William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[2] in 1828, lots from two to six miles distant from the City Hall were valued at from only $60 to $700 each, more than one writer of the day was ready to concede that, owing to advantages of cheaper land on the opposite shores of Long Island and New Jersey, newcomers were likely to settle there before the city could count on a larger growth. We get an idea of the rural condition of the city in the announcement that the post-office (in Exchange Place) was open only from 9 A. M. to sunset; that the “elegant [dry goods] emporium” of Peabody & Co. occupied a frontage of two windows under the American Hotel, at the northwest corner of Broadway and Barclay Street, the residences of Phillip Hone and another prominent citizen being situated in the same block, and that Greenwich Village had not yet lost its character as a summer resort; and, five years later, the New Yorker, in an article setting forth the growth of the city, said, “Her streets, lacking more direct appliances, have been sun-dried and rain-washed till they are passably, if hardly, respectable.”

This was the city on one of whose wharves an Albany boat landed Horace Greeley one summer morning. His equipment for a struggle for a living among entire strangers he