Victorian Flatbush, Brooklyn

Time Out New York magazine listed our popular tour of Victorian Flatbush, in Brooklyn, as one of “10 fascinating architecture tours in NYC”. We were honored to be included there, and hope you will join us sometime to see why it was spotlighted as a unique NYC experience.

Flatbush itself is one of the original six towns of the formerly-independent city of Brooklyn, dating back to the Dutch colonial era. Remnants of this heritage are seen on the tour, including one of the city’s oldest cemeteries. After Prospect Park was built in the 1860s (back when much of Flatbush was still farmland), developers took notice of the potential for new neighborhoods in Flatbush. Just south of the park, starting the 1880s, several developers worked to build a wealthy suburb that would be different from the brownstone & row-house trend of the rest of Brooklyn. Instead, they aimed to build a more suburban neighborhood, filled with huge homes and mansions, private sporting clubs, all within walking distance of this new park (and a short train ride away from the beaches of southern Brooklyn). Thus was born “Victorian Flatbush”.

Half of these developments across the area were destroyed in the 1930s to make way for middle-class apartment complexes, but several historic districts preserve its more picturesque and historic parts.

Recently, the Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner published some unique, birds-eye view photos of the area as it had grown, circa 1907. These are great shots, and experts on this neighborhood’s history will spot some unique finds in the photo, which I’ll spotlight here.

In this large, panorama shot, on the upper right, I’ve circled a pedestrian bridge across the railroad tracks (today the tracks are used by the NYC subway). This bridge was placed along the most scenic road— Albemarle— to connect one end of the Victorian neighborhood to the other. Today, the rail tracks largely (with a few exceptions) mark the dividing line between the preserved section of the neighborhood and the post-1930s section. The bridge was demolished about 40 years ago, to meet the angry demands of the wealthy mansion-dwellers to better separate themselves from the working-class populations starting one block over. You can read the fascinating history of this rail line, and the forgotten bridge here.

The Brownstoner article also includes a close-up of the area near that bridge, the intersection of Albermarle and Buckingham Roads:

Circled by me there is a mansion that no longer exists. It was built by developer Dean Alvord as his personal new home. He had decreed that, after his death, the home be razed and the land donated to the community for common use. Today, the lot is the home of the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. If you look at the site today, the driveway and the foundation of the home are still intact, but otherwise it remains a (now membership-only) community garden.

Want to see all of these sites, and the larger neighborhood, as they look today? Take a look at the slideshow of images on our listing page for our Victorian Flatbush tour, and see our calendar of public tour dates. We can also do this as a private tour on many other dates.

Come see gorgeous suburban blocks, Victorian-style mansions, and history in central Brooklyn!

Finding Your Roots

Here at Custom NYC Tours, designing & leading custom-created walking tours is obviously our specialty. My bragging point is that I know all aspects of this city so well, if you can think of an idea for a tour, I can create it for you, and lead it. We’ve done fun ones recently… a historic overview of Brooklyn neighborhoods, street art with themes about gender or politics, movie & TV locations in Central Park, and more.

But my favorite type of custom requests involve helping families trace their roots back in historic parts of the city.

I had first done one of these in 2016, when I helped a man trace his childhood roots in Bensonhurst.

Earlier this year, I designed another walking tour for a woman from England who had ancestors that moved to Brooklyn in the very early 20th century. She was curious to learn about this side of her family, and what their life in America had been like. She had a few addresses of where they lived around the historic Park Slope neighborhood, and knowledge of their burial in nearby Green-Wood Cemetery. With this information, I crafted a tour of their former neighborhood (Brooklyn being so historically well-preserved, most of their homes still stood). Finally, we journeyed into the cemetery to tour this historic site, and visit her family members’ plot. Seeing how much the tour meant to her was a humbling experience for me in turn.

(As an aside, if you ever have the chance to tour Green-Wood Cemetery, it is highly recommended. Opened in 1838, it was New York’s first rural cemetery. Its tombstones and crypts are works of art in their own right, and there are monuments to the Revolutionary War, as its largest battle was fought on this site in 1776. The cemetery’s popularity as a pastoral retreat helped inspire the demand for New York’s Central Park.)

And, earlier this Autumn, I did a similar tour in historic Brooklyn, albeit with a more local group. The group— now living around the various suburbs of the region— knew that their grandparents had grown up, and started their family, in Brooklyn, and were curious to match locations to family photos and stories. Similar to the woman from England, family records provided them with specific addresses. I created the tour from there.

We visited three historic, but very distinct, Brooklyn neighborhoods. First, Williamsburg. Today, better known for its “hipster” reputation, Brooklyn grew from a 19th-century industrial hub to a thriving immigrant residential neighborhood after the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, when many growing Jewish families moved there from the overcrowded tenements of the Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A few blocks from the bridge’s exit, we found the beautiful apartment house where their family once lived. This section also included looks at the gorgeous buildings along Broadway, once the thriving Wall Street of old Brooklyn. After WWII, even as the orthodox segment of the population grew, new immigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic moved in, creating a rich new cultural blend in the neighborhood fabric. From there, we traveled down to Crown Heights, with its vibrant mix of orthodox Jewish population and Caribbean immigrant families. There, we saw a second home that the growing family once inhabited. Finally, we traveled past Prospect Park to visit historic Flatbush, near the “Victorian” sub-section, to see a pre-war apartment complex the family once called home. The eldest member of the group had grown up as a young girl in that building and recognized its steps and lobby. We ended by recreating an old family photo.

All together, three very different neighborhoods, all tied together by family history. In many ways, that is the story of New York.

The locations of the families’ roots, in Brooklyn historic neighborhoods.

If you, or anyone you know, is looking for a similar tour, I am happy to assist in creating this unique experience. New York’s story is about its neighborhoods and its people, and I would love to help you discover where your family fits into this ongoing history.

Johnny T's NYC Tourist Tips

NYC Street Smarts

The cliché old New York street hussle is a guy with a sidewalk table challenging passers-by to a game of three-card monte. But today's hussles involve homemade CDs, fake monks, and more.  They are based more on abusing your politeness to get your money. I'll outline the most prominent, so you know how to avoid them.

First New Yorker tip: You don’t have to be polite or apologetic to someone looking to part you from your money. Many tourists will stop and listen to the sales pitch out of politeness or offer kind apologies about not being interested… most likely, this only makes the touts be more pushy in their pitch, hoping to wear you down. See someone trying to give/sell you something? Just keep walking, or non-verbally dismiss them. Getting you chatting, even to politely say no, means you’re already a mark in their eyes.

1. The Battery Park ticket sellers.
   Battery Park is a lovely park in lower Manhattan, with views of the harbor, Statue of Liberty, and downtown skyscrapers like the World Trade Center. It is also your waterway portal to harbor cruises, the (free) Staten Island Ferry, boats to the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island, the Governors Island Ferry, & more. But in recent years, the park has become plagued by third-party ticket sellers, many unlicensed, who harass visitors into purchasing boat tickets. Many of them lie to, and scam, visitors about what the ticket they purchased is for. One dispute between two sellers recently lead to a shooting in the park.
   
   Your best bet: Do not purchase tickets from anyone on the street. Buy your ticket from the booth or building where the company is based. If you see aggressive ticket sellers, find and inform the nearest police officer.
   
   

2. The CD guys.
   That above advice goes double for the CD guys. The "monks" will at least treat your rejection politely. That's often not the case here. Here's how this goes down: a young man will approach you, telling you he's a breakout musician, and will practically shove a homemade CD into your hand. He will then demand payment for the CD. If you don't pay, the CD guys often become verbally aggressive, until you pay up, just to get away. They tend to congregate mostly around Times Square, but are ever expanding. If they insist, call the police!
   
   Again, your best is to never take anything someone attempts to hand you in NYC.
   
   

3. The fake monks.
   While the Elmos and Doras of Times Square get more press, there are far more insidious costumed menaces roaming the city... the fake monks. You will spot them all over the high-traffic areas of Central Park, and occasionally in popular spots like the Financial District or the High Line. Dressed as Buddhist monks, these beggars will approach you, hand you a trinket, and then ask for money. They hope you will be too polite or embarrassed to just hand it back and walk away. But that's what you should do.
   
   Your best bet: When you see someone in NYC walk up to you, and attempt to hand you something, keep your hands at your side, and just walking. If they verbally attempt to demand your attention, just ignore it. As noted at the beginning, no response is the best response here.
   
   

4. Street Dancers
   Street dance crews, most commonly seen around the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge area, or in Central Park, can seem a fun distraction when wandering the city streets. But you're better off ignoring them, and keep moving. Often their "shows" begin by showing their impressive moves. This draws in the crowds. Then, the dancers pull in a few volunteers from the crowd, and line them up. This is where the show grinds to a halt. The dancers will stop, leaving the volunteers standing in the circle awkwardly endlessly, while they shake down the audience for "tips" (often requesting $20 or more). The volunteers will be asked for the biggest tips. Then, after several minutes of going around collecting money, and awkward homophobic jokes at the volunteers' expense, they will perform their brief stunt, and send everyone away a little poorer when they arrived.
   
   Again, best to keep moving.
   
   

5. Pedicabs.
   Pedicabs congregate around popular areas like Times Square or Central Park. Many are reputable, but far too many prey on tourists. A recent investigation found pedicabs charging riders hundreds of dollars for fairly basic trips. NYC law requires pedicabs to charge a per-minute rate, and to display that rate prominently on their vehicle, and to make riders aware of that rate before beginning. Many flout this law in various ways. So if you take a half-hour ride on the pedicab and the driver charges $10 a minute (and you were not aware of that), boom you've got a $300 bill at the end.

   Tip: Never, ever ride in a pedicab where the driver is not in full compliance with a well-placed rate sheet on his/her vehicle. You can also try negotiating a set price with a driver before boarding (this advice also works for horse carriage rides). If you see a driver who does not comply, alert a nearby police officer.
    

6. Times Square character photos
   In Times Square, you will see countless people in costumes (Elmo, Minions, Batman, Statue of Liberty, etc) coming up to tourists, having them take photos with them. This seems harmless fun, and kids of course love it, but please note these unlicensed performers expect a tip in exchange for the photo. Refuse to tip, and some performers may become angry. This is among the most harmless hustles... feel free to grab a fun photo, just be aware a dollar or two is expected in exchange.
    

7. The Ground Zero street sellers.
   Technically, this is less a scam, and more just predatory sales. But it's a pet peeve of mine, so I'm including it here. Near the World Trade Center (usually on Church St, between Fulton & Vesey), street sellers gather to sell 9/11 photo books, and similar "souvenirs" to tourists in the area. They are not affiliated with any official organization, and certainly not with the memorial. They are vultures, who are profiting off a tragedy. Please do not buy from them.
   
   Interested in purchasing books related to the World Trade Center? The memorial & museum have an official gift shop & kiosks... where the money goes to a good cause.

But please don't let this scare you! 99% of New Yorkers are polite, helpful, and are happy to welcome you to our city! But it is important to be aware of these scams, and have the confidence to avoid them.

Keith Haring Was Here

Fantastic 1982 story from CBS News about Keith Haring:

Alexander Hamilton and Historic New York

Since the infamous musical "Hamilton" has come out, there's been a resurgence of interest in the Revolutionary War-era history in New York, related to that specific founding father, and beyond.

It's not hard to understand why it took a blockbuster Broadway musical to make this happen. The other two cities of the holy trinity of colonial-era America-- Boston and Philadelphia-- are beautifully preserved historically. You can walk the Freedom Trail in the former, visit Independence Hall in the latter. The two cities are defined by their history. New York, by contrast, is defined by its progress. As such, its historic buildings are largely gone. Most of that is due to development... and first aided by a fire in September 1776 that destroyed a third of the city to date at that point. So most visitors to New York walk the same street as our founders and never even realize it.

My Alexander Hamilton & Historic New York tour is designed to remedy this. This 2-hour walking tour wanders through the oldest neighborhood in New York, to discover sites related to Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution... including the few remaining colonial-era buildings.

For those who take the tour and are interested in following up with more of the Hamilton story, I've created this map of numerous key sites outside of the area the tour covers. From the Weehawken dueling grounds to the Greenwich Village site where Hamilton died of his injuries to his former uptown home, there's so much to see. I hope that this map will help you in your journeys!

Spring is Here!

Spring is (finally) here, and we are excited for a great season-- and then, Summer!-- of touring. From Central Park to Brooklyn Bridge to street art to the High Line and more, we have some great adventures planned.

We are also adding new tours, based on what we hope visitors would want to see. What tours would YOU want to see added? Let us know, and you may see a new adventure added soon!

We really love this video that a tourist made of NYC spots made famous in movies & TV.

These places help create a familiarity with the city that many visitors experience before they even arrive.

NYC's Best Lobbies

New York has many gorgeous buildings... inside and out. Some of the city's most stunning architecture can be found in its lobbies, many of which are themselves landmarked spaces. Over the next week on our Instagram, we will journey inside and highlight some of our favorite NYC interiors.

Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month, here’s a few sites in Manhattan to see (but certainly nowhere near a comprehensive list) of the history of African-Africans in New York City.

A) Seneca Village, founded in 1825, was the first settlement in NYC created by free black people. It had over 300 residents by mid-century, including Irish & German immigrants. It was demolished in 1857 to make way for Central Park (the overwhelming majority of the land that the park sits on was uninhabited). The stone foundation of one of its buildings-- believed to be the village church-- is visible in the park in between two playgrounds near the West 85th St entrance.

B) Slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827. Prior to that, in the 1700s, a slave market existed on Wall Street. Much of colonial-era Manhattan was built using slave labor. Lower Manhattan has several monuments dedicated to this monstrous time in our history, including the African Burial Ground National Monument, on Duane St, where thousands of Africans were buried in the 1600s & 1700s.

C) There were several stations in NYC for the Underground Railroad, including Brooklyn’s Pilgrim Church (home to pastor Henry Ward Beecher) and (pictured here) the Ruggle home in Manhattan, on Lispenard St in modern-day Tribeca. In 1838, Frederick Douglass arrived here. Ruggles estimated that he brought 600 runaway slaves to freedom through his boarding house.

D) Originally a Dutch Village, Harlem became New York's premiere black neighborhood residentially and culturally starting around the 1920s. This was known as the “Harlem Renaissance”. Its most famous cultural landmark is the Apollo Theater. The theater opened as a burlesque venue in 1914, and was whites-only. It reopened as a new performance venue, the Apollo, in 1934, and opened to black patrons. It remains one of the city’s great theaters today.

These are just a few of the sites I visited this month in Manhattan.

You can find a more detailed guide-- and interactive map-- here:
Black History Month in NYC: 15 historic sites to visit

Reading Material!

Here's a few articles/lists that may be of interest to NYC visitors (or locals!):

1. NYC’s best new architecture of 2017, from Cornell Tech to American Copper Buildings
2. New York City’s 20 oldest buildings, mapped
3. 12 real-life NYC homes from your favorite TV shows and films
4. Alexander Hamilton in NYC: A Legacy and History Tour

Winter Touring

New York City receives millions of tourists year-round, but visitors always worry about what options they will have for touring during the winter months. While the weather is always unpredictable (last winter was actually very warm & mild!), it's more likely than not to be cold.

So we are working to prepare for these months. Here are some tours that we offer that make good winter options:

1. Landmarks of Midtown tour: This tour travels through Midtown to see the area's most significant landmarks. It makes numerous indoor stops, including the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, Chrysler Building, and Grand Central Terminal. A great chance to see major icons, while spending only a small amount of time outdoors.

2. Underground Winter NYC Tour: Lower Manhattan: This special winter tour is a great look at the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, without ever stepping foot outdoors. We journey from the Fulton Center through the World Trade Center Transportation Hub to Brookfield Place through a half-mile underground connection & retail complex. We've also added an option to add tickets to visit the One World Trade Center's observatory.

We also, of course, still offer all our tours year-round. Looking for a customized or private tour? Contact us to make arrangements!

 

Jon Stewart Gives Conan The NYC Citizenship Test

How New York Created Christmas

Many people do not know how much of modern Christmas iconography and traditions are rooted in New York's history.

Prior to the early 19th-century, Christmas in America was a far more low-key holiday than it is today… a quiet religious holiday for families, celebrated differently (if at all) across the young nation.

The first major connection between New York and the global Christmas mythology comes from writer Washington Irving (of "Rip Van Winkle" & "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" fame). Upset that there were few unifying holidays in early America, Irving worked to change that. In his 1809 “A History of New York”  (a comical retelling of the city's Dutch era), he declared the European gift-giver St. Nicholas to be the state’s patron saint, claiming that his image appeared on the masthead of the first Dutch ship to arrive in New Amsterdam.

St. Nicholas Day, or the Feast of St. Nicholas, was for much of history a separate holiday in on December 6 associated with the gift-giving saint. One way this holiday was celebrated was placing shoes in the foyer before bedtime the night before. The origin of Christmas stockings?

(And how did the Dutch say Saint Nicholas? Sinterklaas. Later Anglicized to, you guessed it, Santa Claus.)

St. Nicholas then himself became tied to the Christmas holiday thanks to another author, Clement Clarke Moore, who lived in a mansion on Manhattan farm land in what later became the Chelsea historic district. In his famous short story, “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas", originally published in 1823, Moore described the saint as “a right jolly old elf,” based on “a portly rubicund Dutchman,” in the neighborhood, with his “eight tiny reindeer,” with some other elements borrowed from Irving’s version of the Saint. St. Nicholas Day is traditionally celebrated in early December, but Moore’s poem set his visit on Christmas Eve, informally tying St. Nicholas to the holiday for the first time. This, in turn, ties the concept of gift-giving to the holiday.

It cannot be overstated how much of our modern Christmas mythology originates from Moore’s story and depiction of “St. Nick”.

Then, in the 1860s, American political cartoonist Thomas Nast further cemented this depiction with drawings in the NY-based publication Harper's Weekly depicting St. Nick/Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded, fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. This iconic look is the one that since became the default style worldwide for depicting him.

More traditions kept piling up throughout NYC history... Santa's inclusion in Thanksgiving parades, public Christmas trees, decorated store windows, and more.

Today, Christmas remains New York's most enchanting season, and is the busiest tourism season for the city. Holiday markets, elaborately-decorated trees everywhere, bell-ringers... between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day itself, you are hard-pressed to find anywhere in Manhattan where the holiday is not front and center.

Looking to experience this magic? Contact us for a custom tour!

5Pointz, and the Future of NYC Street Art

Several years ago, 5Pointz, the original NYC graffiti "mecca" was lost when the building's owner decided to sell the building to developers. The artists have demanded justice for years, and yesterday a Brooklyn jury agreed the destruction of the art violated the artists' rights. Here are my thoughts on all this:

First, this is a more complicated story than many realize. Contrary to the chaotic, lawless nature of graffiti many artists still cultivate, this was all super organized. The 5Pointz artists were not vandalizing this building. The curator*-- Meres (whose signature art involves lightbulbs)-- sought out this building for a graffiti gallery and asked the owner's permission. The owner, Mr. Wolkoff, agreed, as at the time the neighborhood was undesirable, so who cared. The inside he rented as artist studio space, etc, at low cost. He was known as being very generous, in this regard. So it wasn't even encouraging or allowing the graffiti, it was an active partnership, albeit one where no $$ exchanged hands. So their claim is that they had legit ties to the building, and deserved a say in all this. And that much is fair.

So I sympathize with all this. But my concern is how this ruling will ultimately come back to hurt this community of artists.

The Bushwick Collective-- today's NYC graffiti "mecca", and where I do my Brooklyn art tour-- happened because lots of Bushwick commercial property owners agreed to the same as Wolkoff had years ago... allowing artists to use entire blocks as a canvas, for free. And that has a strict curator as well, local businessman Joseph Ficalora. After seeing this case play out, how many building owners of the next Bushwick Collective or 5Pointz will say "no" when asked, because they fear a future lawsuit? I worry about that.

Many of these artists benefited immensely from 5Pointz, more than any legal compensation can offer. Popular NYC street artists, such as Jerkface or Danielle Mastrion, made their names there. It helped legitimize graffiti, aerosol art, and mural as legitimate forms of art. They had a great deal there and, eventually, it ended.

Moreover, the destruction of 5Pointz, while genuinely sad, helped spread out the NYC street art scene, thus allowing more artists to prosper. Its destruction led to the creation of the Bushwick Collective, the Welling Court Mural Project, The New Allen, and so many other art collectives inspired by 5Pointz. This growth has benefited hundreds of amazing artists. Ultimately, I argue, the destruction helped the community more than it hurt.

Ideally, this ends with property owners respecting artists more, and fostering better, clearer partnerships.

The artists all insist today that this ruling will change the graffiti world. But maybe not in that way they expect.

Click on the image below for a link to my gallery of the final art days of 5Pointz:

[*And heavily curated it was. No one painted on 5Pointz's walls without going through Meres, and getting his blessing. There were signs all over the building that insisted any (commercial) photography must get a permit from Meres, and his contact info printed thereon. It was as organized as an art gallery, albeit all outdoors.]