Big Onion Walking Tours — Local services in New York

Over the year, while introducing fellow teachers to New York City's resources for classroom/field trip use, I have taken many of the Big Onion's Walking Tours. They are all excellent, really top of the line.

Now, with a pandemic going on, I checked to see if they were doing virtual tours. They are, live on Zoom, and I participated in the Chealsea Highline Park tour. It was just as well done as their actual walking tours. The Big Onio live, virtual tours are interesting, well planned, well executed, and guided by a very professional staff of people who either working on or have advanced degrees. The young person who served as guide for the tour I took is working on her PhD. in art history, but she covered not only the arts/artists of the area, but the history, and people who made it what it is.

I would highly recommend both the actual walking tours and the virtual tours. And, as a retired teacher and librarian - I particularly recommend these programs for libraries and for class virtual field trips. Can't wait to try...

In the spring of 2023 I had the great good fortune to go on a weekly basis on a total of nine Big Onion walking tours, along with the students enrolled in my college seminar that semester devoted to New York City history. These included, in the sequence we followed, Revolutionary New York, Immigrant New York, We Built New York, Historic Harlem, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge and Heights, Chelsea and the High Line, Lower East Side Food Tour, and Brooklyn, Dumbo, and Vinegar Hill. Each was well-led, engaging, enjoyable, and informative. Taken together, they helped us understand three centuries of the incredibly vibrant and important history waiting to be uncovered in the cityscape of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I truly believe that when my students go to their fiftieth college reunion, a lifetime from now, and reminisce about what they remember from those long-ago days, the Big Onion tours they took together will stand out in memory as one of the highlights of their undergraduate experience. Maurice Isserman, Professor of History,...

My tour group from Philadelphia thoroughly enjoyed our two-hour-plus walking tour in Harlem last month. Our tour guide, Stephanie was energetic, generous, and knowledgeable. We discovered the present-day lively, noisy streets of Harlem neighborhoods filled with so much history, well-preserved architecture as well as some beautiful contemporary murals depicting the creativity and diversity of today. She was eager to hear our questions and comments as she explained how the Jewish population moved north from the Lower East Side in the late nineteenth century and the black population settled there during the Great Migration from the South. Big Onion Walking Tours never disappoints. I look forward to planning something with them again soon, perhaps...