If we went back to New York City in the 1860s, and we were trying to travel up Broadway,

what would that experience have been like?

The crowds, the congestion, are really impossible for us to comprehend.

Of course, there were no traffic control devices of any kind.

There are no stop signs, there are no traffic lights, there are no marked crosswalks.

We're really still figuring out whether we're even

going to drive on the right or the left at the time. So the streets are crowded with every

possible form of wagon. There are people riding in Hackneys, which were basically taxicabs

that were horse-drawn carriages. There are people just riding horseback. And there are people selling everything.

There are vendors everywhere. They're selling oysters, pickled eggs, yesterday's leftover

baked goods that they got from the bakery. So much traffic moving back and forth without any

control whatsoever, literally crossing the street on

Broadway. Sometimes it would take 15 or 20 minutes for someone to be able to negotiate, getting

across the street. It was really just an unbelievable mass of people, of confusion, of wagons and horses.

And we don't even need to get into the horse poop,

but the condition of the...

I think we do.

We do.

I'm happy to do it.

The condition of the streets themselves was so gross.

They're unpaved. They're dusty, very, very dusty when dry, very muddy when wet, and just covered with horse poop and horse pee. So it was something people took into account when they went out for the night. What will be our route? What will be the least filthy way to get to the theater?

But at least one man in New York City was fed up with wading through oceans of horse pee to get to the theater.

...