ILLUSTRATED TALKS

Joyce Gold's delightful illustrated talks are crammed with anecdotes and dozens of images that provide virtual tours of past and present New Yorkers, special places and defining ideas.

These illustrated talks are attractive as spousal activities for corporate meetings, introductions to NYC for newcomers, special events for organizations, orientation programs for colleges, or part of a training curriculum for hospitality personnel.

Talks can be customized to address the special interests of the group. Depending on the venue and the number of people attending, Joyce welcomes questions throughout the talk, and always holds a lively Q&A session at the end.

photo by Terese Loeb Kreuzer

Inex Mulholland
THE IMMIGRANT, RADICAL, NOTORIOUS
WOMEN OF WASHINGTON SQUARE
Home to many of the political, creative, and intellectual movements in New York's history, Washington Square with its amazing female population accounts for much of that vitality. Factory workers, scholars, artists, radicals, aristocrats — remarkable women left their imprints on this neighborhood and well beyond.
(click for talk highlights)

Italian Immigrant
WE THE PEOPLE
From the earliest days, hard-working, skilled and unskilled immigrants brought New York energy, intelligence and a continually changing mix of cultures.

Collect Pond
NATURAL NEW YORK
NY's place in history owes a debt to the physical characteristics of the place now seen as a city of glass and concrete. What do the natural origins of Manhattan have to do with the city today?

HISTORY IN ASPHALT — STREET PATTERNS OF GREENWICH VILLAGE
The streets of Greenwich Village can bring even seasoned New Yorkers to their knees. For them, and for anyone curious about how the meandering by-ways of Greenwich Village were carved into the island of Mannahatta, this talk is the essential primer.
(click for talk highlights)

MacDougal St
GREENWICH VILLAGE
The Village is one of New York's earliest landmarked communities. On quirky angled streets lie 1920s speakeasies, literary hang-outs, European-style coffeehouses, Off-Broadway theatres — the quintessential American Bohemia.

Collect Pond
WALL STREET: A COLONIAL MELTING POT WITH HEARTY
DUTCH FLAVOR OLD NEW AMSTERDAM
A frontier town where people of the world came to buy low and sell high. The Wall Street area boasts many of Manhattan's most famous historic sites.

NYSE
GREAT BUILDINGS OF MANHATTAN
Discover how historical structures embody the social, political, and technological movements of their times.

Bethesda Fountain
CENTRAL PARK—
THE BIG BACK YARD OF THE CITY
Origins and design of this much-loved refuge, the city's gift to the people.

Grand Centl Terminal
TWENTIETH CENTURY MANHATTAN
From the time of J P Morgan and the Easter Parade through the Roaring 20s, Depression Years, and Post-WW II period, Manhattan grew to be today's cultural, financial, and creative mecca of international stature.

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The majority of the photographs used on this site are owned by Joyce Gold. Permissions for use of historic photographs are in process with various sources.