Explore the Seaport’s Historic Buildings From Your Couch

Pandemic or no pandemic, New York City history buffs don’t have to skip out on the South Street Seaport Museum’s annual tradition of historic building tours, dubbed “Archtober” (get it?). This year, the museum is taking the tours virtual.

Participants in this year’s free digital tours will be taken inside Schermerhorn Row, a landmarked block of Federal-style 19th-century buildings located right at the end of Fulton Street in the South Street Seaport Historic District. (The buildings on Schermerhorn Row, constructed between 1811 and 1812, are also currently the home of the Seaport Museum itself.)

The virtual tour will take visitors through the upper floors of these storied old buildings, including two hotels that were immortalized in New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell’s “Up in the Old Hotel.” A live Q&A with the museum’s director of collections will be held at the end of the tour.

Virtual tours take place on three Fridays: October 9, 16, and 23, between 3p and 4p. Registration opens on September 25.

For impatient armchair historians, a virtual “walking” tour of historic Seaport sites is already available online, in partnership with Urban Archive.