Short Stuff: Selling the Brooklyn Bridge

You've heard the phrase "If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you." But did you know it's based in truth?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
that's Chuck and we're flying solo today and that's okay
because we've got something to say. Mostly this is short stuff.
You really bailed on that one, didn't you. Uh. This
is about selling the Brooklyn Bridge, which I I think
I had heard that this was a thing in history

(00:25):
at some point, but big thanks to the New York Times,
How Stuff Works dot com and n y C Walks
dot com to bring it's the story of George C. Parker,
a man who sold the brook the Brooklyn Bledge many
times over, as well as some other notable New York
places you know yet see would be okay with mo Man,

(00:48):
oh man, He's gonna become a regular part of the show,
I think so. Yeah. George C. Parker was like a
con man extraordinaire, like this guy. Supposedly he at least
he claimed to have sold the Brooklyn Bridge multiple times
a week, every week for years. That's how good he was,
which is probably no, that is almost certainly not true.

(01:09):
But it is documented that he did sell successfully sell
the Brooklyn Bridge to a number of suckers over the years.
Like it wasn't just a one time thing just once
would have made a legion, but the fact that this
guy did it over and over again is really something. Yeah,
and apparently this used to be a thing, and not
just the Brooklyn Bridge. But you were in a situation
in the you know, sort of latest eighteen hundreds in

(01:33):
New York City where you had millions of immigrants coming
through uh Ellis Island who were hopeful. Many of them
were poor, but not all of them because you have
to have some money to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, although
sometimes they sold these things for like not very much money,
which is even sadder. Uh. So they were they were targets.

(01:56):
They were sort of greenhorn targets. And some of them
did have money though, and they would use I think
like um, I guess scouts or something. What would you
call that, someone to kind of like informant informants at
Ellis Island that could maybe be paid off to pass
along information like, Hey, this immigrant came in. They think

(02:19):
America is the land of opportunity. They're really excited and
they got a little cash in their pocket. Right. So
the whole jam was with Parker's Brooklyn Bridge scam was
he would find one of these people a well, healed
immigrant who just thought of America as the land of opportunity,
and um, I thought that this was a golden opportunity.

(02:39):
He would find them and show them, you know, some
sort of deed that said that he owned the Brooklyn
Bridge and he wanted to unload it, so he would
sell it to somebody and and just basically tell them like,
it's not just sown in the Brooklyn Bridge, which is
amazing enough. You can charge a toll and you could
make your money back in like a month and then
just get rich from air. And that was how apparently

(03:02):
he actually attracted people. Yeah, and all this stuff is
so it's very easy in two to say, well, why
didn't they say, well, why aren't you doing this? Weren't
you making this money? Why aren't there tolls and things
like that? And who knows the answer. I think it
was just a different time period. Um. As far as
tolls on the bridge, uh, they did used to charge

(03:25):
when it first opened. It cost a penny to cross
by to to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge by foot,
uh and nicol if you had a horse uh and
a rider ten cents for a horse and wagon and
then uh extra money for farm animals if you were,
you know, toting your farm animals, which is very funny
to think about now, Uh, across across the brick, it's

(03:48):
pretty funny. So there was there was at least a
history where an immigrant may have heard that this was
the case. Uh, they stopped doing this in and I
think even the roadway tolls went away in nineteen eleven,
so you know, they didn't stop it until eighteen ninety one.
So if it's EWO or three, then you could sort

(04:10):
of forgive someone for believing it. Yeah. Plus they were
still charging those roadway tolls for for decades longer. So yeah,
I think the very presence of tolls on the Brooklyn
Bridge made people think like, Okay, yeah, this is the thing.
This guy owns this bridge. I'm going to take over
this enterprise from it. Yeah. And another thing you have
to think about is the Brooklyn Bridge is very large,

(04:30):
and it would be very easy to walk someone up
there and maybe even show them a toll booth without
arousing suspicion, without getting caught, without uh you know, them
necessarily thinking they needed to go over and verify anything
with the toll bridge. Yeah. Imagine also if you had
an inn with one of the toll booth operators you
can introduce as your employee. You know, I'm bringing in money.

(04:53):
Hand about fist here right. The other thing about the
Brooklyn Bridge too, And and like you said, people sold
other stuff, monuments, plots of land and parks in New
York City, basically anything you can imagine that they didn't own.
But the Brooklyn Bridge in particular was like the scam
because it was such a monument in America at the

(05:14):
time of the turn of the twentieth century. Like there
was the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and
that was like the two big symbols of America. So
people wanted to own it as well. The idea of
owning this huge symbol of America. I just got off
the boat from Croatia and now I'm I own one
of two symbols of America. Um, you could imagine how

(05:35):
somebody would jump at that opportunity if they if they
really thought that this guy was legit. Sure, and I
think a lot of times he would just do it
to make a few hundred bucks at a time to
some real greenhorn. But apparently it's legend, has it he
got up to fifty tho dollars, which I did not
fail to do the calculation. Did you happen to do that? Shamefully? Now,

(05:57):
I don't know why we didn't do that. Let's let's
just say it's ten million dollar. Yeah, it's a lot
of money today. Yeah, I'll bet I'm right. Should we
take a break, Yes, let's take a break and figure
out how much they are? If you want to know,
then you're in luck. Just Chuck Shore. So we're back, Chuck,

(06:35):
And I was essentially right, Oh well, how much was it? Uh?
So I said ten million? Right, you said ten million. Uh,
it turns out it's um, it looks like it's about
fifty million. Now no, no, I'm sorry. Let's see one,
two three, it's five million zero five million. That's a jeez.

(06:56):
He really took somebody then. Yeah, imagine Lucy five million
dollars buying the Brooklyn Bridge. Because again, like you're an immigrant,
you're not really kind of hip to how things work here.
Yet imagine going to the cops and then being like
you're you're joking, like you just gave somebody five million
dollars to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Like that had to hurt.

(07:16):
Like to add insult to injury. Yeah, and you know
there was some wife in that decision that was going,
you idiot, that's every penny we have, and some husband
going it'll be worth it, right. I also just bought
some magic beans. Right. Uh. Here's one thing that's pretty
interesting is this became so common because it wasn't just

(07:37):
George Parker doing this. Um. There's one story that we
couldn't quite get to the bottom of that there was
someone named William mcclownde a k a I O U
O'Brien who did this. But then other people have said no,
that was actually an alias Parker. But there were definitely people.
This was a not the most common thing, but it

(07:58):
was a grift that other people did to the extent
that eventually on Ellis Island they had signage up and
pamphlets that said, like, these things are not for sale.
Welcome to America, do not try and buy the Statue
of Liberty. Yeah. The thing I've seen bandied about is
you can't buy public buildings or streets. And I was like,

(08:18):
is it is that true? And I looked it up
and I don't know if it's true. Chuck, Well, what
do you mean? But which one. Public buildings are streets
that they handed out pamphlets Llis Island. Don't you think
that somebody would have saved that pamphlet and there'd be
an image of it on the internet somewhere. I don't know.
That's your reasoning, that's part of it. It also appears

(08:40):
in one book in one New York Times article. In
the New York Times article prints it from a quote
from somebody else who also wrote a book about But
did the Paper of Record? Yeah, but I mean New
York Times. It's also Friday at five the New York Times. Sometimes. Okay,
all right, well, who knows it makes for a good story,
though it is a good story. But aren't those the

(09:01):
most fun? To just be sure? I know that it
did get harder to sell these public buildings. I think
they were trying to do that up through like the
nineteen twenties. But um, you know, people became a little
more wise to this thing over the years. Even though

(09:22):
Parker I believe, in his day sold uh the Statue
of Liberty, Madison Square, Garden, Grant's tomb Uh in the
met not bad amazing. No, imagine buying the met too.
You get all the art inside too, you're not going
to move the art no arts included. Oh no. What

(09:43):
I would have said is no, you know, you don't
own the art, but you can you get a lot
of money for charging for the art to be there. Right,
that's true. What happened to him though he got caught right, Yeah,
he finally didn't. Apparently there was a four strikes in
your out law in New York at the time called
the Bomb's Law, and um, they said that if you
were convicted of a fourth felony, that judge had no

(10:05):
choice but to give you life in prison. And that's
what happened to uh to mr Parker. He passed a
hundred and fifty dollar check that bounced supposedly, the only
in Evening Times said that it bounced back with startling elasticity,
which is hilarious. Um, and he served the rest of
his life in Sing Sing Sings prison as a result.

(10:25):
After all of those griffs and scams, he got life
in jail for a hundred and fifty dollar bounced check.
You know, there are four strikes in baseball at the time,
so that all makes sense. Okay, now it makes sense.
I'm just kidding. Wait a minute, is that true? Wouldn't
that be funny if that's how the judicial system worked? Like, Wow,
what's baseball doing? Right? What's baseball I have to say about?

(10:46):
Is the three strikes or four? That's what we'll do. Yeah,
you can steal first I guess. Oh wait, you couldn't
steal figures. I think this one ended, uh in just
the best way possible. I think it ended about thirty
seconds too late. Uh as short stuff is out, everybody.

(11:08):
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