‘Tour Named Jackie’ Is Hit With New York City Visitors

“Now this,” said the tour guide, pointing out a New York City supermarket, “is where Jackie gets her groceries.”

The group of four, who paid $10 each to learn such tidbits about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, listen with rapt attention.

“A Tour Named Jackie” is in full swing.

Over the next two hours, tour patrons get a chance to see the former First Lady’s local bank, her church and the resale shop where she sells clothes she no longer needs.

“My wife got a brochure in the mail about this tour, so we figured, why not,” said Ernest Rosenfeld, a furniture leaser from Katonah, N. Y. “We wanted to try something different.”

Since it began last July, the walking tour has been a hit. Up to 70 people show up each week with tape recorders, video cameras and notebooks for a walk in Onassis’ footsteps on the Upper East Side, according to Sam Stafford, founder of Sidewalks of New York, which offers 15 different tours in the city.

The Jackie tour has been featured on German and Italian television, in a Brazilian newspaper and, most recently, on a CBS news report.

“People are fascinated with the lives of the rich and famous,” said Stafford, 35. “Jackie is the closest thing to American royalty”

He figures that about half of those who take the tour are foreigners. They all have something to say about Onassis.

“Some tell me, ‘We’ve loved Jackie for 25 years. She’s raised her children so well,’ ” Stafford said. Others are not so complimentary. “We get some real Jackie haters. They only want to hear the bad stuff about her.”

One of the tour’s highlights is the elegant Fifth Avenue co-op building where Onassis, 60, lives. As a doorman glares suspiciously, Stafford starts his spiel.

Onassis bought her 10-room apartment, which overlooks Central Park, in 1965 for $200,000. Its staff of four full-time servants are under strict orders not to speak with reporters.

“A few years ago, Jackie dismissed a cook who told the press that her dress size went from a size 8 to 10,” Stafford said.

The group moves on to the Carlyle Hotel. At Stafford’s direction they look up from the street to the penthouse suite where President John F. Kennedy, it was rumored, used to entertain beautiful women, among them actress Marilyn Monroe.

“I think she put up with a lot of baloney with Kennedy,” said Arline Rosenfeld. “Maybe it was a good thing she married Onassis.”

Since he started leading the tour, Stafford has yet to catch a glimpse of its publicity-shy subject. On a recent Saturday, though, one eagle-eyed member of his group spotted her daughter, Caroline, out walking with her husband, Edward Schlossberg, and their baby, Rose.