I was born in New York City and grew-up here in the 1960s and 70s. I’ve been in the city for most of my life except for about 15 years.

When I returned to NYC in about 2007, I started exploring the city by bike and visiting many neighborhoods I had mostly not visited when I was younger. Some of my favorite bike rides were to Jamaica Bay, City Island and Orchard Beach, the the Old Croton Aqueduct trail, crossing every bridge over the Harlem River (except the Hamilton Bridge - it’s just for cars), crossing the Bayonne bridge years before the elevation of the roadway and my unsuccessful bike trip to the Conference House in Tottenville at the southern tip of Staten Island.

A week or two later I ditched my bike and took the the Staten Island ferry to St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island, hopped on the Staten Island train to the last stop in Tottenville and finally visited the historic Conference House. It’s here on September 11, 1776 (225 years to the day before 9/11) where a diplomatic effort took place to resolve the American Revolutionary War - it wasn’t successful.

(I visited Tottenville again in early October 2024 (via ferry and Staten Island Railway) so I could see the Living Breakwaters project from the shoreline. Living Breakwaters is a nature-based solution built to contend with more frequent and stronger storm surges which are anticipated to strike this southern tip of the borough over the years and decades to come. I include pictures of this project in my Photo Guide to Climate Change in New York City that you can download for free.)

After exploring the far corners of the city by bike, I became an NYC tour guide and have been conducting architecture and history walking and boat tours for about 17 years.

I especially like being on the waterways of the city. I’ve conducted about 700 architecture boat tours around the island of Manhattan for AIA NY and Classic Harbor Line. And two years ago I developed the content for and narrate the AIA New York Climate Change and Architecture boat Tours.

It was this initial foray into climate change education that led me to develop my climate change ebook. At first I only had a vague notion of what I hoped to accomplish. I just wanted to explore and take pictures of resiliency efforts like the under-construction East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project. Then I figured I might as well create some type of photo guide that covered sites related to adaptation and mitigation that you could see from the waterways as you wrap around Manhattan. Then I further expanded my gameplan to shoreline sites throughout the city. Then sprawling further beyond my initial conception, I figured I’d cover inland developments as well. The end result is the wide ranging photo guide I just published.

Doug’s Background

Doug is an educator and tour guide. He graduated from Vassar College in 1984 with a B.A in history. He has conducted walking and boat tours for 17 years.

Credentials:

• Licensed NYC Tour Guide

• Master Captain - Merchant Mariner Credential

• LEED Green Associate - US Green Building Council

• WEDGE Associate - Waterfront Alliance