New York City’s Upper West Side: Farmland Before Skyscrapers?

February 15, 2013

From NYSee Tours’ Owner, Fred Pflantzer to you…

I’ve always loved photography and cinematography. New York City has been photographed and re-photographed countless times. What’s amazing to me is that no matter how hard you look, you will rarely find the same image twice. Every image maker has their own take on the subject, and the photographs show it.

What is reproduced below is the oldest known photograph taken on the Isle of Manhattan. The process was known as a  daguerreotype,  invented by a man named Louis Daguerre. He is considered one of the fathers of modern photography.

The photograph itself was taken on the Upper West Side of Manhattan around what is now 86th Street. If you have taken our Get Acquainted West Side Tour, you know how densely populated that area is. The Dakota, which stands on the corner of 72nd and Central Park West, was the first apartment building constructed in Manhattan; it opened in 1881.

You can see the lure for the wealthy to live away from all the hubbub of teeming lower Manhattan. Imagine, it was the country; a suburb. It would last for a while, and then of course NYC expanded, and engulfed the solitude.

If you’d like to learn more about this historic photograph and it’s provenance you can go  here.

Stay tuned for more photographs of New York City from Fred! Got something to say? Leave it in our comments section below, or on our Facebook Fan Page. Thanks for reading!

NYSee Tours Welcomes You

January 26, 2013

A big welcome to our official blog! There’s more to NYSee Tours than just our tours. Everyone on our team has lived in New York City for an extended period of time at one point or another in their lives. So we have a wealth of information to share with our fans about the goings-on in this great city of ours. Stay tuned for tips, tricks and advice from our local New Yorkers, updates on what’s happening in NYC, and development with our company.

For example, we are very proud to announce two new tours coming very soon. As a little sneak peak, our first will be of the East Side of Manhattan, from the South Street Seaport to Chinatown and the Lower East Side, to the East Village and Union Square, we take you on a journey through time. The second tour will be of Brooklyn. We hit all the major neighborhoods, from Brooklyn Heights to Red Hook, to Prospect Park and Williamsburg.

Whatever you think you know about New York City, you can be sure you’ll our tours with a brand spankin’ new perspective on how diverse, unique and historically rich this city is. Keep checking our website for the full rundown.

Have a comment? Be sure to leave it with us below. Thanks for reading, and be sure to pop back for more each week, as we post something new.