Seeing New York (officially Seeing New York Automobiles, Inc.) was a New York City sightseeing tour company that operated electric omnibuses and boats in the early 20th century.[1]
Tours in open-topped buses left from the Flatiron Building (then the Fuller Building), where the windows were painted to advertise "coaches, automobiles, and yachts".[2] The men wore suits, the women wore gloves and elaborate, often feathered hats. They visited "the historic section, in its Dutch, British and American periods; the Bowery, Chinatown, Brooklyn, Castle Garden, Central Park, the Grand Boulevards, the historic Hudson River, Columbia University, General Grant's tomb, [and] statues of Christopher Columbus and William Shakespeare." By 1913, manager J. H. Mulligan and local manager R. H. Green were operating eight vehicles.[3] In 1904, The Evening World described the tours:
As with celebrity tours today, Seeing New York might make stops at private residences of those in the headlines.[4] Hannah Elias, covered in lurid terms in the press, was one such stop, with the coach returning for a second trip, apparently at the request of the guests.
The "Seeing Yacht," for a fare of $1, gave a three-hour tour that circled "the island of Manhatton, showing the Statue of Liberty, Blackwell's island [now [[Roosevelt Island]]], Jersey City, Brooklyn, Harlem, Bronx, the navy yard, the ocean liners and the wharves, with their commerce and extensive shipping interests."[5]