East Village: Radicals, Rebels and Rockers from McSorley's to CBGB

The East Village has been shaped by waves of immigrants, radicals, and rebels, each leaving their mark on these streets. On this walking tour, you'll trace how the neighborhood became the rockin' cradle of American counterculture. You'll meet the activists, anarchists, beat poets, and punk rockers who called these blocks home.

The tour starts at Cooper Triangle, where you'll learn about Peter Cooper – inventor of America's first steam locomotive, and, improbably, Jell-O. You'll stroll by Cooper Union's Foundation Building, where a speech Abraham Lincoln gave to a crowd of skeptical New Yorkers that convinced them he should be president... then wind through Little Ukraine's streets to legendary McSorley's Old Ale House, where Lincoln came to celebrate afterward and whose wishbone-hung ceiling holds mementos of soldiers who never came home from World War I.

The tour then moves through the neighborhood's many lives: the 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster that destroyed the German community of Kleindeutschland, the Fillmore East where Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Allman Brothers defined rock theater, and the Fourth Arts Block where experimental theater found a permanent home. The tour ends at the former site of CBGB, the club that launched Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Ramones – and whose canvas awning now hangs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how anarchist Emma Goldman's fiery speeches at Beethoven Hall made her the most dangerous woman in America
• Learn how the New York Theatre Workshop launched both Rent and Hadestown before their Broadway runs
• Discover the KGB Bar, a former Soviet-themed speakeasy where literary agents still prowl for talent on Sunday nights
• Peek into the New York Marble Cemetery, where 156 underground vaults hold the city's 19th-century elite
• Be inspired by the story of Rose Schneiderman, whose bread and roses labor speech still echoes in political movements today
• Stand at Joey Ramone Place, home to the most frequently stolen street sign in New York City

Few neighborhoods pack this much history, controversy, and sheer personality into a 90-minute walk. Grab your earbuds, your best buds, and go!