A Walk Through 1840's New York City

 

This 2.5-hour walking tour meets on the steps of the Public Theater in Astor Place, across from Colonnade Row and what was the highest end residential block in the country in the 1830s, the resides of Astors, Delanos and Roosevelts. We end at the Civic Center, and the old Five Points neighborhood of "Gangs of New York" fame, the most notorious slum in New York City's history.

And going from the upper class residential precinct of today's Astor Place to the miserable wretchedness of the Five Points was a top request of tourists in the 1830s, 40s and 50s. And that walk would take them straight through the city center of that day, when the finest shops, theaters, and hotels were arranged along this part of Broadway when it was a historical tether between these most estranged locales.