The Spectacle of Downtown Broadway

The Spectacle of Downtown Broadway

This illustrated essay shows different street views of New York in the 1850s--many taken from Harper's Weekly--including views of Broadway (which appears in Lydia Maria Child and George Foster's work). Friedman-Stadtler also discusses the import of these images in fascinating ways, which put all the images published during this time into an interesting context. For example, did you know that there were 40,000 horses in NYC at this time? They produced 400 tons of waste each day--making walking on the streets rather, uh, odiferous and probably quite unpleasant.

The essay is part of a collection of essays published by the Bard Graduate Center as "Visualizing 19th-Century New York," which allows you to select areas on a map as well as to narrow your search by historical period and topic. For example, here's an essay on oyster saloons (Morris Townsend & Mrs. Penniman meet in one in Washington Square): http://visualizingnyc.org/essays/the-mighty-mollusk-oyster-consumption-among-the-two-great-classes-of-society/

Zahava Friedman-Stadtler

"The Spectacle of Downtown Broadway." Visualizing 19th-Century New York. Bard Graduate Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. visualizingnyc.org

Bard Graduate Center

1850s-1890s

Jean Lee Cole

1850s, 1890s

http://visualizingnyc.org/essays/the-spectacle-of-downtown-broadway/