Recreate the Most Popular Walking Tour of 1840s NYC

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.

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St, New York City, NY 10003-7021

We start across from Astor Place and the ruins of the most elite residential homes in the country in the 1830s. We'll spend a few minutes laying the groundwork for the tour.

Duration: 15 minutes

Pass By: Astor Place, Astor Pl, New York City, NY 10003

The area where we begin the tour is among the most historic intersections of American roadways, where Broadway and the Bowery come together isn't Union Square (whence its name), but here, 6 blocks to the south, where ancient Native American paths and the Manhattan grid meet.

Stop At: 599 Broadway, New York City, NY 10012-3235

The main part of this tour is a walk down Broadway from Astor Place to Canal Street (and the old Five Points neighborhood). This part of Broadway in Manhattan is without doubt the most rich and historically complex part of the city, the neighborhood we call SoHo today.

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Stop At: Bayard–Condict Building, 65 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012, USA

We stop to appreciate Louis Sullivan's only building in the city, and it's a hidden gem of the first breaks with the classica tradition.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Foley Square, 111 Worth St Apt 4G, New York City, NY 10013-4017

Today's Civic Center was a lake, the shore of which had been the African Burial Ground during the British colonial era. The lake would be filled in and become the Five Points.

Duration: 5 minutes

Stop At: Columbus Park, 67 Mulberry St Baxter St, New York City, NY 10013-4331

The tour ends exactly where the streets crossed that made the five points, and the location of the old brewery (said to have housed a thousand people by the 1830s and that there was a murder a day for 15 years). It is also the corner of Columbus Park, which had been Mulberry Bend, a later slum when the area was Italian, but essentially the same place. A place that for the better part of 60 years New York City's most notorious slum.

Duration: 5 minutes

Pass By: Manhattan Unlocked Historical and Architectural Walking Tours, Times square New York, New York, New York City, NY 10036

Manhattan Unlocked Tours lets the architectural makeup of the streetscapes tell the history of New York City.