Before the Vanderbilts built their palaces uptown, New York’s newest fortunes were made and spent on the brownstone blocks between Washington Square and Gramercy Park, and this walk follows them there.
Long before Fifth Avenue meant marble mansions facing Central Park, it meant the brick and brownstone blocks just north of Washington Square. This is where the Gilded Age got its start.
In the early and mid-nineteenth century, New York City saw unbelievable growth. The Erie Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as an influx in immigration, all contributed to making New York the largest city in the country. This elevated the privileged classes of the city to being important names across the U.S. Gilded Age dynasties like the Vanderbilts lived in this neighborhood before they began moving uptown.
On this tour, we will explore the parts of the city that gave birth to the era best known as the Gilded Age. We will walk through Washington Square Park, Lower Fifth Avenue, Union Square, and Gramercy Park to see homes, hotels, and churches of the era and talk about the people (including names like Washington Irving, Mark Twain, the Vanderbilts, John Jacob Astor, PT Barnum, the Brevoort family, and Theodore Roosevelt) who lived there and whose lives formed the basis for the better-known decades of the Gilded Age.
We will end the tour with a visit (from outside the gates) to the exclusive Gramercy Park, a private park whose upkeep has always been handled by the owners of the surrounding properties, not the city. From outside the gates, we’ll see 1840s homes still lit by working gaslight lamps and hear about Mamie Fish, who lived right on the park.
Along the way, you’ll learn how the people who lived on these streets impacted the decades that followed, showing how this first generation’s money, rivalries, and social rules set the stage for the mansions uptown.
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On this walking tour, get ready to see:
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Tour: 2 hours and about 1 mile of walking
This tour starts at 31 Washington Place and ends at Gramercy Park
Accessibility: The tour takes place on New York City sidewalks, which are accessible but can be cracked or uneven in some spots.
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Rosemary (Ro) Shmavonian is a New Yorker-by-choice for more than 40 years, working in fashion, finance, and theater. She raised two boys here with her husband and has a deep interest in everything from arts to sports to business and architecture. She can draw on that to make sure her guests feel really “clued in” to the city.
Charlotte Smart is a playwright, licensed sightseeing guide, and on-again, off-again academic. She earned her master’s from the University of Chicago and has been living full-time in New York City ever since. Her areas of expertise stretch from 19th century theater to comic book studies, and her ongoing play “Ad & Ned” is drawn from Edwin Booth’s private letters. As a member of GANYC, she brings hands-on enthusiasm to her tours.
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