Ann Street is a 3-block-long street located in the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. It runs roughly east to west from Broadway to Gold Street. History Ann Street is one of the oldest streets in New York City, appearing on a map created in 1728. Ann Street was named after Ann White, the wife of a developer and merchant, Capt. Thomas White. She may have urged him to name the street after her because other merchants' wives already had streets named after them. The street is relatively small and short compared with the other lower Manhattan streets named after merchants' wives. There have been several other streets in the city named Ann Street. One laid out between Reade and Franklin Streets prior to 1797 later became Elm Street. "Anne Street" was also a name circa 1748 for part of the present William Street. Today, there is only one Ann Street in Manhattan. In 1809, John Scudder, a former seaman, had taken over Edward Savage's "Columbian Gallery of Painting and City Museum" on Water Street, and added additional curiosities. He operated Scudder's American Museum on Chatham Street until 1817, when he relocated to the New York Institution on the site of the city's former almshouse in City Hall Park. The museum shared this space with the New-York Historical Society. Scudder died in 1821. In 1830, his son moved Scudder's American Museum to a five-story building on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, across the street from St. Paul's Chapel. In 1841 P.T. Barnum acquired Scudder's Museum. "Barnum's American Museum" became one of the most popular showplaces in the United States during the 19th century. Barnum made a special hit in 1842 with the exhibition of Charles Stratton, the celebrated midget "General Tom Thumb", as well as the Fiji Mermaid which he exhibited in collaboration with his Boston counterpart Moses Kimball. The line in the Charles Ives song, Barnum's Mob, Ann Street, refers to the crowds drawn to see the curiosities at this museum. Other nineteenth-century businesses on Ann Street include the publisher Dick and Fitzgerald on 18 Ann Street. On May 10, 1979, a woman was attacked on Ann Street by a "pack of rats" as she was walking to her car. The woman hurried into the car and the rats climbed onto it. Several witnesses called the police. The rats were later found living in the burnt-out wreck of