Can't take the city out of these folks

BOSTON -- When Jan Engelman left Boston for Malden in the late 1980s, she didn't leave it behind.

Engelman, a software engineer who used to live in Dorchester and work in the Back Bay, began volunteering for Boston by Foot, a nonprofit organization now in its 29th year of offering walking tours of Boston.

''I got involved with Boston by Foot when I stopped living in the city and stopped working in the city," Engelman said. ''I've always loved the city, and I needed a connection. I needed a reason to go back in."

Like Engelman, most of the approximately 200 people who give tours for Boston by Foot don't live in Boston. For them, the city isn't home, but it is a passion.

Lynn resident Malvina Goldin struggled through a language barrier to become a guide. Goldin, who arrived in the Boston area from Moscow in 1992, has been giving tours for Boston by Foot since 1999.

She occasionally gives tours of the Freedom Trail in Russian, connecting the history of Boston with American history, particularly the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, such as the Boston Massacre. She dreams of organizing a group of Boston-area residents who speak Russian to give tours.

''I like to share my excitement about the city," Goldin said.

Judy Glock, a Marblehead resident who sells advertising for Yankee Publishing, gives tours of the North End, not far from her office on Union Street in Boston. She joined Boston by Foot in 2001, only about two and a half years after moving to the area.

''I was fairly new to Boston, and just fell in love with the city, its history, and its beauty, and I just wanted to show it off," Glock said.

Boston by Foot is the creation of Polly Flansburgh, who got the idea in 1976 from a woman who gave comparable tours of Chicago. There were few organized tours of Boston at the time, before the age of duck boats, trolleys, and tour buses.

Flansburgh, a Lincoln resident, developed a tour-guide course based on lectures from experts, books on Boston history and architecture, and actual tours.

Today the organization offers regularly scheduled 90-minute tours, May through October, of Beacon Hill, the North End, Victorian Back Bay, Literary landmarks, Boston underground, and the heart of the Freedom Trail, along with a Freedom Trail tour designed for children. There are also specialized tours-of-the-month developed by guides.

About 10,000 people a year take the tours, most of which cost about $10. Revenues cover expenses, which run about $100,000 a year and include advertising and printing promotional materials.

The training is rigorous, bordering on intense. Guides-in-training attend five-hour sessions on five consecutive Saturdays during the spring. The sessions include a two-hour lecture by an expert on some facet of Boston's history and buildings, followed by small discussion groups and then a 90-minute training tour.

Students must complete four papers during the course, which culminates with a two-part final exam: a written test featuring slides of buildings followed by a tour test, during which each student is picked to give a short presentation from memory on a particular building.

And volunteering costs money: guides-in-training pay $95 for the course, not including materials.

They're not done once they pass, either. To keep their standing, each guide must give at least six tours a year.

The training, while hard, ensures a certain standard of knowledge.

Rob Radloff, chairman of the Boston Foundation for Architecture, a nonprofit organization that supports Boston by Foot with grants, said the guides provide valuable information about the city's buildings.

''It's a well-thought-through explanation of the architecture, but in understandable layman's terms," Radloff said. ''They really spend time to get the message right."

While the course requires a fair amount of reading, many of the veteran tour guides do far more on their own.

Glock, for instance, who estimates she gives 25 to 40 tours a year, has read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, who defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. At her home last week, a book about Paul Revere sat next to an issue of People magazine.

Engelman finds that people who take walking tours tend to take them seriously, and appreciate the guides' knowledge and preparation. She usually gets good responses, which she finds energizing.

''You find people who are by and large interested in what you're interested in," she said, ''and they're by and large in a good mood."