Walking Tours with Renee Rewiski

Pay-What-You-Wish (suggested minimum tip: $20 per person)

 

We are pleased to offer a series of optional walking tours led by Renee Rewiski, an experienced New York City guide who has been designing and leading tours for more than sixteen years. These walks are designed to let you see New York through a New Yorker's perspective, while getting to know a part of Manhattan that most visitors only experience as tourists.

 

All tours are pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested minimum tip of $20 per person, paid directly to Renee (Venmo or PayPal; no credit cards). Details on how to sign up will follow; advance reservations are strongly encouraged.

 

Thursday, March 26

 

Orientation Walk: From the First Presidential Mansion to the Seaport (12:30–2:00 p.m.)For those arriving early on Thursday, this short walk offers a grounded introduction to the streets around Pace, framed through sites that most visitors pass without realizing their national significance.Time: 12:30–2:00 p.m. (in time to return for the 3:00 p.m. opening session)Focus:Navigating the immediate Pace neighborhood with a New Yorker's sense of shortcuts, landmarks, and "where people actually go" rather than just the tourist map.Gotham Park beneath the Manhattan anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, a new multi-phase project transforming former highway-adjacent space (including the famed Brooklyn Banks skate area) into a community park and public realm experiment.The area near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge where George Washington's first presidential mansion—the Samuel Osgood/Franklin House on Cherry Street—once stood, when New York briefly served as the nation's capital in 1789–1790. A small, hard‑to‑find plaque is one of the few traces of this early federal past.A walk down to the South Street Seaport Historic District, where preserved 18th- and 19th‑century mercantile buildings and cobblestone streets tell the story of New York's rise as an international port, now reimagined with museums, shops, and riverfront views.Ideal for: Anyone who wants to understand where Pace sits in the larger story of the city—colonial waterfront, early federal politics, and contemporary public-space redesign—while getting practical, local insight into where to walk, eat, and explore over the next few days.Friday, March 27Lower Manhattan History & Memory (4:30–6:30 p.m.)This two-hour tour explores Lower Manhattan from its origins to the present, weaving together political history, finance, architecture, and public art in the streets immediately surrounding Pace. It is an opportunity to walk through the city's founding core rather than just "seeing" it from a bus window.Time: 4:30–6:30 p.m. (after conference sessions conclude)Focus and route highlights:The evolution of New York from a Dutch trading post (New Amsterdam) to a British colony and then to a capital of the new United States, as seen in the street plan and surviving sites in Lower ManhattanBroadway's "Canyon of Heroes," where ticker-tape parades for heads of state, astronauts, and championship teams have marked civic memory in the urban landscapeBowling Green, the city's oldest public park, and the "Charging Bull" sculpture—an unofficial, guerrilla-installed artwork that has become a global symbol of financial optimism and riskBattery Park and the changing waterfront, including discussion of new construction and raised shorelines as responses to climate change and rising sea levelsViews of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the Staten Island Ferry terminal, and the southern tip of Manhattan where Henry Hudson's arrival reshaped the region's Indigenous and colonial historiesFraunces Tavern, connected to George Washington's farewell to his officers, and the Stone Street area, where archaeological work has revealed layers of the colonial cityWall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, Trinity Church cemetery and Alexander Hamilton's grave, and the World Trade Center area, concluding at the Memorial Gardens as a contemporary site of mourning, resilience, and global memoryAccessibility: Approximately 2 miles of walking with frequent stops; route is described as handicap accessible.Nearby dining options: Fraunces Tavern, pubs along Stone Street, Morton's at the World Trade Center, and Eataly in 4 World Trade Center.Saturday, March 28Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Heights, and DUMBO (1:30–4:30 p.m., with optional ferry afterward)After the conference concludes at 12:45 p.m., this extended walk offers a chance to move from Manhattan into Brooklyn on foot, tracing an engineering landmark and the layered histories of one of New York's earliest suburbs and its post-industrial waterfront.Time: 1:30–4:30 p.m. (with the option to continue past 5:00 p.m. if you choose the return ferry)Focus and route highlights:Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883 as the longest suspension bridge in the world and widely hailed as an "eighth wonder of the world," a National Historic Landmark that still anchors New York's visual identityStories of the bridge's construction, engineering innovations, and the Roebling family, framed as part of New York's industrial and infrastructure historyBrooklyn Heights, designated New York City's first historic district, with connections to the early American Revolution, abolitionist activity, and generations of writers and artists who lived along its streetsThe Brooklyn Heights Promenade, offering a New Yorker's favored view back to the Manhattan skyline, and a descent into DUMBO, a former manufacturing district now home to tech firms, galleries, luxury lofts, and creative industriesThe transformation of warehouse architecture and cobblestone streets into a contemporary arts and lifestyle district, including the iconic view under the Manhattan Bridge framing the Empire State BuildingDistance and logistics: About 4 miles of walking with several stops, including a bathroom stop across the bridge.End point and options: Time Out Market and several restaurants in DUMBO. Participants may:Stay in DUMBO for dinner on their own, orTake the Fulton Ferry back to Manhattan (approximately $4.50 per person; optional), retracing one of the oldest cross-river routes.Sunday, March 29SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown (10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.)This tour traces the city's northward growth through three iconic neighborhoods, emphasizing architecture, immigration, and cultural memory. The walk highlights how working-class and immigrant communities have shaped New York's built environment and cultural imagination.Time: 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.Focus and route highlights:SoHo's cast-iron district, home to the largest surviving collection of cast-iron buildings in the world, where 19th‑century commercial facades now house galleries, lofts, and fashion retailThe E. V. Haughwout Building, which installed the world's first successful commercial passenger elevator in 1857, a key step toward the vertical city and the future of skyscrapersThe evolution of these blocks from manufacturing and theater/shopping districts to artist lofts and then to today's global design and retail landscapeToday's very small Little Italy, a reminder of the neighborhood's Italian immigrant past and how ethnic enclaves shrink and move as real estate pressures growChinatown's dense markets, parks, and side streets, illustrating ongoing immigration, community life, and the politics of visibility in one of the largest Chinese communities in the Western HemisphereGraffiti and street art woven into the route, connecting visual culture, branding, and the city's portrayal in film and televisionEnd point: The tour concludes in Chinatown, with Little Italy just a block away for those who wish to have lunch afterward.Optional Friday Daytime Spouses/Guests Tour (Time TBD)If there is sufficient interest from spouses, partners, and other guests who are free during Friday daytime hours, Renee can offer an additional tour centered on the World Trade Center and the changing waterfront.Focus and route highlights:St. Paul's Chapel and images of the original World Trade Center, including how memory and loss are narrated in public spaceDiscussion of what has been rebuilt since 2001, what remains planned, and how architecture and memorial design communicate different ideas of resilience and securityA walk along the waterfront that examines raised shorelines and flood-protection work as responses to hurricanes, sea-level rise, and climate policy debates in New YorkThis tour will be scheduled only if there is enough interest; details will follow if it moves forward.Payment and Sign-UpCost: Pay-what-you-wish, with a suggested minimum tip of $20 per person, paid directly to Renee.Payment methods: Venmo or PayPal (no credit cards).Sign-up: Please click on this link to reserve your spot on any or all of the walking tours.These tours are designed to help you experience Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and nearby neighborhoods as living environments—places where New Yorkers work, commute, grieve, organize, and make art—rather than as static tourist "sites." Early sign-up is recommended, as group sizes may be limited.