Explore Manhattan’s Chinatown without worrying about getting lost along its narrow streets and corridors and visit spaces that are normally off limits to the public.   After checking in at the Chinatown Little Italy Information Kiosk on the corner of Baxter and Canal streets we will head down to the old Five Points neighborhood brought back to fame by Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.  This was the cauldron that gave birth to Manhattan’s Chinatown in the mid 1800’s.  We tour the southern portion of Historic Chinatown as far south as Kimlau Square and wind our way through the labyrinth of winding roads stopping at places like Confucius Plaza, a Taoist Temple, the Famed Doyers street and see the largest Buddhist Statue in New York City.  The grand finale is a visit inside the CCBA – The Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association where you may catch a glimpse of the Mayor of Chinatown.  

This Official Neighborhood tour is in partnership with the Chinatown Little Italy Historic District Association and was developed in collaboration with the Historic Districts Council.

If you love New York City history or just want to take a deep dive into one of Manhattan’s most storied neighborhoods, you shouldn’t miss this guided tour of Little Italy.  You’ll leave with a warm sense of nostalgia, as you walk the very lanes and avenues where so many American dreams were born.

This tour begins at the Chinatown Little Italy Information Kiosk on the corner of Baxter and Canal streets and will encompass the entire northern portion of Historic Little Italy all the way up to Houston Street and back.  Learn about the very first American Catholic Church built specifically for the Italian American community, pay tribute to the haunts of the very first Italian American Police Sargeant Joseph Petrosino.  See the streets where famed film producer/director Martin Scorsese grew up.  Meet the neighborhood as we pay homage to all the Italian owned establishments.  See locations of many famous films and tv shows. Don’t be surprised if your tour is taking place during filming of new productions.

This Official Neighborhood tour is in partnership with the Chinatown Little Italy Historic District Association and was developed in collaboration with the Historic Districts Council.

Join us on a journey through over four centuries as we walk down New York City’s oldest street! Originally a Native American footpath and Dutch farm road, site of the first free African American homesteads, and Washington’s triumphal march route during the British evacuation, it was the lower stretch of the Boston Post Road, one of America’s first highways. It witnessed 19th  century gang wars, the bloody Astor Place Riot, and the anti-slavery speech at Cooper Union that propelled Lincoln to the presidency. Though landed gentry like the Delanceys settled here, it soon became the working-class main street for sailors, shopgirls, gangs, gays, sporting men, and waves of immigrant Irish, Italians, Germans, Jewish, and Chinese. NYC’s first entertainment district, it has seminal links to tap dance, vaudeville, Yiddish theater, Houdini, Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Mae West, modern tattooing, Abstract Expressionism, Beat literature, improvisational jazz and punk rock. Comparing it to the more upscale Broadway, Walt Whitman found it “more democratic, with a broader, jauntier swing.” Though it declined in the 1900s, when flop houses and dive bars proliferated, it nonetheless became home to affordable jewelry, lighting, and restaurant supply stores, and a live-work home for artists like Marc Rothko, Maya Lin, William Burroughs, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin and Debbie Harry.