Private Tour of the Gilded Age City around Madison Square
What visitors will take away from this tour was just how small the Gilded Age city of New York was. Distrcits for shopping and theaters, for the upper and middle classes, were all a block or so away from each other. Not only that, but the apartment building, department store and office tower were all new innovations, and at their social heights in the same place around Madison Square just as telephones and electicty were coming on the scene.
Most fascinating will be the proximity all of these venues, from the carriage trade shops and the homes of familes like the Roosevelts, Astors, and Schermerhorns, were to the blocks of illiicit, often raucous nightlife activity in the old Tenderloin just a few blcoks away.
This is a tour de force of the Gilded Age City of NEw York around Madison Square.
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Private Tour of the Gilded Age City around Madison Square
What's included in Private Tour of the Gilded Age City around Madison Square
(Subject to Option Inclusions)Itinerary
We begin the tour with a general overview of history and the city's move uptown. Pictures help recreate the evolution of the area from farmland to a fashionable city center. We learn the history of the Astors, the creation of the first Waldorf=Astoria, and their social interactions with families like the Vanderbilts of the new Industrial class wealth.
Madison Square
Pictures enhance a short walk and talk around Madison Square, including the hisotries of Met Life and the first Madison Square Gardens at the height of the Gilded Age.
Broadway
We begin hte process of circumnavigating the ruins of the long forgotten city, when the telephone and electricity were brand new and not yet common to households. It was the age of the department store, hte apartment buildnig and the office towers, new ways of living, working and playing for a rising middle class. Each thoroughfare that crossed at Madison Square held a different class-based attraction of some form of commercia culture, including a redlight distrcit of blocks above 23rd Street and west of Broadway! Here, we begin the tour with the carriage trade shops of upper class wealth along Broadway, including th old Lord & Taylor and Arnold Constable & Co buildings, among others.
Inclusions
- Expert guide
- Gratuities
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Travelers should have at least a moderate level of physical fitness
Meet
Pickup and Dropoff
You will make your own way to the meeting points
Meeting / End Points
- We meet on Broadway alongside the Flatiron Building.
