
1908, Edward R. Murrow, the influential radio and television broadcaster during the industry's formative years, was born. He died 1965.
We walk in his haunts in the media capitol, on midtown tours.
1917: Jazz singing great Ella Fitzgerald born in Virginia. As a teenager she made her career in Harlem.
Here is one of my favorite Apollo Theater stories, paraphrased from her website:
'In 1934, at 17, she competed in Amateur Night. Ella went planning to dance, but she felt her act would not compare. Once on stage, faced with boos and murmurs of "What's she going to do?" from the rowdy crowd, a scared and disheveled Ella made the last minute decision to sing. Ella quickly quieted the audience, and by the song's end they were demanding an encore. A few months later she joined Chick Webb's Orchestra.'
We experience this on Harlem tours.
1930: Paul Mazursky, actor, director, writer, screenwriter, born this day in Brooklyn.
We walk in his footsteps on Greenwich Village tours and Brooklyn tours.
1940: Happy Birthday, actor Al Pacino, born in Manhattan.
We see where Pacino got his start in theater on Broadway tours; We see Serpico's neighborhood on Greenwich Village tours, and where he drove blind in "Scent of a Woman" on DuMBO tours on Brooklyn tours.
1964: Happy Birthday, voice actor famous for "The Simpsons," actor, comedian, and director Hank Azaria born in Queens.
2007: The Dow Jones industrial average topped 13,000 for the first time, ending the day at 13,089.89. A lot of good that did us in early 2009. We explore cycles of boom and bust and financial history on Wall Street tours, Financial District tours, Colonial NYC tours, Dutch New Amsterdam tours, and Downtown tours.
Posted: Apr 23, 2013 | 4:33 AM
by Jared Goldstein
"I can't imagine anyone being more knowledgeable, informed, engaging and personable than Jared, particularly about the neighborhood he knows personally from his own family history.
Our Urban Adventure tour exceeded whatever expectations we might have had and we enjoyed the experience very much."
Mr. James D.
USA ~ 13 Nov 2011
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Posted: Apr 23, 2013 | 3:59 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1775: Inspired by colonial clashes at the battles of Lexington and Concord, revolutionary NYC crowds seized British weapons and formed a militia.
Colonial NYC tours.
1789: President-elect George Washington and wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House in New York City, loaned by a local Quaker merchant.
Washington lived in the mansion on the right corner.
George Washington's New York Tour, George Washington the NYC Tour, South Street Seaport tour, Colonial tour, Colonial NYC tour.
1932: "The premier fashion designer of all America,"
Halston, born in Des Moines, Iowa.
He broke out with Jackie Kennedy's pillbox hat, became America's first world-class designer, invented designer licensing, and dressed
Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, and.... He also designed uniforms such as for the Girl Scouts and the NYPD.
1968: Columbia University students began a
week-long occupation of several campus buildings
in protest against university involvement in the Vietnam War as well as building a community-segregated gym on public property.
Sampling CU President Grayson Kirk's cigars and brandy.
Columbia tour, Columbia University tour, Uptown tour, Harlem tour.