Straight Dope Staff Report: Has anybody really 'sold' the Brooklyn Bridge?

A Staff Report by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

Has anybody really "sold" the Brooklyn Bridge?

14-Jun-2007

Dear Straight Dope:

Is there any truth to those old stories about unscrupulous New York baddies attempting to "sell" the Brooklyn Bridge to hapless tourists and/or newly arrived immigrants? Where'd that come from? And did anyone really want their own bridge? Smells fishy to me. But then again, so does the Brooklyn Bridge from time to time. —Nick Harp, Ann Arbor, Michigan

SDSTAFF Gfactor replies:

It depends who you ask, Nick. On the one hand, the New York Times "F.Y.I." columnist, Ed Boland Jr., says a Times article from 1920 claimed it was already an old joke. That seems indisputable. Word sleuth Barry Popik has turned up this 1914 quote from the Lincoln, Nebraska Daily Star:

A St. Louis man has bought part of a bridge across the Mississippi. We can't help wondering if this is the same westerner who used to buy the Brooklyn bridge every season.

Then again, Times stories from 1928 credited two different men with having actually "sold" the bridge. The first was William McCloundy, a veteran New Jersey confidence man who had just been jailed on a larceny charge. Popik quotes the article:

According to detectives who extradited McCloundy on Friday night, he sold the Brooklyn bridge in 1901, for which he was convicted of grand larceny and served two and a half years in Sing Sing.

The second perp was con man and forger George C. Parker, who had just gotten a life sentence:

His early exploits are said to have included the "sale" of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Both these assertions are hearsay about professional BSers and involved events that had taken place long before. Still, the idea isn't as crazy as you might think. The stock in the bridge was originally privately held, and Brooklyn and New York didn't acquire all of it till 1875.

In a 2005 Times article called "For You, Half Price," Gabriel Cohen musters the evidence, most of it based on second hand accounts. He cites the Parker and McCloundy stories plus a book called Hustlers and Con Men: An Anecdotal History of the Confidence Man and His Games (1976) by crime writer Jay Robert Nash. Nash says many swindlers sold the bridge. According to Cohen:

By all accounts, the bulk of the suckers were greenhorns, fresh off the boat. Swindlers used to approach the stewards of international vessels docked at Ellis Island and pay them for information about passengers who might have money and be interested in buying property. "They didn't understand the country," Mr. Nash said of this population. "They didn't understand the law. But they understood that this was supposed to be the land of opportunity."

Scholars remain skeptical, though. Historian David McCullough, in an interview with Michael Pollak of the Times, said that nobody really knows where the story comes from. Richard Haw, in The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History (2005) says it's a myth.

References

Boland, Ed, Jr., "Bridge for Sale," New York Times, October 27, 2002: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E3DC113CF934A15753C1A9649C8B63&fta=y

Cohen, Gabriel, "For You, Half Price": New York Times, November 27, 2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/thecity/27brid.html?ex=1290747600&en=d5b19f580f176c64&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Haw, Richard, The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History (2005)

Popik, Barry, "Buy/Sell the Brooklyn Bridge," barrypopik.com, July 13, 2004:
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/buy_sell_the_brooklyn_bridge/

Pollak, Michael, "Brooklyn Bridge Online (No, Not on eBay)," New York Times on the Web, June 1, 2000: http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/bbridge/bbnyt060100.htm

—SDSTAFF Gfactor
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

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Staff Reports are researched and written by members of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, Cecil's online auxiliary. Although the SDSAB does its best, these articles are edited by Ed Zotti, not Cecil, so accuracywise you'd better keep your fingers crossed.

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