Sag Harbor Partnership Launches Walking Tour App

The launch of a Sag Harbor Walking Tours app will give visitors a new way to connect to the community—with multiple tours through different time periods that provide a window into what the village once was like.The free application, which is available on Androids, iPhones and other Apple devices, offers a literary tour, which will guide users to the homes of authors from as far back as the 1700s; a tour of the Eastville community, which will teach visitors about its distinct culture; a tour of the historic whaling port hosted by the Sag Harbor Historical Society; a tour of the village’s cultural district, featuring nine destinations; a tour of historic buildings featuring old photographs and postcards; and a kids’ tour, where children are invited to take a photo at each location they visit and can receive a prize at their final destination.

The app is meant to be an interactive experience for all, said Nick Gazzolo, the mind behind the app and a board member of Sag Harbor Partnership, the civic organization formerly called Serve Sag Harbor.

Sag Harbor is an “outdoor museum,” Mr. Gazzolo said when explaining how the idea came to him. “It would be great if you could just walk around and someone could tell you what you are looking at.

“There is an opportunity here for us to begin to aggregate all of this Sag Harbor history and perspective,” he continued. First-time visitors in particular may not be familiar with Sag Harbor’s history, he said, adding that “one of the pleasures of working on this has been discovering a number of things that I don’t know.”

The makers of the app have coordinated with groups like the Eastville Community Historical Society and the Sag Harbor Historical Society in order to use some of the information they use in their own walking tours. “The thing I am happiest about is all the organizations we have reached out to have been enthusiastic to using their content,” Mr. Gazzolo said.

April Gornik, a local artist and also a Sag Harbor Partnership board member, designed the trademark logo for the app—a whale, similar to one in a watercolor painting she had previously painted—and many of the individual picture icons and text for the individual tours. She said the project has been really fun, albeit time-consuming. She has been working steadily on it for a month and a half.

“The idea is basically to get people to go past Main Street to see some of the great little side things,” Ms. Gornik said. The tour of the Cultural District, especially, emphasizes this goal as it leads visitors past Bay Street intersection up to the Whaling Museum, to the Old Whalers’ Church, and beyond.

Although the app was just launched, there are already plans to add more tours because of the overwhelmingly positive feedback—visitors and residents alike can expect a Sag Harbor Wartime Veterans tour coming soon.

“We wanted to make this connection between high tech and history, and put as many of our stories into people’s pockets and hands,” Mr. Gazzolo said.