We are a fully licensed walking tour company serving clients from the United States and the world.
We are a fully licensed walking tour company that specializes in walking tours of NYC. You can request a specific neighborhood tour, or let us customize a NYC experience based on your interests!! We are experienced and knowledgeable tour guides and we treat you like family!!!! Best yet... We come to your hotel to meet you, or we can direct you to a central meeting place of our choice (and yes, that central meeting place will be a part of your tour).
11/19/2024
We stand with our fellow Staten Island businesses!
Thank you all đź’•
05/28/2024
05/26/2024
From all of us at Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours. We will closed for the Holiday on Monday 5/27 and will be open for business on Tuesday 5/28.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is a stop on our Gems of Midtown East Tour! Happy St. Patrick’s Day 🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀 Want to see the gorgeous cathedral? Book your Gems of Midtown East Tour with us today for a future date!
Come and explore two neighboring squares loaded with lots of history and Macy’s too. On this tour, you will walk about Herald Square and Times Square along with the neighborhood of Chelsea.
12/31/2023
Radio City Music Hall is a Stop on our Gems of East Midtown Tour!
ON THIS DATE (91 YEARS AGO)
December 27, 1932 - Radio City Music Hall opened its doors to the public for the first time.
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city. Its interior was declared a city landmark in 1978.
The 12-acre complex in midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center was developed between 1929 and 1940 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on land leased from Columbia University. The Radio City Music Hall was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and interior designer Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.
Its originally planned name was International Music Hall. The names "Radio City" and "Radio City Music Hall" derive from one of the complex's first tenants, the Radio Corporation of America. Radio City Music Hall was a project of Rockefeller; Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who previously opened the Roxy Theatre in 1927; and RCA chairman David Sarnoff. RCA had developed numerous studios for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, just to the south of the Music Hall, and the radio-TV complex that lent the Music Hall its name is still known as the NBC Radio City Studios.
The Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932 with a lavish stage show featuring Ray Bolger and Martha Graham. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class variety entertainment. The new format was not a success. The program was very long and individual acts were lost in the cavernous hall.
On January 11, 1933, the Music Hall converted to the then familiar format of a feature film with a spectacular stage show perfected by Rothafel at the Roxy Theatre in New York City. The first film was shown on the giant screen was Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen starring Barbara Stanwyck and the Music Hall became the premiere showcase for films from the RKO-Radio Studio. The film plus stage spectacle format continued at the Music Hall until 1979 with four complete performances presented every day.
We stop by his apartment building and visit strawberry fields on our Central Park tour.
December 8, 1980, marked a tragic day in the history of music, as the world lost one of its most iconic and influential figures, John Lennon. As a founding member of The Beatles, Lennon's impact on the music industry and popular culture is immeasurable. Early Life and Rise to Fame: Born on October 9...
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We are a fully licensed walking tour company that specializes in walking tours of NYC. You can request a specific neighborhood tour, or let us customize a NYC experience based on your interests!! We are experienced and knowledgeable tour guides and we treat you like family!!!! Best yet... We can come to your hotel to meet you, or we can direct you to a central meeting place of our choice (and yes, that central meeting place will be a part of your tour).
What makes Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours unique from other tour companies?
When I was still tutoring full time around 2009 into early 2010, I was pondering the thought of doing something adventurous on my time off from tutoring. Tourism popped into my mind, I remember seeing a video on NY1 for Big Apple Greeter some years before that. I contacted Big Apple Greeter and asked them how I can become a tour guide. Their process was simple, all I had to do was attend several orientations and a training session. At the time I was pondering if Tourism was for me, as I was showing people from around the world the great borough of Manhattan. I left Big Apple Greeter in December of 2012, during this time the call was getting louder and louder as I was beginning to ponder the thought of branching out on my own with sightseeing guide license and all. It was like festivus, an epiphany, an apocalypse all rolled into one the day I passed my sightseeing guide’s license exam. My hard work paid off and my dream was about to embark and set sail.
It was on that cold January day in 2013 that Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours was BORN! I was then going about ways to get my new business off the ground and at first just like watching that video for Big Apple Greeter, I saw an ad for Groupon on television. Bingo! Since I was already a member of Groupon as a buyer, it was an easy cinch to become a Groupon Merchant. I decided to add my first ever packages Gems of Midtown East and Downtown 9/11 Memorial packages to the Groupon giving the buyer a choice of which tour they wanted to go on when they purchased the Groupon. Just about a month or two later I had a gold mine on my hands! People are still purchasing the Groupon’s to this day. Just by doing this I was able to start my business and get the proper tools to get it going.
I took what I have learned from Big Apple Greeter and poured it into Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours, which is making the visitor feel like at real New Yorker. Presto! This was the motto I decided to go with which was Tours led by Real New Yorkers and not Scripted Tour Guides, because we want you the visitor to see Manhattan through the eyes of Real Manhattanites and New Yorkers. By doing this we engage our visitors into the life and sounds of New York City. We encourage our guides to put their personal stories into the tours, such as “I remember my mother and father taking me to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. I enjoyed it so much we decided to make it a yearly family tradition. ““I remember going to see my uncle at the World Trade Center during business hours in the days before 9/11 numerous times since he worked on the trading floor there, and I would observe him trading from the visitor’s deck. He worked in 4 WTC and is a 9/11 Survivor.” These are some of the stories from my past that I incorporate in to the tours when I conduct them.
That was just the foundation to the gold mine that would be Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours. We were gaining so much ground at this point, it had come to the attention of the business reporter of the Staten Island Advance. She wrote such a wonderful article on how we (a then one woman operation) managed to uncover the secrets of Grand Central Terminal. It was the crowning moment for Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours, because we did something no other tour company would even imagine doing… GOING INSIDE THE BUILDINGS TO LEARN ABOUT THEM! It was at this point our slogan was born, We don’t take you to Grand Central Terminal, We take you INSIDE Grand Central Terminal. Another thing that makes us stand out from the others is that we have a Zazzle store in which people can go and buy our souvenir merchandise, and where we buy our gear for the tour guides. People then began to call us and they too wanted to know the ins and outs of Grand Central Terminal henceforth making the Gems of Midtown East the number 1 tour package seller for our company. This package is STILL our biggest seller with the Downtown package coming in a close second.
One of my favorite TV shows is Friends. When I was planning out my Central Park Package Tour and re-introducing it to the tour itinerary from my Big Apple Greeter days, I needed a name that would catch the person’s eye. The name of the coffee shop where they hung out at was called Central Perk. So that gave me the idea of titling this tour Did You Say Central Park, or Central Perk? My friends thought this title was genius and I ran with it. I also use the friends’ concept when I conduct my tours, I am Rachel, the landmarks are Ross and the visitors are Monica, Joey, Chandler and Phoebe which adds on to the real New Yorker concept that I developed when planning and organizing my company and its aspects.
It was also during this time that I wanted to re-introduce another tour from my Big Apple Greeter days, Times and Herald Square. I said to myself, I have Grand Central, East Midtown, Downtown, and Central Park already on the table there was something missing. That missing ingredient was Times and Herald Square. So I decided to put my prowess to work again, if I can uncover and expose the secrets of Grand Central, I can then dig even deeper and reveal the history of Macy’s in Herald Square and the Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve in Times Square! It was at that point that Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours struck again. People were asking me at events and engagements where and how I attained all this knowledge. I said simple, I studied the facts while going for my licensing exam and by going to the places to learn all about them.
When I was a student teacher going for my Master’s Degree, I was saddened at the fact that the art of the field trip was becoming a thing of the past. When I was developing my Kidz Tours, I had the field trip concept in mind, and decided to create field trip style versions of the Downtown and Grand Central Tours where the kids can learn about the 9/11 Memorial and Grand Central Terminal while actually being there all in a two hour nut shell or a full day at the request of the school organizing the trip. This is another thing that makes us stand out from our competition.
We thank you for choosing Manhattan Greeterz Walking Tours and hope that you have an enjoyable tour experience with us.