By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — It was a snowy April day 55 years ago when a group of hardy New Yorkers braved the weather to trek from Madison Square Park to Gramercy Park and Stuyvesant Square — ending with pints at Pete's Tavern — on what was believed to be the first-ever public architectural walking tour.
The tour, organized by the venerable Municipal Art Society, cost a $1 and was led by architectural historian and author Henry Hope Reed.
The architectural preservation advocacy group is commemorating the anniversary of this tour by recreating it on Sunday (hopefully, without the snow), led by noted architectural historian Francis Morrone. The price has gone up to $15.
The original April 8, 1956 tour was such a big event that the New York Times covered it: "The thirty-six scarf-and-boot-clad diehards converged in Madison Square under Saint-Gaudens' statue of Admiral Farragut."
"After gushing astonishment at seeing each other, they sloshed in line behind their peripatetic tutors," the Times wrote.
As they stood to admire a statue of William Henry Seward — the New York governor, senator and secretary of state responsible for the purchase of Alaska — "two policemen, snug in a heated patrol car, shook their heads in bewilderment," the article said.
Later, as they walked up East 21st Street, which is now considered an elite pocket of New York real estate, a woman who ran a boarding house stuck her head out the window, "studied the group curiously and then exclaimed: 'Oh, I thought you all wanted rooms.'"
This was before the boom of the walking tour industry, which nowadays covers everything from best pizza to radical women, so it must have been odd to see a big group of people staring at buildings.
Reed got the idea to do a walking tour from Paris, where it was common practice, the Municipal Art Society's Director of Tours and Programs Tamara Coombs said.
"He was on a preservation committee and he got tired of sitting in committee meetings," Coombs explained. "He decided to go out in the street and engage New Yorkers to look at what was around them."
Madison Square Park, which was not as fashionable as it is today, was still rich in architecture and social history. "You could imagine Edith Wharton walking by here and Teddy Roosevelt walking there," Coombs said. "Architectural walking tours are not just about the buildings. They're about the people who created them."
The Madison Square tour was the first of many that MAS has conducted over the years, which celebrate the city and also have an advocacy bent, Coombs said.
"The walks help to build that preservation constituency to provide that public support needed to convince politicians to do something," Coombs said.
Upcoming MAS tours will focus on the changing waterfront along the East River, the struggles of the Garment District and the redeveloping Coney Island. The organization is also planning a tour on the anniversary of 9/11 examining how lower Manhattan has changed over the last decade.
The two-hour Municipal Art Society tour of Madison Square Park meets at 2 p.m. in front of the Admiral Farragut Monument, inside Madison Square Park at 26th Street; $10 for MAS members; $15 for non-members. Reservations required: www.MAS.org/calendar or call 212-935-2075.
