Pearl Street, between Franklin Square & Oak Street, 1835

NYPL ID number: 809860

A. Weingartner's Lithography

1859

Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Academy of Music

In the early 1850s, a group of New York merchants decided to build an new opera hall to replace the old Astor House. Opened in 1854, it was the largest opera hall in the world containing 4,000 seats. Rather than promote exclusiveness, its creators offered inexpensive seating to attract a large general audience. In this, they were so successful that prostitutes flocked to perfomances.

NYPL ID number: 809597

n.d.

Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

No. 86 North Moore Street

After living in the Five Points area for many years, in 1847 James McCune Smith moved to North Moore Street in St. John's Park. This neighborhood had once been home to the city's white elite before their move farther north above Bleecker Street.

George Hayward

NYPL ID number: 805408

1865

Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Niblo's Garden, Corner of Broadway and Prince Street, 1828; Niblo's Garden and Theaetre, 1845

Established in 1828, Niblo's was the city's premiere "pleasure garden," suprassing all others in its exclusiveness, expensive entrance food, fancy food and cosmopolitan entertainment.

NYPL ID number: EM11615

1828 and 1845

Emmet Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs,The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

John Jacob Astor

The son of a butcher from a small town in southern Germany, Astor emigrated to the United States in 1784, married into a Knickerbocker family, and began business in the fur trade. In the mid-1790s, he turned to the China trade, shipping out otter, beaver, and fox skins and bringing back tea, silk and porcelain. Ten years later, he was building his own ships and was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.

Alonzo Chappell

NYPL ID number: 1101660

1864

Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations