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On a recent Saturday morning, about 230 people crisscrossed Lower Manhattan on a hunt for old places — spots that were, in some cases, 250 years or older. Groups of friends, families and solo hunters, many of them readers of The New York Times, followed clues that led them from one historical site to the next.
They were on a scavenger-hunt-like quest, organized by journalists.
The free event, an interactive walking tour called “Search for the Past,” was tied to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Starting in March, about a dozen Times journalists from the Metro desk, Special Projects team and News Design planned an itinerary that guided participants to six spots with ties to the city’s history and its role in the American Revolution.
“We wanted to show how the New York of 250 years ago is still visible today,” said Eden Weingart, a visual editor at The Times.
Everyone who signed up for the event received an email the day before with one of six starting clues. Each led to one of the sites, which were scattered around some of the oldest neighborhoods in New York City.
Attendees were checked in at each station by a group of volunteers from The Times before moving on to the next site.
The clues, such as “This living being has breathed the New York air for an estimated 300 years,” are now published online. So is an article by Anna Kodé, a reporter for the Metro desk who led the project, exploring the history of the sites. The idea, Ms. Kodé said, was that readers could take the tour for themselves at any time.
“If it can inspire them to be a little bit more curious on their daily commute or walk, that’s the ultimate goal,” she said.
New York City offered a lot of locations to choose from. It’s not every city, after all, where the newly signed Declaration of Independence was read aloud to the public and a 300-year-old English elm tree “witnessed” the American Revolution. But the team wanted to home in on spots whose history had parallels to present-day events, Ms. Kodé said, as well as ensure they included a mix of familiar and lesser-known places.
“I wanted sites with a range of histories,” said Ms. Kodé, who frequently writes about New York City history and landmarks. “Lenape history, Black history, New York City’s role in the Revolution.”
The Times also designed the experience to be completed by foot or by transit, to be accessible for people in wheelchairs and to have plenty of shade (and bathrooms).
After she landed on the six places, Ms. Kodé wrote the clues, drawing from sources like maps, newspaper articles and preservation and landmark designation reports. It was often challenging, she said, to locate authoritative information. Some sites, like the African Burial Ground National Monument, received their historical designation hundreds of years after their creation.
“It can be a challenge to identify specific details when you’re writing about history from the 1600s and 1700s,” said Amanda Holpuch, the lead editor for the article and tour materials. “We’re very open in the piece about what is contested or not definitive,” she added.
Ms. Kodé visited each of the sites and talked to borough historians, urban foresters and museum directors.
“I wanted to not only tell the history of each site, but to tie it to the present,” she said.
An 18th-century fence at Bowling Green, for instance, once surrounded a statue of King George III that patriots tore down in 1776 after hearing the Declaration of Independence read aloud.
“There’s a strong parallel to Confederate monuments being taken down in more recent years,” Ms. Kodé said.
At each site, participants collected a custom postcard designed by Ms. Weingart, with an image of the location on the front and reporting from Ms. Kodé’s article on the back. Ms. Weingart also designed envelopes for the event, with boxes for six unique location stamps.
The participants, who ranged from a New York City tour guide with several decades of experience to newcomers to the city who had arrived mere weeks before, said they enjoyed discovering sites they would not otherwise have come across.
“It’s a city that everyone in the world knows, but you don’t get a sense of the history,” said Paula Gondim, a marketer who recently moved to New York City, as she arrived at the remnants of the 17th-century Lovelace Tavern, which once served as New York’s city hall and is now visible beneath a glass window in the sidewalk at 85 Broad Street.
Ms. Gondim said the event had made her more curious about her new neighborhood, Chelsea.
“I’ll definitely have to explore more,” she said.
For the Times journalists who planned the event, that spirit was the goal. They hope to organize more of these kinds of events in the future, Ms. Weingart said, with the aim of helping people engage more deeply both with Times journalism and the places that surround them, beyond the reach of their phone screens.
“It’s fun to get out and actually do something,” Ms. Weingart said.
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