Bowery Boys Walks

New York history on foot, from the podcast team

Bowery Boys Walks runs its own history walking tours in New York City. It was started in late 2018 by Greg Young and Tom Meyers, who have recorded the Bowery Boys Podcast since 2007, and the about page says they "built a team of professional, licensed New York City tour guides" and developed walks from the podcast's most popular episodes. The site says it leads small-group tours "across all five boroughs," and that it runs "more than 35 unique tours covering Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond." The catalog bears that out: most walks are in Manhattan, from the Financial District and Chinatown to Midtown, the Villages, Riverside Drive and Washington Heights, with others in Brooklyn (the Brooklyn Bridge, Green-Wood Cemetery, Victorian Flatbush, Coney Island), Queens (the World's Fair grounds) and Staten Island. Prices are in US dollars.

The homepage headlines "8 years of walking tours," "25+ expert guides" and "35+ unique tours," shows 5.0 ratings on TripAdvisor and Google, a TripAdvisor 2026 Travelers' Choice Award Winner badge, and calls its team "Official NYC Licensed Tour Guides." Guides are described as "historians, authors, jazz musicians, theater veterans, and lifelong New Yorkers," and the homepage introduces several of them by name.

The walks and what they cost

The walking-tours page shows 49 tours, filterable by Gilded Age, Food, Architecture, Arts & Music, Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, Midtown, Brooklyn and Queens. Most public tours are listed at $50. The about page calls the Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue Tour the "most-booked walk in our catalog since 2018." Other $50 walks include the Midtown Art Deco Tour, the Grand Central History Tour (the terminal "opened in 1913 as the most sophisticated rail terminal ever built"), the South Street Seaport Tour, Historic Hotels of Midtown from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age, the Jane Jacobs vs Robert Moses Tour, The Hidden History of Greenwich Village, Historic Haunts of Lower Manhattan, Bob Dylan's Greenwich Village, the Brooklyn Bridge History Tour, New York City Subway Secrets and a Lower East Side Tour. A new America 250 walk, Revolution in Old New York: Soldiers, Spies & Statesmen, has been added.

The food walks cost $95: Tastes of Chinatown: Neighborhood History and Food Tour, and the East Village Food and History Tour, which invites walkers to "Taste your way through the #1 food neighborhood in NYC." A few specialist tours are priced differently, such as the Green-Wood Cemetery Tour ($55), The Gilded Age World of Edith Wharton ($65) with Carl Raymond, host of The Gilded Gentleman, and Tiffany to Sargent: Highlights of the Gilded Age at the Met Museum (from $70). Several walks are built around a named specialist: the Central Park History and Landscape Tour is led by Emma Guest-Consales, An Insider's Tour of the Met Museum is led by Patrick Bringley, described as a longtime guard and New York Times bestselling author, and the New York Newspaper History Tour is run by a former journalist. The Brooklyn Bridge walk also has a private version, Brooklyn Bridge History with Kriss Roebling. Other themes reach into less familiar corners of the city, such as Little Syria and Lower West Side, Lost Gay Bars of the Villages, and Traversing the Heights, on Robert Moses and the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. A further 11 tours, among them a Broadway history walk, New York in Neon, Walking Staten Island and a Christmas in Old New York tour, "run on a seasonal or occasional basis."

Booking and the day itself

Public tours are booked on the site, which says "all tours have real-time availability" and lists upcoming dates and start times on the homepage, from 9:00 AM walks to 6:00 PM ones. The private-tours page describes the public catalog as "from $50 per person, all-in pricing." The FAQ, according to the about page, answers questions on "Group sizes, pricing, the weather policy, cancellations, kids and pets"; those answers are not repeated on the tour listings, so the cancellation window and group cap have to be read there. The site offers gift cards and a newsletter with "subscriber-only discounts."

Private, school and corporate walks

Any tour can be booked privately. The private-tours page presents it as "One flat rate, your group only," shows private versions of popular walks (the Gilded Age Mansions, Jane Jacobs vs Robert Moses and Grand Central tours at about 2 hours, Tastes of Chinatown at about 3 hours), and describes the day as meeting the guide for "Two unforgettable hours of NYC history, just for your group." Private rates are not listed; an inquiry form asks for group size and dates, and the team says it replies within 24 hours with availability and pricing.

The custom-tours page handles companies, schools and institutions. It says the guides work with "K–12 classes, university courses, libraries, and faculty programs" and will match a tour to a curriculum on immigration, the Gilded Age, urban planning, the American Revolution or civil rights. Financial firms get "Follow the Money: Financial District," pitched at new hires, summer interns and offsites, and remote teams can book private virtual tours over Zoom. The page says the company has led private tours for Fortune 500 companies, law firms, universities and schools, and shows logos including Meta, Google and NYU. The research team, it says, "has 19 years of NYC history under their belt."

What to check, and who it suits

The tour listings do not show group caps, meeting points or accessibility details, and the cancellation and weather rules sit in the FAQ rather than on each tour, so those are worth reading before booking. Private-tour prices come only by inquiry. The site gives no public email or phone number; contact runs through forms.

Bowery Boys Walks suits visitors and New Yorkers who want a story-driven history walk with a licensed guide, especially around the Gilded Age, architecture, music and neighborhood change, and listeners of the podcast who want to see its episodes on the street. Families, school groups and companies have clear routes to a private or custom walk. Travelers after a quick highlights tour of the big sights in one go will find the catalog more specialized than that.