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Atlantic City’s coveted real estate properties of Boardwalk, Park Place, and Atlantic Ave featured in the classic MONOPOLY board
With peak foliage season soon approaching, it’s the perfect time to book a cruise up the Hudson River and
Dive into the most sensational headlines of 1830s NYC as we explore the remnants of Newspaper Row in Lower Manhattan!
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!
Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Hotels of Newspaper Row
If you are an Untapped New York Insiders, you can join us for a discounted preview tour on August 17th, before this tour debuts to the public on September 15th! Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free. Registration for this preview tour opens on August 3rd at 12pm ET.
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.
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!
Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Hotels of Newspaper Row
James Scully is an outgoing native New Yorker who grew up in a home with three generations of family. He had close relationships with both his grandparents and great-grandparents and was exposed to an invaluable amount of local culture. It has helped him become a passionate actor, writer, director, and historian. He’s a graduate of Xavier High School in Manhattan, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and has spent over a decade working in media for companies such as Condé Nast, and Hearst.
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