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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

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

12/12/2024

Avoid the chaos of holiday shopping!
Consider a GIFT CERTIFICATE from Big Onion Walking Tours!

Support a small, Brooklyn based, business that employs graduate students and educators! Gift certificates are good for all walking tours and can be purchased for any dollar amount. They are e-certificates that are sent immediately upon purchase.
PRO HINT - email one to yourself, print, and include in a card!

The link to the gift certificate page can be found on the lower right corner of our homepage! Purchase is secure and, if ever lost, can be digitally traced & reissued!

Image 1: I Baker, “Life in New York! (Sleighing in Winter)” 1830-1832. New-York Historical Society
Image 2: www.bigonion.com website!

12/12/2024

Lenox Avenue & West 133rd Street, circa 1935.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, photographers, artists, and writers, were employed by the government to document life in urban and rural America. This image is a rare New York image taken by W. Lincoln Highton. He was best known for his New England and Virginia photography. Highton did not reach the level of fame his WPA colleagues, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Gordon Parks, and Berenice Abbott achieved.
This image shows a midday street scene in Central Harlem just two blocks from the meeting site of our Saturday December 14, 1 p.m. Historic Harlem walking tour. Come join us and explore the history and architecture of Harlem, with an emphasis on the Harlem Renaissance (circa 1920s & 1930s). Tour is featured on our homepage.
Image Source: New York Public Library, Schomburg Center

12/09/2024

In 1899, E. Idell Zeisloft edited and published a massive, 600-page, volume called “The New Metropolis: Memorable Events of Three Centuries, 1600-1900.” The book was filled with 1,000 images and claimed to recall 1,600 “memorable events” from the three centuries.
Many of the “events” were deeply sensationalized stories and even rumors.
Zeisloft took George Caitlin’s 1827 painting of Five Points, a rowdy and exaggerated image, and brought it to a new height.
Join us on Friday, December 13, at 1 p.m. for our Gangs of New York walking tour. We will explore the accurate history of Five Points along with the sensationalist stories. Tour is featured on our homepage.
Image 1: “An Encounter between a Swell and a “Bowery B’hoy,” Five Points in 1827. In Zeisloft “The New Metropolis”, 1899.
Image 2: “The Five Points” by George Caitlin, circa 1827. Metropolitan Museum of Art

12/07/2024

Beyond the famous tree at Rockefeller Center, New York is central to the long history of American Christmas celebrations. In fact, New Amsterdam was the first place in North America to have the first Christmas traditions, namely wreaths with gold ribbons and hot cocoa (made with sugar and cacao from the Dutch colonies of Curacao and Surinam).
It was Washington Irving who, in 1809, Americanized the mystical Dutch name Sinterklaas into Santa Claus. Some 15 years later, New Yorker, Clement Clarke Moore penned “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” The first tree appeared at Rockefeller Center more than a century later!
Join us on Saturday December 14 and Tuesday December 23, both at 1 p.m., for our Annual Christmas Stroll in Greenwich Village. Woven into the history of the neighborhood will be discussions of the creation of American Christmas and the influences of Dutch, German, English, Italian, and others cultures who call New York “Home”.
Tour is featured on our homepage. Reservations required.

Image: Image of Santa Claus/Sinterklaas as depicted in Washington Irving’s “Knickerbocker’s History of New York,” 1809.

12/05/2024

On this day in 1876, the Brooklyn Theatre Fire became the largest mass casualty in a theatre in US history, claiming the lives of about 300 audience members (today it is still the third most fatal catastrophe in an America theatre, having been surpassed by two others in the 20th Century).

Opened in 1871, the 1600-capacity venue sat at Washington and Johnson Streets, and was hosting a well-received production called The Two Orphans when the tragedy occurred. Around 11pm, a small fire broke out amongst the set pieces and the cast actually continued the play while stagehands attempted to put it out, urging the audience to remain calm. Approximately 1000 were in attendance that night, distributed through the exclusive floor-level seats, the first mezzanine, and the cheaper family circle section at the top floor of the theatre. As the fire spread rapidly, it became clear that evacuation was the only option.

Those closest to the ground had a much easier path out of the burning building, while a single staircase served those in the family circle. Those patrons were soon trapped close to the building’s ceiling where the rising smoke built up, unable to all reach the staircase.

Around 11:45 part of the building collapsed, and the resulting influx of oxygen fanned the flames higher, as the Brooklyn fire department focused on containing, rather than extinguishing the fire. It didn’t burn out until after 3am, leaving hundreds dead, disproportionately those seated in the family circle. 103 of them would never be identified, and are buried in a mass grave in the Brooklyn Green-Wood Cemetery, marked by a granite obelisk.

Come hear about other significant episodes from Brooklyn’s history on the Big Onion Brooklyn Heights walking tour, this Saturday December 7, at 1PM! Tickets available on our website (link in bio).

Images: (1) Cover of Harper’s Weekly (December 23, 1876); (2) Brooklyn Theatre via NYPL (1870s); (3) Brooklyn Theatre From Johnson Street Looking East (1876)

12/05/2024

Sokol on the Upper East Side circa 1940, when Yorkville was home to Czech and Slovak enclaves. Founded in Prague during the 19th Century, the Sokol movement sought to cultivate “a sound mind in a sound body” amongst its followers through physical training, educational event, and social activities. The movement spread from Prague to other parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, and eventually to the USA via Czech immigrants.

Since 1896, the 71st Street Sokol has provided athletic activities like gymnastics, and learning resources such as a library, English language lessons, and entertainment events such as musical performances. They institution fostered a strong sense of community among the members, who demonstrated their affiliation and presence in the community through events and parades. According to one local historian, around 70 Sokol members attempted to join the American army to fight in World War I and passed the physical exam due to their gymnastics training but were rejected for being above the maximum fighting age!

The institution still operates on the Upper East Side today, offering a variety of athletic options for people of all ages. But it wasn’t always an uptown establishment: New York’s Sokol was first located on the Lower East Side, where a significant number of Czech immigrants lived amongst the Polish and German populations. Opening in 1867, its first 29 years were spent serving many denizens of E 5th Street, where the early Czech immigrants were concentrated. Many of them worked in cigar factories, which they followed north to Yorkville as the industry relocated.

Come hear more about the histories of NYC on one of our walking tours this weekend! The Upper East Side at 1PM on Saturday, December 7th, or the Multiethnic Eating tour of the Lower East Side at 1PM on December 8th - or both! Tickets available on our website now, link in bio.

Images: Sokol Hall Building, 1940 and Gymnastic show, Sokol building in New York, 1940 c/o MemoryofNations.eu and Norma Zabka; Sokol 2023, Julie Urbisova

12/02/2024

Washington Square Park South, around the early 1900s. If you’ve been following us or coming on our tours for a while, you’ve probably heard that Washington Square Park was a potter’s field before it was a park, and that approximately 20,000 people are still buried there today. But we don’t always delve into the details of running a potter’s field. The fact is, someone needs to do the digging.

Enter Daniel Megie, who served as the professional gravedigger for the potter’s field in the early 1800s. He built a house on Washington Square Park South and Thompson Street, giving himself an enviably short commute to work. Megie additionally worked as an executioner at the nearby Newgate Prison, which was several blocks west on Christopher Street, but still walkable. While the elm at the park’s northwest corner has long been rumored to be the site of the hangings Megie might have overseen, no concrete evidence implicates the tree in this process, or documents the park itself as a regular location to carry out capital punishment.

The closure of the potter’s field in 1826 put Megie out of a job, after which he appears to have moved onto other work elsewhere. His two-story wooden house outlasted him, providing space for different public establishments until NYU demolished it to build a new structure in its place. Noted for its aggressive expansion into Greenwich Village in the mid-20th Century and continuing into the 21st, the university has received significant criticism for altering the architectural character of the neighborhood with large, modern facilities in place of various historic structures including the nearby Edgar Allen Poe house on W 3rd Street, and the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal.

Come learn more about the history of Greenwich Village with Big Onion’s walking tour on Friday, December 6th at 1PM. Tickets available now at the link in our bio!

Image c/o Bettmann (Media ID 39425373)

11/28/2024

We are grateful for everyone who has taken our tours or supported us virtually this past year. Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Image: Elliott Erwitt, Snoopy 1988
Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Manhattan

11/26/2024

The start of a new era in the Financial District.

This aerial photograph, taken sometime in the early 1960s, shows the construction of 28 Liberty Street (better known as One Chase Manhattan Plaza), a 60-story skyscraper that opened in 1961. The building, designed in an International Style by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, reflected the modernist sensibilities of the era.

The early skyscraper age in the Financial District began in the late 19th century. Fueled by both technological advances - including in steel-frame construction and elevators – and economic growth, the neighborhood underwent a dramatic transformation. Buildings reached ever higher into the sky. Iconic early skyscrapers like the 1913 Woolworth Building (depicted here in the far right background) symbolized the city's growing economic power and architectural ambition.

The Great Depression brought this earlier era of exuberance to a close, but not before the completion of a few final major works, including 40 Wall Street (a 927-foot-tall tower opened in 1930, pictured center left) and 70 Pine Street (952-foot-tall tower opened in 1932, pictured center right). The look of the Lower Manhattan skyline remained mostly unchanged for the next 30 years.

This began to change around 1960, with the construction of early International Style towers like 28 Liberty Plaza and 80 Pine Street, followed in the mid-1960s by 140 Broadway, fundamentally reshaping the look and feel of the neighborhood. The Twin Towers, completed in 1973, capped this era of downtown revitalization.

Former behemoths, meanwhile, were, by the early 1960s, increasingly crowded out of view. The most notable was the 612-foot Singer Building, its dome barely visible in this image. Once the tallest building in the world, the early skyscraper had, by the 1960s, outlived its usefulness; by the end of the decade it was demolished in favor of another International Style tower, One Liberty Plaza.

Curious for more history about the Financial District? Join us this Saturday, 11/30 for our tour of Historic Lower Manhattan. Tickets on our website.

11/24/2024

A restaurant supply store, located at 243 Bowery in the Lower East Side in 1975. The name, Bari, evoking the southern Italian city, reflected the large Italian American population that still called the neighborhood home. The signage advertised the latest instruments needed for a pizzeria.

While pizza is synonymous with New York City, the story of the evolution of the devices that produced it is less well known.
In the early 1900s, pizza was an ethnic food confined to the Italian enclaves of urban centers like New York, New Haven, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Immigrants adapted the food, traditionally made in Naples with wood-fired ovens, to the industrial environs of American cities, with coal-fired pizzas becoming the norm.

After World War II, pizza gained unprecedented popularity in the United States, transitioning from an ethnic food tied to Italian immigrants to a mainstream American staple. Returning soldiers who had encountered pizza in Italy during the war developed a taste for it. At the same time, as Italian Americans spread beyond their urban enclaves and mixed with other American ethnicities, pizzerias began to emerge beyond traditional Italian neighborhoods, introducing more people to this versatile dish.

Technological advancements like the gas-powered deck oven (pictured in the signage) played a crucial role in supporting this rapid growth. The Bakers Pride Oven Company, founded in 1945 in the Bronx, helped popularize the new style with the invention of the Y-602 Double Pizza Oven. Gas ovens offered a consistent and easily controlled heat source, significantly simplifying the pizza-making process, while double-decker designs doubled the cooking capacity without requiring additional floor space, making it possible for small shops to serve large crowds efficiently. These ovens, which produced high-quality pizzas with crispy crust and evenly cooked toppings, helped establish the thin-crust pizza sold by the slice as a beloved local tradition.

Hungry for more NYC food history? Join us for our annual post-Thanksgiving food tour this Friday. Tickets on our website.

11/21/2024

A lonely building awaits demolition in Downtown Brooklyn in 1952, with the Manhattan Bridge visible in the background. A photo from 1883 (image 2) shows the waterfront near the Brooklyn Bridge in another era, before the park and the carousel came along!

The piers saw a sharp decline in demand for services after the bridge opened in 1883 due to the shrinking number of commuter ferries. Changing modes of transport, like the expansion of highways and the emergence of trucking as the dominant shipping option in the mid-20th century, decreased reliance on water transport, and therefore traffic into formerly bustling waterfronts like those in Downtown Brooklyn. Revitalization meant reimagining the space, and remodeling a lot of it!

That meant demolition or remodels for many of the nearby structures such as warehouses built around the neighborhood to support the waterfront industries. Today the area is virtually unrecognizable (see image 3), but has undeniably evolved to fit the needs of our changing urban cultures and visions for waterfront development!

Come learn more about the history of the bridge and the surrounding neighborhoods on the Big Onion Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights walking tour, this Sunday November 24th at 1PM! Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

Images: (1) Old house, soon afterwards demolished to make room for a park, near Brooklyn Bridge, N.Y., 1952 via ; (2) Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1883, via Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy; (3) Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy

11/20/2024

Many people assume that Gay Street got its name in recognition of LGBTQIA+ rights, given its proximity to Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn. The 1969 Stonewall Uprising is considered a major turning point in the history of the American q***r rights movement, so it would be a fitting gesture to honor it with a street name. However, the name first appears on a map as early as 1833 meaning it predates Stonewall by over a century!

Another rumored source of the name is Sydney Howard Gay, editor of a 19th Century abolitionist newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Gay didn’t stop at writing about abolition - he used the paper’s office in NYC as a stop on the Underground Railroad as well! Gay Street is also located in the section Little Africa section of Greenwich Village, first established in the 1650s when New York was still New Amsterdam by a group of free and partially free Black men in the colony, which remained a thriving Black community through the turn of the 20th Century. However, Sydney Howard Gay was still a teenager in 1833 - a little young to inspire a street name.

In all likelihood, Gay was the last name of a prominent or wealthy Greenwich Village family in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, like many of our other downtown streets and landmarks. Coincidentally, the name would work out to honor multiple NYC stories of social justice through the ages!

To learn more about the history of social justice movements in NYC, come join the Big Onion Social Justice walking tour, this Saturday, November 23rd at 1PM! Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

Images: (1) Gay Street, 1894 via NYPL; (2) Tenement House on Gay Street, Greenwich Village, New York City c/o Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive; (3) c/o Village Preservation

11/18/2024

Houses 3-4, Gramercy Park West. Notable for their detailed cast iron porches, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis who took inspiration from New Orleans aesthetics.

This block hosts some of the earlier homes built on the border of New York’s famous private park, established in 1831 and locked up in 1844. As the neighborhood grew around it, it took on a sophisticated and exclusive character due to some of the high profile New Yorkers who moved in.

Number 4 was home to James Harper from 1847-1869. You may know his name from his successful publishing company, Harper Collins, which he founded with his brother in 1817. He had another major accomplishment for his resume: he briefly served as NYC’s mayor after winning a special election for a one year term in 1844. He failed to win re-election for a normal term in 1845 and did not hold elected office again. His most enduring accomplishment as mayor? He banned free roaming hogs from the streets of Manhattan! 🐖 🐖

Despite moving into this house after he was no longer the mayor, Harper still had the traditional mayoral lamps installed. When lit, the citizens knew not to disturb the mayor.

Come hear more about the history of Gramercy Park and its public counterpart parks on the Big Onion A Tale of Two Cities walking tour, this Saturday November 23rd at 11AM! Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

Imagess: (1) Gramercy Park, Nos. 3-5, 1935 via ; (2) James Harper as a middle aged man, J. Henry Harper, 1912.

11/18/2024

Looking down the bend of Mott Street in the 1970s. Like many Lower Manhattan streets that pre-date the 1811 grid, Mott curved to work around natural features of the island’s original landscape such as the Collect Pond, which was filled in and covered over in the 19th Century.

Mott Street has been home to multiple different immigrant communities, including those that populated the notorious Five Points neighborhood, and some early Italian immigrants, but is best known as one of the main books of Manhattan’s old Chinatown. At the end of the block in this photo you can see part of the wall belonging to the Catholic Church of the Transfiguration which has served numerous immigrant populations over the years.

In the center of Manhattan’s old Chinatown district, Mott Street’s early Chinese inhabitants were largely working aged men from Guangdong province, and the area had a reputation for being a bachelor town (even noted by Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives). In the mid-20th Century, large waves of Cantonese immigration changed the demographics as large numbers of people coming from Hong Kong and Taiwan arrived. This cemented the neighborhood’s status as a contemporary ethnic enclave, and a premier destination for dim sum, a Cantonese culinary tradition!

While NYC has multiple Chinatowns spread across the boroughs today, the original Lower Manhattan Chinatown remains a major tourist attraction and a thriving community.

Come learn more about the history of immigration on the Lower East Side on the Big Onion Immigrant New York walking tour, this Friday November 22nd at 1PM! Tickets available now on our website (link in bio).

📸: LES Back in the Days on Facebook

11/13/2024

The home of Mr. Tom Foley and his family. Madison Avenue at East 77th Street. May, 1891.

Henry T. Sloane Mansion, 9 East 72nd Street. 1894

The “Gilded Age” is considered a period of luxury and extravagance on the Upper East Side and rapid industrialization with extreme economic polarization in New York and throughout the nation.
The Foley home, called a “shanty” by many writers, was three years and a quarter-mile from the Sloane House. All that remains of the Foley home and family are a few glass negatives. The Sloane building, designed by architects Carrere & Hastings, is a New York City Landmark and owned by the Qatari government.

Join us on Sunday November 17 at 1 p.m. for our Upper East Side: A Clash of Titans walking tour. We will explore the historic development of the neighborhood. The walk is featured on our homepage.

Foley Home: The image is part of collection donated by an Elizabeth Ransom. 61 glass negatives and three prints, all from 1891-92 were donated. Nothing is known about the donor. Courtesy New-York Historical Society.
Sloane Home: Photographed by Matthew J. Niewenhous, Gilded Communities.

11/11/2024

Soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment of New York, the “Harlem Hellfighters,” parade up Fifth Avenue, February 17, 1917.

3,000 Black veterans of World War I, marched up Fifth Avenue. A small portion of the 375,000 recruited nationwide, and 200,000 sent overseas. Most never saw combat, but were relegated to menial tasks in a segregated United States Army. Those who saw combat, including the 369th, were forced to change uniforms and fight with the French. These soldiers were often on the frontlines of the hardest combat and about 1,500 were killed. Their motto on the front was “God Dam, Let’s Go”.

The Harlem Hellfighters fought 191 days in Champagne and the Marne. They were the first to cross the Rhine River into Germany.
During the 1917 parade a journalist wrote:
“Never have White Americans accorded so heartfelt and hearty a reception to a contingent of their Black countrymen…Racial lines were fro a time displaced…the blood they had shed in France was as red as any other.” - New York Herald Tribune.

On this Veteran’s Day we remember the bravery of the 369th Infantry Regiment of New York. To hear more about their impact on our city and the neighborhood of Harlem, join us Friday November 15 at 1 p.m. for our Historic Harlem Walking Tour. Featured on our homepage.

Image: FPG/Hulton Archives /Getty Image; France, Amerique

11/09/2024

Join us tomorrow, Sunday November 10 at 1 pm, as we commemorate Veterans Day - the day dedicated to all who served in the United States Armed Forces. The first iteration of the day was called Armistice Day, November 11, 1919, to mark the signing of the armistice ending World War I. The day became a national holiday in 1938.
Our walk of Lower Manhattan focuses on early American history and, in part, traces the path of George Washington’s triumphal return to New York City on November 25, 1783 - Evacuation Day - the date the British abandoned the freed city.
Tour is featured on our homepage.
Image: “‘Evacuation Day’ and Washington’s Triumphal Entry in New York City, November 25, 1783” courtesy Library of Congress

11/08/2024

A 1920 flyer, written in multiple languages, advertising free language services provided by the Tompkins Square Branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL).

Once home to large populations of Irish and German immigrants, the LES was, by the early 20th century, primarily inhabited by Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants (including, as these flyers convey, speakers of Yiddish, Polish, and Hungarian). Their reasons for leaving their countries of birth were numerous – seeking better economic opportunities or fleeing from political turmoil and oppression in their home countries – but, once in NYC, these immigrant groups faced similar challenges and opportunities.

One common and indispensable resource was the NYPL. The library, officially organized in 1895, quickly recognized the importance of providing resources to the city's growing immigrant population. Starting in the early 1900s, it began to play an instrumental role in helping arriving immigrants integrate into their new community. To assist immigrants in navigating a new society, the NYPL began to provide free English classes, naturalization and citizenship preparation resources, and legal assistance. At the same time, the library made efforts to help these groups preserve their unique cultural identities by stocking a vast collection of foreign language books to cater to the diverse linguistic needs of immigrants.

The Tompkins Square Branch, opened in 1904, was one of the principal resources for these populations residing in the Lower East Side

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/

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Videos

The journey over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan in 1899! This footage, which shows the bridge’s iconic towers, the former train tracks, and pedestrians on the footpath, was shot from a cable car that would have traveled to the bridge on the privately owned Graham Avenue Tracks in Brooklyn, and arrived into the Park Row terminal. The transit companies elected to use cable cars rather than steam locomotives for service due to architect Washington Roebling’s concerns that the latter would be too heavy for the bridge to support. Cable cars traversed the bridge in both directions from its opening in 1883 until 1944; trolley service over the bridge continued until 1950 when the roadway was constructed, catering to the owners of private automobiles. Cable car service initially used single-car service, but quickly had to add on additional units do to consumer demand. In 1885, two years after the bridge opened, 20 million people crossed via cable car! While you’ll have to travel over the Manhattan Bridge (1909) or the Williamsburg Bridge (1903) if you want to make a video like this one today, you can still see the Brooklyn Bridge from the other perspective alluded to in this video: by foot! The pedestrian walkways, opened in 1883 and first officially crossed by Emily Roebling, Washington Roebling’s wife and unofficial co-architect, remain accessible to commuters and visitors alike. Come hear more about the Brooklyn Bridge and its history on out Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights walking tour at 11AM, Thursday July 19th or 11AM, Saturday August 3rd. Tickets available on our website now! New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 2, 1899, Thomas A. Edison Inc. via @librarycongress #nyc #newyork #newyorkcity #newyorkhistory #nychistory #newyorkcityhistory #Manhattan #bigonionwalkingtours #newyorkwalkingtour #Brooklyn #Brooklynbridge #brooklynheights #19thcenturyfilm #cablecar #train #trolley #traintracks #bridge #19thcenturyhistory #pedestrian #walk

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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.