Category: New York City History

Tickets to all Boroughs of the Dead tours are now on sale for the Halloween 2017 season. Our meticulously researched ghostly and macabre historical tours are, as always, led by expert guides who are published authors, museum educators, and seasoned storytellers.

Truman Capote lived at 70 Willow Street from 1955 to 1965. Capote never owned the house; it was owned by his friend, Broadway set designer, Oliver Smith.

The following is a guest post by our guide Leanna Renee Hieber. Her custom tour, The Magic and Mysticism of Central Park, will run on Sunday, June 18th in a special Fathers’ Day edition. Tickets are available here. We think of Frederick Law Olmsted as the father of modern landscape architecture, and along with his […]

1920’s horror writer H. P. Lovecraft did not much relish his two years living in New York City (and that is putting it very mildly). He considered himself forever a New Englander and spent his long months of exile pining for his home in Providence, RI. But if there is one way that Lovecraft did resemble a typical New Yorker, it was that he was a walker.

The following is a guest post written by our tour guide Marie Carter. The Hell Gate Bridge is currently celebrating various anniversaries right now. It was completed on September 30, 1916. On March 9, 1917, the first Pennsylvania Railroad train—the Federal Express service between Washington and Boston—went over the Hell Gate Bridge, completing the first […]

On Sunday, January 22nd, 2017, join us for our fourth annual Edgar Allan Poe In Greenwich Village tour, a two-hour literary and historical walking tour that steps into the Greenwich Village of the 1840s, where Poe lived and worked at the height of his fame.

Today marks the 181st birthday of Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Twain lived in various locales throughout New York City for much of his adult life, from the West Village to Wave Hill in the Bronx. He often claimed his favorite residence was 14 West 10th Street, located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, on one of the Village’s most picturesque blocks. It is known far and wide as a haunted house, and some even claim he haunts there now.

Boroughs of the Dead’s “Ghosts of Christmas Past” combines New York City history, Yuletide folklore, and local ghost stories into a holiday walking tour unlike any other.

Boroughs of the Dead is proud to announce that two of its guides are featured in the upcoming Morris-Jumel Mansion Anthology of Paranormal and Fantasy Fiction, published by Riverdale Books.