Nick Capodice (l.) and Cindy VandenBosch from Urban Oyster, Peter Glickman (r.) and Ed Glickman stand in front of Glickman family's second U.S. home.
It's a walking tour with a personal touch - your family's genealogy.
ABrooklyn-based company is offering custom tours based on family history - with stops at ancestral homes and other important places in the lives of their forebears.
"Every building has a story," said Cindy VandenBosch of Urban Oyster, which is offering tours that start at $1,200 a group.
"I think it's really powerful for a family to share the experience of learning about an ancestor."
Chelsea radiologistPeter Glickman, 45, inspired the company to offer the tours when he asked them to create one for a family reunion.
"It's not just about the research. It's about sharing stories. These are the fascinating stories - not kings, queens or mayors," he said.
For his group of 17, VandenBosch researched Glickman's great-grandfather -Barnet Glickman, a tinsmith who emigrated as a teen in 1888 fromLithuaniatoWilliamsburg.
She dug up immigration, census and neighborhood records.
"He would have come through Castle Garden - where the expression Kesselgarden [Yiddishism for something noisy or chaotic] comes from because it was a real zoo of people coming into theU.S.," said guide Nick Capodice, describing thelower Manhattanimmigrant processing facility that predatedEllis Island.
VandenBosch found that Barnet's first home on Siegal St. had been torn down - so the group's first stop was his four-story rental address on Heyward St., now covered in tan vinyl siding.
He lived there until at least 1910 with his wife, Bessie, seven kids and more than 50 Russian and German immigrant neighbors - upholsterers, dressmakers, candy dippers - all packed into the eight tenement apartments with shared hallway bathrooms.
On the tour, Capodice set the scene: A wagon works was a few houses over, and the smell of baked bread would have wafted from Schultz's Bakery across the street. The elevated train line would have rumbled a few blocks away.
"Suddenly we stepped out into the late 1800s," said Glickman's cousin Ed, aPhiladelphiainvestor and amateur genealogist.
He said the tour was eye-opening because his own research was stymied by a change in the family's name, from Glukman to Glickman.
The next stop was 101 Harrison Ave., the three-story home Barnet bought sometime before 1920, which the Glickman cousins remember visiting as children.
It's now covered in vinyl siding, but the distinctive window-frame woodwork - carved suns and stars - is still there.Ed Glickman's grandfather, Meyer, ran a dental office on the main floor in the '60s.
"I remember because I was his patient," Ed Glickman said. "He practiced 'dentistry on the floor.' I'd run away, and he'd practice on the floor where I was caught."
When the Glickmans first moved there, the fortresslike 47th Regiment Armory on the corner was home to rowdy boxing matches, and people would have filled the street lining up to get in.
No one appeared to be home at the Harrison Ave. house on a recent visit.
"They're probably going through similar immigrant tales," said Peter Glickman, looking up at the windows.
The family walked past the public school building - now theUnited Talmudical Academy- that ancestors would have attended. They learned about the slum clearance that made way for green space and the Williamsburg Houses.
Peter Glickman said it was great to hear about the old days, while living with modern comforts.
"Nine people living in a single apartment?" he said of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. "And then there's the whole concept of imagining what it was like to live during Prohibition."
Ed Glickman said he found plenty to like about life back then: "A steak sandwich for a nickel at Peter Luger's sounds like a good deal."
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