Man-bats on the moon! The oldest woman who ever lived! The grandest hotel in New York! In 1835, these are a few of the top stories you might have heard shouted in the streets of Manhattan. As the city’s penny papers went to war, the country’s biggest showman staged his first spectacle and America’s richest man took on a new venture. On our new walking tour, Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Hotels of Newspaper Row, join James Scully, tour guide and director/co-creator of the award-winning audio drama Burning Gotham, to explore the most sensational headlines of the time at the sites where they were printed and where they happened!
From their headquarters in Lower Manhattan, New York City’s “penny papers,” The New York Sun and The New York Morning Herald, stoked fears of cholera, fire, and immigration as they battle for readership. The upstate Morning Herald’s founder James Gordon Bennett Sr. was caustic, shrewd, and stopped at nothing to put The Sun out of business. In August 1835, their battle leads to a fire which burns down Bennett’s office, just as The Sun begins to publish the greatest literary hoax of the nineteenth century, fooling both layman and scholar: The Sun claims intelligent life exists on the Moon just as Halley’s Comet is about to fly overhead.
Image via Library of Congress
Even as he calls the hoax remarkable, Phineas T. Barnum is orchestrating one of his own. Barnum is set to display a woman named Joice Heth, who claims to be George Washington’s one-hundred-sixty-one year-old nursemaid. Their ensuing relationship will change the trajectory of Barnum’s life. Remarkable indeed.
In the Spring of 1835 John Jacob Astor divested himself completely from his fur company to sink his fortune into building the finest hotel in the United States, constructed on the north side of Vesey Street and Broadway. Astor was simultaneously buying up as much Manhattan real estate as possible.
Join Untapped New York as we explore the City Hall area uncover the remaining sights, sounds, and smells from 1835 New York City, with a close look at how a single year forever changed history! Be the first to experience this new tour as an Untapped New York Insider on August 17th: Insiders book here!
