Tour guide keeps in step with ever-changing city

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 4 | October 20 - 26, 2006

By Lori Haught

Joyce Gold speaks about the history of New York with a certain passion, and the twinkle in her eye shows how much she loves the city’s history and how excited she is for the future.

“If you live in a place, you think that’s what it is, but it won’t be that way for long,” Gold said. “And it wasn’t always that way.”

Gold started giving tours of Manhattan 25 years ago. It was her passion about where she lived that led her to discover that she had a gift for imparting history to others.

Gold was working as a real estate broker at the time she began the tours. It started as a side project, as friends wanted her to give them tours of the city; eventually, it developed into a full-time career.

“Years when I would make a lot of money [as a broker], I would say, ‘I don’t need this much money, I should just give tours of New York,’ ” she said. “Years that I didn’t make a lot of money, I would say, ‘I should just give tours of New York.’ It took a while before it clicked that this is what I should be doing.”

Gold fell in love with the history of the city when she picked up a book some 30 years ago that had been written more than 100 years prior about New York 100 years prior to the book’s publication. She has since collected about 900 books on New York City and reads eight different publications a week, including Chelsea Now, along with its sister newspapers, The Villager, Downtown Express and Gay City News. She uses the news to stay on top of current developments in the neighborhoods where she gives tours.

She moved to New York City in the ninth grade, received her Bachelor of Arts at Queens College and her master’s in metropolitan studies at New York University.

Gold, who has lived on 17th St. and Seventh Ave. since 1978, said the most interesting part about the neighborhood is generally the people.

“Why do certain ethnic groups live there? What could have happened to the neighborhood? I’m always interested in what makes an area what it is,” she said.

Tours can range from all-day private affairs to two-to-four-hour weekend tours, which are open to the public and cost $15 ($12 for seniors 65 and over). For more information and an up-to-the minute schedule, visit www.nyctours.com.

The tours are constantly changing given the group that’s participating. So, for example, how would a private tour given to a group of college students vary from the same tour given to, say, the Grandmothers Against the War?

“College students might know more about what’s happening now with music and would be more interested in the clubs and activities which they could enjoy,” Gold said. “For Grandmothers Against the War, I might focus on more of the political history. They probably don’t need as much explained to them [as college students]. I would also change my timing and consider stopping every so often for a bathroom break or rest. One of the most interesting things is to adapt what you’re saying.”

Gold is very committed to the neighborhoods of Manhattan. She said she makes a point of pointing out local businesses on her tour.

“First of all, it’s always nice to promote local businesses, and second, it gives people a specific place where they know and can come back to later,” Gold said.

Gold’s tours cover more than 30 parts of Manhattan. And within those areas, there are different tours. Within the Village alone, she offers 20 different routes.

The weekend tour of Chelsea is generally an overview of the district, according to Gold. She said the buildings in Chelsea are by far the best 19th-century architecture in the city. She also discusses the shift of the theater district Uptown and the move of the more recent migration of art galleries from Soho to Chelsea.

Gold said tours can include anyone from a tourist to a lifelong New York City resident.

She said the most popular tour during October is “Macabre Greenwich Village,” held the weekend before Halloween.

“It’s become so popular I have started repeating it on Sundays,” she said.

This spooky favorite features the stories of hangings in Washington Square, the graveyard that inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write “The Raven” and the story of a ghostly fireman who still haunts the Village. The “Macabre” tour meets at The Washington Arch on Fifth Ave. at Washington Square N. at 1 p.m. on Sat. Oct. 28 and Sun. Oct. 29.

Gold has taught courses on Manhattan history at New York University and New School University since 1980. She has also written three books on the history of Manhattan and contributed to Kenneth Jackson’s “Encyclopedia of New York City,” writing the entries on Soho and Tribeca.