The Gilded Age architecture tour of NY; ground-up in the grip of history.

Isn’t a big part of Life having this endless curiosity about so many seemingly random things?

Take architecture. For us, for most travelers, a subject of deep interest but not a lot of knowledge. NYC history and its expression in architecture is one such subject and we have always wanted to do an architecture tour of NY — of course, with so much history, what time and type, where does one start? This was finally resolved when my wife read a book about the Gilded Age, the greatest time of growth and change in NYC.

So…we went looking for a private tour. I have done plenty of upper deck bus tours (London, so-so, Dublin, pretty good, Rome, great…) After much research, Tours By Locals (https://www.toursbylocals.com), we found Robert Amell and corresponded our general parameters. The aggregator made it very easy.

We felt lucky to have had someone like Robert Amell, the private NYC tour guide. Not for just being knowledgeable, which he was deeply, but in being passionate. He loves what he does, he loves what knows and sees it, breathes and is alive for him. This is a gift. He has several NY tours, investigate to see, you will be richer for it.

Starting on 13th and 6th, we wound our way up and anchored ourselves in Madison Square Park, entering no the corner where Mr. Steward’s statue (the Secretary of State for President Lincoln) holding the corner across from the fantastic Flatiron building. The tour took us through time and structures, of how waves of immigrants, money, retail, manufacturing, moved the whole city further uptown, tearing down what came before as they want.

We took few photos…somehow it just did not capture the nuance and the beauty built into the stories behind those buildings both visible and those long-gone — but captured by historical photos Robert had in a binder. The use of the binder, his weaving of tales, and the faded photos, helped immensely and gave the tour a depth of humanity and the tumult of New York during this period. At one point, we got special access to the former ballroom of a gilded Age hotel…and this magnificent, over-the-top decoration of ceilings and marble columns, was now hidden away as a luggage storage area.

The areas from SOHO up to near the Empire State Building has the most pre-20th century buildings left. So, if you did your own research, and can tolerate the impatient glances of New Yorkers as you stop and look up (no one looks up in NY, it’s a sign you are a tourist!).

One example worth sharing…the Saint Nikolas Hotel, the largest and most expensive of its time, opened in the 1850’s. At its height, it had a massive white oak staircase that led to the second floor; it held a 1,000 rooms. Today? Nothing is left. You come to realize that few, if any, city in the world underwent such seismic growth and change that New York experienced.

While sad to see so much beauty and majesty lost, thankfully, after 1960’s, buildings started getting protected. But New York today is still a magnificent and mighty city to view from the ground up!