THEN: Nassau Street was the epicenter of Publisher Row in 1840s NYC, an era of forward-thinking literature and sociopolitical change sparked by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. Gowan’s Antiquarian Bookstore was their drop-by for stimulating conversation and occasional mud-slinging when they disagreed.

Newspaper offices for The Sun, Broadway Journal, Sunday Times and Weekly Newspaper, Evening Mirror and The Weekly Mirror, and many others lined Nassau Street. Moonlighting writers scribbled late into the night to supplement their small incomes ($20 a poem or article). Some became famous overnight, like Poe with his “The Raven.”