{"id":361358,"date":"2026-10-01T00:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361358\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T00:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:58:10","slug":"most-nyc-tourists-see-the-statue-of-liberty-this-new-walking-tour-shows-the-women-history-forgot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361358\/","title":{"rendered":"Most NYC tourists see the Statue of Liberty\u2014this new walking tour shows the women history forgot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask any New Yorker about Fanny Fern<\/a>, and you’ll likely get a blank stare. Yet Fern was a writer and reform journalist who became the first salaried female newspaper columnist in the United States. She influenced culture irreversibly, even if history doesn’t acknowledge it.<\/p>\n

So, too, did Mabel Ping-Hua Lee<\/a>, who at just 16 years old led New York City’s Suffragette parade down Fifth Avenue on horseback in 1912, only to be barred from voting herself when women won that right in 1918 because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in 1921, reportedly the first Chinese-American woman to do so, and spent her life fighting for equality. Evidence suggests she never got to vote.<\/p>\n

In a city named after the nation’s Rockefellers, Carnegies and Columbuses, the stories of New York’s founding women have been all but erased, far too quiet for far too long. A new walking tour called She Was Here<\/a> is out to fix that. The interactive, walkable history lesson goes well beyond your typical sightseeing experience and is part of a global mission to uncover the stories of extraordinary women who defined history.<\/p>\n

Deepening your knowledge of tourist stops<\/p>\n

She Was Here resulted after a successful pop-up collaboration with She Shapes History<\/a>, a company born out of what founder Sita Sargeant describes as “immense frustration at the lack of respect and recognition for women’s contributions” in Sargeant’s home of Canberra, Australia.<\/p>\n

“I started running a weekly walking tour, had no idea people would even show up, and it just grew and grew from there,” she recently told me over video chat. She Shapes History now operates tours in four Australian cities: Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Wollongong.<\/p>\n

She Was Here is now its own company run by Santos and Padilla. It takes visitors through the history of Grand Central Terminal, Bryant Park, the New York Public Library, Times Square, Rockefeller Center and Central Park, all while sharing the stories of the women to whom we can give credit for such iconic places and events.<\/p>\n

\"Beth<\/p>\n

Beth Santos, left, and Nikki Padilla Rivera laugh together along the East River waterfront with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background in New York City.<\/p>\n

(She Shapes History\/Wanderful)<\/p>\n

“This tour is like no other walking tour you’ve been on before,” explains Beth Santos, founder of global travel network Wanderful<\/a>, which collaborated with She Shapes History to bring the first pop-up feminist walking tours to New York in March ’26 for Women’s History Month.<\/p>\n

Santos told me in an email that the experience with She Was Here will continue to be interactive and engaging: “We ask our guests to read quotes, share stories from their own lives (to whatever level they feel comfortable), and join us in questioning the history we’ve been given, and most importantly, the history that’s missing.”<\/p>\n

She says she and her NYC tour co-founder Nikki Padilla Rivera aim to engage guests in the mission by encouraging them to consider at each tour stop what shaped a place and, just as importantly, what stories might have been left out.<\/p>\n

“These are really important questions,” Santos said.<\/p>\n

\"Nikki<\/p>\n

Nikki Padilla Rivera, left, and Beth Santos walk outside McNally Jackson bookstore in New York City while wearing “She Shapes History” T-shirts.<\/p>\n

(She Shapes History\/Wanderful)Plan your visit<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, well-behaved women don’t make history. But the badass ones do. It’s time we learned their names. Sure, we have the Statue of Liberty, arguably New York’s most famous woman. But she’s symbolic. What’s missing from NYC’s narrative are the real women behind the city’s rise, the activists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries whose names have been forgotten or left out of the history books entirely. The She Was Here<\/a> walking tour brings their stories to life with a memorable experience that invites guests to connect personally with these extraordinary histories<\/p>\n

What to expect: History class, but cooler: A 1.5-hour guided walking tour through Midtown Manhattan, starting at Grand Central Terminal and ending near Central Park. Learn about women’s contributions to NYC history in a small group setting (16-person max) with friendly guides who know how to captivate visitors through story and discussion. See the city through fresh eyes, and go home with stories that continue a legacy.<\/p>\n

More information: Visit the She Was Here website<\/a> and read Wanderful’s profile in Going Places<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that Nikki Padilla Rivera is a co-founder of Wanderful, but Beth Santos is the sole founder of Wanderful<\/a>. Nikki Padilla Rivera and Beth Santos are co-founders of She Was Here.<\/p>\n

How this was made: AI tools assisted with this story’s structure, formatting, transcription and metadata. Reporting, product testing, ideation, research, relationship-building, interviews, source-finding, fact-checking and actual writing are always conducted and overseen by Megan DeMatteo, an independent creator, editor and media consultant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ask any New Yorker about Fanny Fern, and you’ll likely get a blank stare. Yet Fern was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[134264,134263,134266,9,24,24621,56,63,65,64,134265,18978],"class_list":["post-361358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-beth-santos","tag-extraordinary-women","tag-mabel-ping-hua-lee","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-public-library","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-padilla-rivera","tag-walking-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}