Thursday, October 1, 2026
Long Beach resident Joel Greenberg will be partnering with the Allegria Hotel on a series of free walking tours of the city.
There will be two weekly tours. One, on Sundays, from 10 a.m. to noon, will highlight points of interest west of the hotel — which is at 80 W. Broadway — and on Wednesdays, another 10-to-noon tour will head east. They will begin this Sunday, and continue weekly until mid-October.
Greenberg, an attorney at Rivkin-Radler, in Uniondale, grew up in East Rockaway and Hewlett. He has lived in Long Beach since 2022, and was a resident of Atlantic Beach for 13 years before that. Over the years he has come to have a deep appreciation for the “City by the Sea,” and through his love of photography, he has explored “just about every inch” of Long Beach, he said, which helped inform his selection of locations for the tours. He felt it was time to help develop more eco-tourism on the barrier island.
“We have the fishing and marine life, but other things are left unrepresented,” Greenberg said in explaining why he is organizing the tours. “People have no knowledge of what we have here.”
The primarily educational walks will feature destinations that are central to Long Beach culture, including historic mansions in the Red Brick District, a former speakeasy during the Prohibition, a pedestrian walkway to the vibrant West End of town, houses of worship, and the city’s commercial district. There will also be stops at the Long Beach Holocaust Memorial, the Sept. 11 and Hurricane Sandy memorials, as well as the Long Beach Historical Society.
Greenberg highlighted the history behind some of the stops along the tours, with associations as diverse as the Great Depression and women’s suffrage. One of the stops is the Long Beach Post Office, where a commissioned mural from the Works Progress Administration hangs. “Pleasures of the Bathing Beach,” by the Italian-born New Deal artist John Corbino, is one of many paintings commissioned during the Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
“I feel like there is a lot of history here,” Greenberg said of the mural and other local historical landmarks.
The tours, which will highlight not just the history of the city, but also its culture and heritage, will be suitable for everyone, including families with school-age children. Participants are encouraged to wear comfortable walking shoes, as well as a hat and sunscreen if suitable for the weather, and to carry water. Restrooms will be available along the way.
The excursions, Greenberg said, will also highlight Long Beach’s natural beauty and vibrant wildlife.
Viewing the palatial homes and former hotels that helped establish the city as the place to be in the early 1900s, tour participants will see for themselves what made people from Manhattan want to travel 25 miles east.
Greenberg will also offer tour participants the opportunity to make cash donations that will be divided between two civic-minded institutions, the Long Beach Soup Kitchen and the Kiwanis Club. The soup kitchen is a nonprofit that has served over 20,000 meals since it opened in 1983. David Blau, its president, said he would welcome donations by tour-takers.
”Every donation, no matter how big, can help tremendously,” Blau said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s five dollars — that’s five more dollars than yesterday.”
The Kiwanis Club of Long Beach is also a nonprofit, focused on helping local children “one need at a time” — sending some kids to summer camps, helping guidance counselors in the school district and offering supplies to struggling parents. The club extends its efforts to families in Point Lookout and Atlantic Beach as well.
“Everything goes back to the children in our community,” Kiwanis President MariAnne Raisig said of donations. “They are how we survive.”
The tours are limited to the first 20 guests who register by calling the front desk of the Allegria Hotel, at (516) 922-3711.
For more information on donations to the Long Beach Soup Kitchen or the Kiwanis Club of Long Beach, go to LongBeachSouplitchen.com or KiwanisClublb.org.
