What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 6pm Tuesday 9am - 6pm Wednesday 9am - 6pm Thursday 9am - 6pm Friday 9am - 6pm Saturday 9am - 5pm Sunday 9am - 5pm

Big Onion Walking Tours

Name: Big Onion Walking Tours
Address: 476 13th Street, New York, NY, 11215, US
Telephone: (212) 439-1090
Price range: $$
Rating: 4.8

Home
United States
New York, NY
Big Onion Walking Tours

Big Onion Walking Tours Walking Tours of New York City neighborhoods focusing on history & architecture. Lead by NYC licensed educator-guides with teaching & academic backgrounds.

w York" by New York Magazine (1998). We were named one of the "Best History Tours in the World" by Forbes.com (2010).

04/24/2025

The layout of a tiny apartment can make or break the experience of living in NYC, so it’s no wonder that the profession of interior design as we know it traces back here!

Actress Elsie de Wolfe (2) pictured with her partner, literary agent Elisabeth Marbury (left), lived in the so-called Irving House (1) on E 17th Street and Irving Place, at the turn of the 20th Century. Although the house is located in the historically elite Gramercy neighborhood, the project of urban planner Samuel Ruggles, it is still fairly small by mainstream American standards. de Wolfe and Marbury hosted regular Sunday salons in their shared home for members of their diverse and interesting social circle, necessitating decor that was both fashionable and functional.

de Wolfe’s redesign of the interior of the house after moving in involved changing the color palette to brighter tones, simplifying and softening heavy materials like drapes, and using mirrors to maximize light in the space. The evolution of her personal dining room, where she and Marbury hosted their salons, demonstrates the transformation (3-4) from heavy Victorian furnishings to its revamped early 1900s appearance. Her home garnered the attention of NYC’s aristocratic classes and she launched a successful career designing homes and rooms for the city’s elite!

After finding success as an interior designer, de Wolfe entered into a marriage of convenience with diplomate Charles Mendl, which enabled her to travel between NYC and France more frequently to take on clients on different continents. However, she never broke up with Marbury; they lived together until Marbury’s death in 1933. de Wolfe published an autobiography in 1935 without any mention of her husband in it!

Come learn more about people and history of Gramercy and Union Square with our walking tour, this Sunday April 27th at 1PM! Tickets available on our website.

Images: (1) Washington Irving House (1900), NY Historical Society; (2) Marbury and de Wolfe from My Crystal Ball (1923); (3-4) Irving House interior, Hutton Wilkinson

04/22/2025

One of Eugene de Salignac’s most iconic images of painters posing balanced on the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge!

Much of the painting work was done closer to the ground, also captured by de Salignac, the son of French immigrants, in his tenure as the official photographer for the NYC Department of Bridges/Plant Structures in the 20th Century. He got the gig unexpectedly: having no photography training, a relative hooked him up with an apprenticeship to the official Department of Bridges photographer in 1903, and he was promoted upon his boss’s unexpected death in 1906. He served as the sole photographer for the agency until 1934 when he was forced into retirement at age 73.

The painters in these images may have been painting the cables red or tan, but with the black and white images there’s no way to know for sure. The first image is posed, as evidenced by the fact that the painter’s supervisor is with the group up on the cables! That may have worked for a ‘cool boss’ in 1914, but we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t fly today…

To learn more about the Brooklyn Bridge and take a photo (from the pedestrian walkway only!) join the Big Onion Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights walking tour this Saturday, April 26th at 11AM! Tickets available on our website.

Images all by Eugene de Salignac, c/o NYC Department of Records & Information Services

04/20/2025

Eddie Boros’ Toy Tower, formerly located in the 6&B Community Garden in Alphabet City.

The East Village underwent numerous changes in the mid-20th Century. As it emerged as a distinct neighborhood from the larger Lower East Side, tenement landlords neglected their buildings and many fell into complete disrepair. A number of buildings in the neighborhood were marked for demolition, and properties were left for developments of various kinds. Some went to real estate developers, but some lots were taken back by the local community and transformed into spaces like public community gardens.

Residents took it upon themselves to organize and clear out the vacant lot on 6th St. and Ave. B in 1982, eventually successfully securing a charter for the garden. Members of the garden occupy individual plots within the space, which they can cultivate how they please. Most of them cultivate plants, as the term garden would imply, but one member had a different idea.

Boros began constructing what eventually became his 65 ft. tall wooden plank tower in 1988 to house the wooden sculptures he carved without impeding on other plots. He decorated the structure with various toys and other discarded objects he found in the neighborhood; the evolving structure eventually became a local landmark, making it into guidebooks, media coverage, and was even incorporated into the set design for the musical RENT.

Sadly, the tower is no more. It was condemned and removed by the city in 2008, one year after Boros’ death. Many of the toys incorporated into it were distributed to neighbors. Although the Tower of Toys is gone, the 6&B Garden persists today as one of many community spaces hanging on as the East Village continues to change.

Come learn more about the evolution of the East Village on our walking tour this Saturday, April 26th at 1PM! Tickets available on our website.

Images: (1) Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times (1988); (2-3) Grégoire Alessandrini (published online 2014)

04/17/2025

Yiddish language storefronts dotted the Lower East side in the early 20th Century, when the Jewish population in the neighborhood peaked due to high rates of immigration.

While we refer to the era as being the Jewish Lower East Side, the community was quite diverse, comprised of immigrants from a number of different Eastern European countries with unique cultures and traditions. Despite the range of geographic and national origins within the community, they largely shared a common language. Yiddish is a Germanic language that emerged within Central Europe’s Jewish populations in the 10th Century, and traveled with them and their descendants through generations of population displacement, during which Western and Eastern dialects additionally developed, the latter with a more notable Slavic influence.

The hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who came to the Lower East Side used Yiddish in their daily lives: for signage, verbal communication, for entertainment in NYC’s vibrant Yiddish theatre scene, and in multiple daily newspapers that saw massive circulation around the neighborhood. While many Yiddish speaking immigrants did not pass on the language to their descendants, there are still an estimated 250,000 Yiddish speakers in the USA according to Rutgers, thanks in part due to renewed efforts of non speakers to learn the language.

And of course, it’s not only English that influenced Yiddish speakers - whenever we schlep our bags on the subway, schmoozing with the boss or buying tchotchkes to bring home as souvenirs, it’s a reminder of how immigrant cultures contribute to what becomes mainstream Americana.

To learn more, join the Big Onion Easter Sunday Jewish Lower East Side tour on April 20th at 1PM! Or, to hear about the many different immigrant communities who have lived on the LES, join our Immigrant NY tour on Friday April 25th at 1PM! Tickets on our website.

Images: (1) Jeff Rothstein; (2) Andreas Feininger (1940s) c/o

04/15/2025

This bird’s eye view of the East River from 1851 (1) shows the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts pre-Brooklyn Bridge. Zoom in on the Brooklyn side (2) and you can see the stately, suburban houses of Brooklyn Heights!

The initiation of passenger ferry service between Manhattan and Brooklyn by the New York and Brooklyn Steam Ferry Boat Company in 1814 enabled real estate developer Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont to successfully market his vast estate to wealthy merchants and bankers from Manhattan. This early commuter class built elaborate mansions to create an early suburb in the independent town of Brooklyn.

Due to the geological features of the land, the houses on the edge of the plateau employed unique designs to take advantage of their properties. The Prentice Mansion (b. 1835) maintained multiple terraces in the backyard, maximizing the vertical space and planting a variety of fruit trees! John Prentice, a local fur merchant, had purchased the structure in 1840 for his family; conveniently, its location near the waterfront both allowed the family to harvest fresh fruit and gave Prentice a quick commute to his riverside warehouses. The mansion was demolished in 1909 as the neighborhood began developing higher-density housing to accommodate the growing population.

Come learn more about the history of Brooklyn Heights with a Big Onion walking tour of the neighborhood this Saturday, April 19th at 1PM. Or if you’re interested but also want to get some time in on the Brooklyn Bridge, join our Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights tour on Saturday, April 26th at 11AM! Tickets available on our website.

Image: (1) John Bachmann, Bird’s eye view of New-York & Brooklyn (1851) via ; (3) Prentice House, One Grace Court, Brooklyn Heights (1900 ca.) via

04/13/2025

On April 13th, 2003 the MTA officially stopped selling subway tokens and required passengers to swipe with cutting edge technology, the MetroCard.

The newly consolidated New York City Transit Authority adopted a uniform 15-cent fare for subways in 1953, and introduced tokens as the novel way to pay. Rather than paying money directly to an individual or machine, passengers could first purchase tokens from dedicated token machines in the station, and then feed those tokens into the gates to the station for entry. The subway token went through a number of different designs throughout the years, sometimes to accompany a fare increase, or sometimes just for fun.

In the 1980s, some sly transit-users figured out that the MTA tokens were the same size and weight as those used for the nearby Connecticut Turnpike, which were significantly cheaper. If one planned ahead, one could purchase the CT tokens and use them to gain access to the NYC subway system. This sparked a token war between the two parties, as New York felt Connecticut should be the ones to redesign their tokens, but they refused and continued using their dupe NYC tokens until turnpike tolls were discontinued.

After 22 years of MetroCard use, the MTA is once again changing payment methods. If you still have yours, take it for a swipe while you still can to join a Big Onion tour this weekend to learn more about the history of our city!

Hear about how the construction of the subway back in the early 20th Century shaped Greenwich Village as we know it today on our GV tour, this Friday, April 18th at 1PM, or to the other three tours we’re offering this weekend - all on our website!

All images c/o (1) Joseph E. O’Grady and token machine (1958); (2) “Y” Cut Tokens (1970s); (3) The Subway Sun, Vol. XXV, No. 38: Give Tokens (1957-8)

04/10/2025

Pictures of the chronically unloved City Hall Post Office and Courthouse, which occupied the southern tip of City Hall Park from 1869 to 1939.

Designed by Alfred B. Mullett, Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, the massive Second Empire–style structure was constructed between 1869 and 1880. The large and ornate building, intended to house numerous government offices (including a post office, customs offices, and federal courtrooms), reflected the expanding power of the federal government in the years after the Civil War.

Despite its grand ambitions, the structure was widely criticized from the beginning, with locals mockingly referring to it as “Mullett’s Monstrosity.” Critics derided its hulking granite mass, asymmetrical proportions, and oppressive presence near the more delicate City Hall.

Construction delays and ballooning costs only added to public dissatisfaction, and even Mullett himself faced intense scrutiny during the project.

Though panned by critics, the building nevertheless became a central part of the city’s downtown civic landscape. It stood at a crucial transportation and governmental hub, serving millions of postal customers and hosting major federal cases.

By the mid-20th century, however, both architectural tastes and the needs of government agencies had changed. The building had come to be viewed as outdated and obsolete. In 1939, despite some efforts to preserve it, the City Hall Post Office and Courthouse was demolished.

Today, nothing remains of “Mullett’s Monstrosity.” Its sister buildings, similarly designed by Mullett for expanding federal agencies in the two decades after the Civil War, include the Customs House in Portland, Maine; the old Court House in St. Louis, Missouri; and, most famously, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.

For more history of Lower Manhattan, join us for our Historic Lower Manhattan tour on Saturday, April 19. Tickets on our website!

Images courtesy of the NYPL.

04/08/2025

The iconic cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), photographed on a wintery Jones Street in Greenwich Village.

Shot by photographer Don Hunstein, the in-house photographer for Columbia Records, it features a young Bob Dylan walking arm-in-arm with his then-girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. The photo, spontaneous and unstyled, was captured not far from Dylan’s apartment at the time, a cramped $60-a-month studio apartment located at 161 West Fourth Street.

When Dylan arrived in New York in 1961, the Village was the epicenter of the folk revival, its reputation as a countercultural bastion forged by figures like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Dave Van Ronk. Young artists from across the country gathered in its cafés, basements, and clubs, including places like Café Wha?, the Gaslight Café, and Gerde’s Folk City. In the Village, these folkies sought refuge from the bland commercialism of 1950s pop music and the political conservatism of the Cold War era.

By 1963, with the issuing of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the songwriter had begun to redefine folk music. Songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” both on the album, effectively channeled the anxieties of a rising postwar generation and cemented Dylan’s role as a new kind of artist, one that was simultaneously poetic and political, and who seemed plugged into the pulse of a youthful, changing America. With its instantly recognizable cover art, the album also cemented in the imaginations of folk music fans across the globe the indelible link between the Village and the ascendant folk music counterculture.

Curious for more history about the 1960s musical countercultures? Join us on Friday, April 18 for a walk of Greenwich Village. Tickets on our website.

04/05/2025

A photo of 125th Street in Harlem from the mid-1940s.

125th Street is Harlem’s main thoroughfare and has long been the cultural, commercial, and political heart of Black New York. Sometimes called Harlem’s “Main Street,” it was formally laid out in the early 19th century as part of the city’s grid plan.

The street first gained prominence in the early 20th century during the Great Migration, when African Americans from the South transformed Harlem into a vibrant center of Black life. Already, by the 1920s, 125th Street had become a hub of the Harlem Renaissance.

On the right is the Loew’s Victoria Theater, an upscale 2,394-seat motion picture and vaudeville theater. Built in 1917, it was considered among the finest “movie palaces” of its era.

Further down the street is the famed Apollo theater, which opened in 1913 as a 1,500-seat burlesque theater that catered exclusively to white patrons. Following Sidney Cohen’s acquisition of the venue in 1934, the Apollo, converted into a music venue, quickly emerged as a thriving center for Black art and entertainment. During the height of its fame from the 1930s to the 1960s, the Apollo played a fundamental role in fostering Black culture; its famous “Amateur Night” helped discover talents like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and James Brown, offering a rare platform during a time of segregation and limited opportunity.

The street also served as an important flashpoint for some of the early civil rights fights for equal opportunity and equality. On the left side of the picture is Blumstein’s Department Store, one of the neighborhood’s largest and most prominent white-owned business, which served mostly Black customers but long refused to hire Black employees in customer-facing roles. In 1934, it became a key target of the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign, a broader civil rights boycott demanding fair employment. .

Join us on Saturday, 4/12 at 1pm for our Historic Harlem walking tour. Tickets on our website.

Image courtesy of the NYPL.

04/04/2025

A print from 1883 and a postcard from 1910.

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge from 1869 to 1883 was a feat of engineering. Each aspect – the construction of the towers or the creation of massive anchorages on either side of the East River – posed its own unique challenges. Among the most impressive, though, was the ingenuity required to wind and wrap the four massive suspension cables slung high above the East River.

By 1877, with both towers complete, the focus shifted to spinning the cables that would support the bridge’s roadway. One challenge: the East River and its bustling port couldn’t be blocked during construction. So engineers devised a daring system: workers operated from narrow platforms suspended by wires above the river, accessed via footpaths stretching from one stone anchorage to the other, crossing over the towers themselves.

The cable-spinning process relied on a steam-powered carrier system. A single wire was looped around a traveler and pulled back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan. This conveyor-like method slowly accumulated what would become more than 14,000 miles of wire in total. When 278 wires were spun, they were bundled into a strand. Nineteen strands formed a single cable. Each was secured to 23-ton iron anchor plates embedded deep within the massive stone anchorages, held fast by radiating chains of iron eyebars.

In 1878, Washington and Emily Roebling introduced a custom-designed machine to wrap the cables with precision. An iron clamp shaped each strand into a perfect cylinder. Then, a spiral of soft wire bound the cable tightly, after which it was coated in white lead. This protective wrapping gave the cables their stiffness and resistance to weather. The final four cables, once wrapped, were each an impressive 15¾ inches thick.

For more history on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, join us on Friday, 4/11 at 1pm for our Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights walking tour. Tickets on our website.

Images courtesy of the NYPL.

04/03/2025

Despite its striking natural beauty, Central Park’s sweeping lawns and winding paths weren’t shaped by nature alone. Behind its creation stood thousands of anonymous laborers—men who dredged, blasted, and built the landscape that has since become one of the most recognizable in the world. When work began in 1858, over three thousand men transformed 843 acres of rocky, swampy terrain into the park envisioned by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

Despite their contribution to the city's most famous park, the names of the thousands of laborers who built the park remains largely unknown. Most lived in boardinghouses or tenements downtown. Others settled in the shantytowns that dotted the city’s northern fringes. The workforce, composed of a stunning array of immigrant laborers, was as diverse as the city itself. German gardeners, Italian stonecutters, and an army of masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths toiled alongside Irish laborers, many earning just a dollar a day. Skilled workers, like stonecutters and pavers, earned a higher wage—up to $2.25 a day by 1860. Their tasks were grueling. Massive boulders were blasted with gunpowder and hauled away on horse-drawn trucks. Miles of underground drainage pipes were laid, reshaping the land with millions of bricks, thousands of trees, and countless shrubs. The work, in its scale and ambition, was a marvel.

If you're curious for more history about NYC's immigrant history and the construction of its signature park, we have two upcoming walks that will interest you. Join us tomorrow, April 4 at 1pm for our Immigrant New York walking tour, or on Saturday, 4/12 at 1pm for our Central Park walking tour. Tickets on our website.

Images courtesy of the New York Public Library.

03/30/2025

Various images of the Empire Stores warehouses, from the 1880s during their commercial peak to the 1930s and, finally, the 1970s, when the buildings sat abandoned.

New York City’s dominance in the coffee trade was built on the Brooklyn waterfront. By the late 19th century, 86% of the country’s coffee supply arrived in New York Harbor, much of it passing through the vast warehouses that once lined the Brooklyn shore. Among them, the Empire Stores, constructed in 1869 by the Manhattan firm Nesmith & Sons, were a crucial link in a booming industry that connected Brooklyn to coffee-growing regions across the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

At the time, green coffee beans were highly perishable. To protect their valuable imports, merchants stored them in Brooklyn’s massive warehouses before sending them to roasters. As space in Manhattan grew scarce, Brooklyn—particularly the area beneath Brooklyn Heights and extending to Red Hook—became the preferred destination for coffee shipments. The Empire Stores stood at the heart of this trade, their thick brick walls and iron shutters safeguarding tons of beans waiting to be roasted.

One of the biggest players was the Arbuckle Brothers Company, pioneers in large-scale coffee roasting. They transformed raw beans into ready-to-brew coffee, setting industry standards that influenced roasting and packaging worldwide. They bought the Empire Stores in 1920 and used it as a central part of their Brooklyn-based operation.

Today, the Empire Stores are among the last remaining structures from this era. Since 2019 they have operated as a food market hall for Time Out New York.

Curious for more history about Brooklyn's industrial waterfront? Join us on Saturday, April 5 at 1pm for our tour of DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. Tickets on our website.

Images courtesy of the Museum of the City of NY and the Brooklyn Library.

03/27/2025

It’s not an exaggeration to say that New York has a coffeeshop on every block - as of 2019, we have the most coffeeshops per capital of anywhere in the USA! The seeds of local coffee culture were planted by the Dutch colonists who started drinking it as a morning beverage (to replace beer). Through the British colonial and Revolutionary War periods, coffeehouses offered public space for New Yorkers to meet and discuss their affairs. The coffee consumption has continued through the centuries: during World War II, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia even counseled New Yorkers on how to navigate new rations on coffee, suggesting they reuse the morning’s grounds to make their afternoon cup to get the most mileage out of their beans.

Coffeeshops have served NYC’s diverse communities in many ways over the years: as suppliers for the caffeine-addicted among us, third spaces for people to work and socialize, and venues for communities to gather and share their traditional food and drinks. The array of NYC’s 20th Century coffee shops includes establishments like Greenwich Village’s Le Cafe Figaro (1) where Beat Generation greats like Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan were known to linger after its 1957 opening. Across Broadway, coffeeshops on the Lower East Side (2-3) catered to the tastes of immigrant communities building lives in a new city.

Grab a to-go coffee from your favorite shop and bring it on a Big Onion walking tour this weekend! Check out Greenwich Village on Saturday, March 29th, or the Lower East Side on our Multiethnic Eating tour on Sunday March 30th, both at 1PM. Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

Images: (1) Ricardo Spino, 1970; (2) Andreas Feininger, 1940s, Greek Coffee House, Mulberry Street; (3) Alexander Alland, 1939, Manhattan: Bowery - Hester Street

03/26/2025

Two sides of the street on the Upper East Side in 1882. The Jacob Ruppert Mansion (1), designed by William Schickel, was constructed in an upcoming neighborhood at the end of the 19th Century. The view across Park Avenue (2) was less impressive than the German brewer’s residence at 93 Street, which signaled the turn the Upper East Side was soon to experience.

Prior to becoming one of the fanciest and sought-after real estate environments in the city, the Upper East Side was primarily farmland, full of shantytowns and squatters. A combination of factors pushed NYC’s wealthy elite north in the late 19th century, including increasing immigration rates downtown and the 1876 opening of Central Park, then NYC’s newest, hottest attraction.

The uptown movement of NYC’s elites drove the development of the gilded age mansions, and upscale accommodation and amenities we associate with the Upper East Side today. Unfortunately for Ruppert and Schickel, this particular mansion didn’t survive the era of rapid development: Ruppert’s heirs tore down the structure in 1925.

Come learn more about the history of the Upper East Side on our walking tour this Saturday, March 29th at 1PM! Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

Images: (1) Tenements and row houses photographed from Jacob Ruppert mansion, 1882; (2) Home of Jacob Rupert - 1116 Fifth Avenue , NY, 1925; (3) View from the roof of George Ehret’s home at Park Avenue and 94th Street, 1882-3, Peter Baab

Address

476 13th Street
New York, NY
11215

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 6pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 6pm
Friday	9am - 6pm
Saturday	9am - 5pm
Sunday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

(212) 439-1090

Website

http://www.bigonion.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Big Onion Walking Tours posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Big Onion Walking Tours:

Shortcuts

Our Story

Since 1991, Big Onion has been leading award winning walking tours of New York's historic districts and ethnic neighborhoods. All our guides are fully licensed with teaching backgrounds! We lead more than 25 different tours throughout Manhattan & Brooklyn. We offer public "show up" tours, every day, year-round. All of our walks are also available for private bookings. Big Onion has been called "The Best in New York" by New York Magazine (1998). We were named one of the "Best History Tours in the World" by Forbes.com (2010). The Village Voice called us the “Best Place to Take Out-of-Town Guests” (2014). We have been awarded a “Certificate of Excellence” by TripAdvisor annually since 2014 (first year award was granted).

UPDATED APRIL 2019: Big Onion Walking Tours is very proud to expand to the historically & architecturally significant Hudson River Town of Hudson, NY.