Audio tours
in New York

Audio tours in New York

History

Dry New York: The Mob, Jazz and the City That Never Stopped Drinking

From 1920 to 1933 the United States banned alcohol, and New York answered with tens of thousands of hidden bars, smuggling through the harbor and a generation of gangsters who turned crime into a business. Thirteen stops

🎧 22 min 13 stops 🚶 7 km ESENPT +2

History

Ellis Island: the Door Twelve Million People Walked Through

Between 1892 and 1954, some twelve million immigrants passed through a red brick building on a small island in New York Harbor. Waiting for them were doctors who watched them climb a staircase, inspectors with twenty-nin

🎧 24 min 12 stops 🚶 5.77 km ESENPT +2

Harlem: the Neighborhood Where Black Culture Reinvented America

In the 1920s a neighborhood in northern Manhattan became the cultural capital of Black America. Poets, musicians, painters and activists who arrived from the South and the Caribbean changed twentieth-century literature,

🎧 25 min 13 stops 🚶 7.79 km ESENPT +2

History

Wall Street: the Week in 1929 When Money Dragged the World Down

A street six hundred metres long, born as a Dutch wall, ended up governing the economy of the planet. In October 1929 its stock market collapsed, and the crisis that followed left one in four Americans out of work and pu

🎧 27 min 13 stops 🚶 2.38 km ESENPT +2

History

New York: the 102 Minutes of September 11 and the World That Came After

On 11 September 2001, 102 minutes passed between the first impact and the fall of the second tower. That day 2,977 people died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and the Western world changed the way it thinks abo

🎧 22 min 12 stops 🚶 4.3 km ESENPT +2

History

Brooklyn: the City That Voted Itself Out of Existence and Became World Famous

For more than sixty years Brooklyn was an independent city, the fourth largest in the United States, with its own mayor, port and factories. In 1894 it voted to join New York by just 277 votes, and many of its people nev

🎧 26 min 12 stops 🚶 19.47 km ESENPT +2

Nature

Central Park: the Wilderness That Was Built Stone by Stone

The lakes, hills and woods of Central Park look as if they had always been there, yet almost everything was drawn on an 1858 plan and built with gunpowder, carts and thousands of labourers. To make room, the city evicted

🎧 20 min 12 stops 🚶 4.13 km ESENPT +2

History

Chinatown and Little Italy: When Manhattan Was a Patchwork of Villages

Around 1900, lower Manhattan was one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Within a few blocks lived Irish, Cantonese, Neapolitans, Sicilians and Eastern European Jews, each with their own language, temples

🎧 25 min 13 stops 🚶 4.25 km ESENPT +2

The Bronx: The Borough That Burned and the Party Where Hip-Hop Was Born

In the 1970s the Bronx seemed to be vanishing amid fires, abandoned buildings and expressways that split whole neighborhoods. It lost more than three hundred thousand residents in a decade. And in that same landscape, te

🎧 22 min 12 stops 🚶 16.41 km ESENPT +2

Architecture

New York: the Race to the Sky That Was Won in the Depths of the Depression

Between 1929 and 1931, as the economy collapsed, Manhattan staged its fiercest contest ever for the title of tallest building in the world. The Chrysler hid a secret spire to beat a Wall Street bank, and the Empire State

🎧 24 min 12 stops 🚶 4.35 km ESENPT +2

History

Stonewall and Greenwich Village: the Night That Changed Civil Rights

In the early hours of 28 June 1969, the New York police raided yet another gay bar in the Village. This time the customers did not scatter: they fought back, and the protests returned for several nights. Out of them came

🎧 23 min 12 stops 🚶 2.39 km ESENPT +2

History

The Statue of Liberty: France's Gift That Took Twenty-One Years to Arrive

The idea was born in France in 1865, among opponents of an emperor who dreamed of a republic. The French paid for the statue, the Americans were to pay for the pedestal, and for years hardly anyone in the United States w

🎧 23 min 12 stops 🚶 4.88 km ESENPT +2

Times Square: A Century of Spectacle, Decay and Makeover

Times Square was born in 1904, named after a newspaper, and became the brightest shop window in the world. In the 1970s, 42nd Street meant porn cinemas, prostitution and drugs; in the 1990s, the city, the state and compa

🎧 24 min 12 stops 🚶 3.49 km ESENPT +2

History

Five Points: the Most Feared Neighborhood of 19th-Century New York

Between the courthouses of Foley Square and Chinatown lay Five Points, the neighborhood that the 19th-century press turned into a byword for misery, crime and gangs. Dickens and Lincoln visited it, Jacob Riis photographe

🎧 23 min 13 stops 🚶 2.44 km ESENPT +2

Williamsburg: Hasidim, Hipsters and the Brooklyn Nobody Quite Understands

In Williamsburg, a few blocks apart, live one of the largest Hasidic Jewish communities in the world, which speaks Yiddish and dresses like Eastern Europe two centuries ago, and the neighbourhood that made Brooklyn a byw

🎧 22 min 12 stops 🚶 5.91 km ESENPT +2

History

Coney Island: The Beach That Invented Mass Entertainment

At the southern tip of Brooklyn, a strip of sand the Dutch named after rabbits became the world's first great playground for the masses. Here the sausage in a bun was popularized, some of America's first roller coasters

🎧 22 min 12 stops 🚶 5.84 km ESENPT +2

Suggested plan for New York

Doing every Trevurs tour in New York takes about 33 h in total. A relaxed way to split it:

No fixed schedule: start whenever you want, skip stops, or spread a tour over several days.

New York on a budget

The Trevurs app is free and has 16 audio tours in New York: 6 h 14 min of narration across 197 stops and 100.8 km of walking routes. Download them over wifi and listen offline, with no mobile data. Entry tickets to museums, churches or monuments along the way are not included. Premium, from USD 1.99, adds unlimited offline downloads, every tour and no ads.

How to travel on a budget with Trevurs →

New York at your own pace

Each tour starts at stop 1 and you go stop by stop at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No booking and no fixed start time, and it works offline once downloaded. 2 routes are longer than 12 km: split them over several days or use public transport between some stops.

• Dry New York: The Mob, Jazz and the City That Never Stopped Drinking
  Starts at stop 1, “Those Who Arrived” (map) · 22 min of audio · 7 km (~1 h 45 min on foot) · ~2 h 15 min in total
• Ellis Island: the Door Twelve Million People Walked Through
  Starts at stop 1, “A City Born Speaking Many Languages” (map) · 24 min of audio · 5.8 km (~1 h 25 min on foot) · ~2 h in total
• Harlem: the Neighborhood Where Black Culture Reinvented America
  Starts at stop 1, “El Barrio and Its Museum” (map) · 25 min of audio · 7.8 km (~1 h 55 min on foot) · ~2 h 30 min in total
• Wall Street: the Week in 1929 When Money Dragged the World Down
  Starts at stop 1, “The Bull Nobody Ordered” (map) · 27 min of audio · 2.4 km (~35 min on foot) · ~1 h 15 min in total
• New York: the 102 Minutes of September 11 and the World That Came After
  Starts at stop 1, “The Bridge a City Crossed to Escape” (map) · 22 min of audio · 4.3 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Brooklyn: the City That Voted Itself Out of Existence and Became World Famous
  Starts at stop 1, “The Bridge That Joined Two Cities” (map) · 26 min of audio · 19.5 km (~4 h 50 min on foot) · ~5 h 30 min in total
• Central Park: the Wilderness That Was Built Stone by Stone
  Starts at stop 1, “The Pond Where the City Stops” (map) · 20 min of audio · 4.1 km (~1 h on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Chinatown and Little Italy: When Manhattan Was a Patchwork of Villages
  Starts at stop 1, “Five Points, the Most Feared Crossroads” (map) · 25 min of audio · 4.3 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• The Bronx: The Borough That Burned and the Party Where Hip-Hop Was Born
  Starts at stop 1, “Mott Haven, Where the Bronx Begins” (map) · 22 min of audio · 16.4 km (~4 h 5 min on foot) · ~4 h 30 min in total
• New York: the Race to the Sky That Was Won in the Depths of the Depression
  Starts at stop 1, “The Flatiron, Manhattan's Prow” (map) · 24 min of audio · 4.4 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Stonewall and Greenwich Village: the Night That Changed Civil Rights
  Starts at stop 1, “The Arch Where the Village Begins” (map) · 23 min of audio · 2.4 km (~35 min on foot) · ~1 h in total
• The Statue of Liberty: France's Gift That Took Twenty-One Years to Arrive
  Starts at stop 1, “The Park Where New York Pulled Down Its King” (map) · 23 min of audio · 4.9 km (~1 h 15 min on foot) · ~1 h 45 min in total
• Times Square: A Century of Spectacle, Decay and Makeover
  Starts at stop 1, “The Tower That Named the Square” (map) · 24 min of audio · 3.5 km (~50 min on foot) · ~1 h 15 min in total
• Five Points: the Most Feared Neighborhood of 19th-Century New York
  Starts at stop 1, “The Cemetery That Reappeared in 1991” (map) · 23 min of audio · 2.4 km (~35 min on foot) · ~1 h in total
• Williamsburg: Hasidim, Hipsters and the Brooklyn Nobody Quite Understands
  Starts at stop 1, “The Bridge That Emptied the Lower East Side” (map) · 22 min of audio · 5.9 km (~1 h 30 min on foot) · ~2 h in total
• Coney Island: The Beach That Invented Mass Entertainment
  Starts at stop 1, “Sea Gate, the Island's Gated End” (map) · 22 min of audio · 5.8 km (~1 h 30 min on foot) · ~2 h in total

In one day you can do The Bronx: The Borough That Burned and the Party Where Hip-Hop Was Born (~4 h 30 min): about 4 h 30 min of touring with audio and walking. Doing all 16 tours takes about 7 days at a relaxed pace, as in the suggested plan on this page.

Exploring at your own pace, and when a guide is better →

Why an audio tour

• ✓ No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for
• ✓ Start at any time of day, on your own schedule
• ✓ Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop
• ✓ No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route
• ✓ Works offline once downloaded

Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.

How it works

Questions about audio tours in New York

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