It describes a practical joke allegedly perpetrated in 1824, by a retired ship carpenter named Lozier.
According to the story, in the 1820s a rumor began circulating among city merchants that the weight of the urban district was causing the southern section of Manhattan Island to sink, near the Battery.
[1] The story did not appear in any known newspapers (although the press supposedly did not report on such pranks in that era) and no records have been found to confirm the existence of the individuals involved.
[2] The hoax was first documented in Thomas F. De Voe's (1811–1892) [3][4] volume The Market Book (1862), as conveyed by his uncle who was Lozier's supposed associate, and was told again in Herbert Asbury's work All Around The Town: Murder, Scandal, Riot and Mayhem in Old New York (1934, reissued as a Sequel to Gangs of New York).
Another condensed retelling occurs in the 1960s Reader's Digest book, Scoundrels and Scallywags: 51 Stories of the Most Fascinating Characters of Hoax and Fraud (1968).