Old Time Tours - 19th Century NYC Guidebooks: 1840-1870

Below are some sample titles from the decades when Irish and German immigration boomed; NYC had two police squads; the funeral of "Butcher" Bill Poole drew a gargantuan crowd that surpassed the funeral of President Andrew Jackson; and William "Boss" Tweed met with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in Washington, D.C. to assure the Lincoln administration that Tammany Hall would peacefully implement a new military conscription in New York after the deadly 1864 Draft Riots.  

• 1850 The Great Metropolis, or New-York Almanac.  Good list of newspapers, and a thorough section on all the modes of mass transit in and out of Manhattan.  Editions also published in the 1840s.
• 1850 New York By Gaslight. A tour of the city at the midnight hour.
• 1851 The Towns of Manhattan. Unpublished manuscript by James Fenimore Cooper.
• 1852 Glimpses of New-York City.  Authored by Bobo, "a South Carolinian (who had nothing else to do)."
• 1853 The Citizen & Strangers' Pictorial & Business Directory. Author Solyman Brown was an outspoken abolitionist minister at New Jerusalem Church on Astor Place.
• 1853 New-York in a Nutshell. Author Frederick Saunders lived into his nineties and was a man of letters on a multitude of jaunty subjects.
• 1853 The Lions of New York / Phelps.
• 1858 Nelson’s Guide to the City of New York.
• 1859 The New-York Sketch Book, and Merchants' Guide / Gobright.
• 1860 The Union Sketch-Book: a reliable guide, exhibiting the history…/ Gobright.
• 1865 Walks About New York / Jackson.
• 1866 Lloyd's Pocket Companion
• 1868 The Secrets of the Great City. Edward Winslow Martin.