Tour Guiding

To inquire about scheduling and rates for a customized walking tour of some section of Washington D.C. or another locale for your organization or group, please contact me at lukenathanphillips2012@gmail.com .

I have conducted tours for various touring and civic groups, including Mejdi Tours, Honoring Veteran Legacies, the American Conservation Coalition, the Hertog Foundation, the Rumi Forum, and more.

DC Custom Tour Guiding

I give walking tours of several areas of Washington D.C. These tours typically run between 90 minutes and three hours, adjustable for your group’s needs. The themes of these tours range from \American political history and its representation in D.C.’s public buildings and monuments, local landscape, architectural, environmental, and urban history regarding the same areas, to biographies of the many Americans commemorated in these memorials and monuments and buildings, and the relevance of all these themes to the broader American national story, up to and including the themes of our present time.

I specialize most in the history of American political conflict and reconciliation, including contemporary polarization between conservatives and liberals; general American intellectual history and the development of new understandings of the American character and identity across the decades and centuries; and intensive biographical meditations on individuals memorialized, with special emphasis on their lives and legacies for citizenship and leadership.

Some examples of niche walking tours I have developed in Washington D.C. include:

Cabinet Secretaries, Presidential Counselors, and the Bipartisan Public Service Tradition in American Politics (White House area to Federal Triangle)

The Roosevelts in Washington (DuPont Circle area to White House area) (auto tour expansion including Tidal Basin and GW Memorial Parkway)

Japan, America, and the Cherry Blossoms (Tidal Basin)

While my main focus is in one-off DC walking tours, I also do some work in hybrid walking/auto tours, full-day and multi-day DC walking tours, and tour guide work in other locales.

Journey Through Hallowed Ground

I developed and operate the tour program for Journey Through Hallowed Ground, the nonprofit stewarding the National Park Service unit Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area.

These are historical, conservation, and civic tours of the various JTHG NHA and related sites, including but not limited to Gettysburg, Antietam, Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Harper’s Ferry Battlefields, Mount Vernon, Montpelier, Monticello, and other historic homes, and Shenandoah National Park.

These are organized upon request for groups of all types.