Category: Best Walking Tours

The Stamp Act in New York, 1765, Part II

June 29, 2021 Tags:
Catherine Brass Yates (Mrs. Richard Yates)

Here’s Part II of the “Stamp Act in New York, 1765”, which is covered on the walking tour “Washington and Hamilton in New York City,” along with other stories of women in the American Revolution:

Just a few months later, on December 6, 1765, in resistance to the Stamp Act which included a tax on wedding certificates, the New-York Gazette published an announcement: “We hear that the young Ladies of this Place are determined to Join Hands with none but such as will to the utmost endeavor to abolish the Custom of marrying with License.”[i] Other ladies protested by rejecting the beloved cloth and fashionable “rich brocade” manufactured in England, dusting off their old spinning wheels, and committing to a tedium of spinning their own cloth. The attachment to fine English cloth was so dyed in the wool, so to speak, that some women lamented wearing unfashionable homespun; but newly patriotic women implored all women to show pride in “clothes of your own make and spinning”.[ii]  It was a tough sell to some New Yorkers.  In the New-York Gazette, in “A Letter from a young Lady in Town to her Friend in the Country,” the writer expressed the great indignity of wearing homespun: “Must we in nothing be distinguished from meer country dowdies?  Must the refinements of a thousand years give way to the ignorance that prevailed” at a time when “ladies were so grossly ignorant of the charms of dress, and so entirely void of taste?”[iii]  Over time, as patriotism surged, homespun became “a badge of honor and a visible political statement” for women who supported the great cause of liberty.[iv]  Parliament, confronted by the nonimportation pact that was bolstered by women, repealed the Stamp Act in 1766.  When news of this victory reached New York City, women and men celebrated here at the Commons as the Sons of Liberty raised the first Liberty Pole—a Roman symbol of public defiance to oppression.[v]  Nevertheless, it was a short-lived victory.  More taxes were imposed on the colonists from the Townshend Acts in 1767 to the Tea Act in 1773.  As Britain asserted its authority and demands for revenue, resistance increased, and women continued to exercise their agency as housewives, consumers, and shopkeepers by making purchasing decisions based on what was good for the colonies.

[i] Linda De Pauw, Four Traditions: Women of New York During the American Revolution, (Albany: New York State Bicentennial Commission, 1974), 14.

[ii] Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers, 16.

[iii] Belinda. “A Letter from a young Lady in Town to her Friend in the Country.” New York Gazette or the Weekly Post-Boy, October 30, 1765.

[iv] Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers, 17.

[v] Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 203.

The Commons and King’s College

September 2, 2020
King's College Best NYC Tour

The old Commons in Lower Manhattan is today’s City Hall Park. It was near King’s College where Alexander Hamilton took classes before his participation in the American Revolution.

John Adams’ 1774 description of this area of the city to takes us back in time: We…walked up the broad Way, a fine Street, very wide, and in a right Line from one End to the other of the City.  In this route we saw the old [Trinity] Church, and the new Church [St. Paul’s Chapel].  The new is a very magnificent Building—cost 20,000 Pounds New York Currency.  The prison [in today’s City Hall Park] is a large and handsome stone Building.  There are two setts of Barracks.  We saw the New York [King’s] College, which is also a Stone building. 

The Commons is where people assembled in celebration or in protest of government laws and actions.  It was the eighteenth-century equivalent of today’s Times Square.  Many important events took place here, including the first New York City public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776.  It was also here–in a celebration of Parliament’s repeal of the Stamp Act–that the first of five Liberty Poles was erected. There is a replica Liberty Pole in City Hall Park today. We see this area on the Hamilton & Washington walking tour.

Hamilton and Burr Together One Week Before the Duel

January 9, 2020 Tags: , , ,
Hamilton Walking Tour NYC

On July 4, 1804, one week before the infamous duel, the rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, were together at Fraunces Tavern at an event sponsored by the Society of the Cincinnati, whose members were American and French veterans of the Revolutionary War. Fraunces Tavern is one of the stops on the “Hamilton & Washington In New York” Walking Tour.

While the challenge had been established, the date for their encounter at dueling ground in Weehawken was still days away. The artist John Trumball was at Fraunces Tavern and noticed their unusual moods. He reflected on his observations years later in his published autobiography:

“On the 4th of July, I dined with the society of the Cincinnati, my old military comrades, and then met, among others, Gen. Hamilton and Col. Burr. The singularity of their manner was observed by all, but few had any suspicion of the cause. Burr, contrary to his wont, was silent, gloomy, sour; while Hamilton entered with glee into all the gaiety of a convivial party, and even sung an old military song. A few days only passed, when the wonder was solved by that unhappy event which deprived the United States of two of their most distinguished citizens. Hamilton was killed–and Burr was first expatriated, and then sunk into obscurity for life, in consequence of their compliance with a senseless custom, which ought not to have outlived the dark ages in which it had its origin.”

Brooklyn Bridge Fallout Shelter

December 12, 2019 Tags: ,
Best Brooklyn Bridge Walking Tour

In 2006, as the city was performing an inspection of the Brooklyn Bridge to uncover structural abnormalities, they made an unusual find. In a dark and dank arched structure on the shoreline of the East River, underneath the bridge and near the Manhattan anchorage they found “medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs,” a stockpile of cold-war-era 17.5-gallon water drums that could be reused “as a commode,” 352,000 Civil Defense All-Purpose Survival Crackers (calorie-packed crackers that were probably still edible), along with doses of Dextran, a drug used to treat or prevent shock. This was reported by the NY Times. The items were stored during the cold war, evident from the supply boxes stamped with dates from 1957 and 1962, dates that correspond to the Soviet launching of the satellite Sputnik and the Cuban Missile Crisis, respectively. The room was still intact and had been for years without the city’s knowledge.

photo CBS News

Olmsted: Service & Art

August 29, 2019
Best Central Park Walking Tour

Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Central Park believed that every element added to the landscape design must satisfy human needs and not be created strictly for decoration. ” On the Central Park tour, we see the most beautiful bridges and arches that serve and protect the guests of the park. Here’s what Olmsted wrote:

“Service must precede art, since all turf, trees, flowers, fences, walks, water, paint, plaster, posts, and pillars in or under which there is not a purpose of direct utility or service are inartistic if not barbarous. … So long as considerations of utility are neglected or overridden by considerations of ornament, there will be not true art.”

Burr & Hamilton – Dream Team

May 9, 2019 Tags: , , ,
Hamilton Burr NYC Tour

While many people know about the rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr and Hamilton’s unfavorable opinion of Burr as a public and private man, it is less known that they were on the same legal team in the scandalous trial of Levi Weeks in 1800. Weeks was accused of murdering his girlfriend, Elma Sands, by throwing her down a well, in what is today SoHo, in December 1799. Weeks retained Burr, Hamilton and Henry Brockholst Livingston, all well-known lawyers to defend him. Weeks was acquitted after only a few minutes of jury deliberation. With strong public sentiment against the verdict, Weeks left New York for Mississippi where he became a builder and architect. His Auburn Mansion in Natchez, Mississippi is National Historic Landmark. Burr and Hamilton would engage in a duel in Weehawken a little over four years later in July 1804. The portrait is of Aaron Burr.

Fraunces Tavern’s Origins

Tags: , , ,
Best Washington Walking Tour NYC

On the Hamilton & Washington in New York City walking tour, we see the famous Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street, a location that is very important to the history of the United States. The tavern, which you can visit today both as a tavern and museum, was originally built on a water lot (that was landfilled) as a brick house for Stephen De Lancey. Samuel Fraunces would acquire it in 1762 and opened the Queen’s Head Tavern and subsequently Fraunces Tavern. Washington bid his officers an emotional farewell at the tavern on December 4, 1783. The image shows the building on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets around 1905.



Central Park’s Lake

March 30, 2019 Tags:
Best Central Park Walking Tour NYC

The Central Park Lake is a 20-acre man-made lake incorporating an existing water body but enlarged for Olmsted and Vaux’s design. In the winter of 1858, after only six months of work on Central Park, the Lake had its first season of ice-skating. The still photo above is from a 1900 movie. While skating is now prohibited on the Lake, there are two formal skating rinks in the Park. Rowboats can also be rented at the boathouse.

Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn

March 9, 2019 Tags: , , ,
Best Brooklyn Walking Tour

In 1862, Walt Whitman, resident of Brooklyn Heights wrote the following:

“Why then should not Brooklyn, in the experience of persons now living, become a city of a great million inhabitants? We have no doubt it will. We can not go over the list and description of our public institutions in this paper, although we intend to do so one of these days. We have not, in a modern city like Brooklyn, such marked specimens of magnificent architecture as the ancient or mediaeval cities presented, and many of whose ruins yet remain. For our architectural greatness consists in the hundreds and thousands of superb private dwellings, for the comfort and luxury of the great body of middle class people–a kind of architecture unknown until comparatively late times, and no where known to such an extent as in Brooklyn, and the other first class cities of the New World.”

Whitman was correct about the “great million inhabitants” that Brooklyn would achieve and the “greatness” of the architecture. See the houses he is referring to on the Brooklyn Revolution (aka Best of Brooklyn Tour)

Truman Capote’s Tribute to the Best of Brooklyn

February 14, 2019 Tags: , , , ,
Best Brooklyn Walking Tour Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn Bridge

Best Brooklyn Walking Tour Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn BridgeOn the Brooklyn Revolution walking tour, highlighting some of the best that Brooklyn has to offer, one of the most popular sites is the former home of Truman Capote, where he worked on two of his greatest works: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood.”  The house is on 70 Willow Street.  From 1955-1965, Capote rented space on the basement level from Oliver Smith, the famed Tony Award-winning Broadway scenic designer.  George Plimpton, who was a visitor, wrote that “when friends came to call, [Capote] often took them on a tour of the entire house (when Smith was not at home) and said it was his house, all his, and that he had restored and decorated every room.”  In February 1959, Capote penned “Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir” for “Holiday” travel magazine in which he begins:

“I live in Brooklyn. By choice. Those ignorant of its allures are entitled to wonder why.”

The entire article and photos taken at the time by David Attie of Capote, the house and the neighborhood are available in the book: “Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir, with the Lost Photographs of David Attie.”