New York Evening Express

New York Evening Express

Front page of the New York Evening Express, Saturday, December 31, 1870
Type	Daily newspaper
Editor	James Brooks (from 1836 to 1873)
Founded	June 20, 1836 (as the New York Express)
Ceased publication	December 1881
Headquarters	New York City, NY, U.S.

The New York Evening Express (1836–81) was a 19th-century American newspaper published in New York City.

The Express began publication on June 20, 1836, as the New York Express, a Whig publication under the direction of James Brooks, formerly an editor of the Portland Advertiser in Maine, with the assistance of Brooks' younger brother Erastus Brooks (originally as their Washington correspondent). Robert E. Hudson served at its initial commercial editor. It was merged with Hudson's Prices Current and Shipping List upon its creation, and on November 1, 1836, merged with the Daily Advertiser founded in 1817 by Theodore Dwight, and thus referred to as the New York Daily Express. William B. Townsend of the Advertiser became a part owner of the Express with James Brooks.

When the Whig Party declined, the Express supported the Know Nothing movement, and then the Constitutional Union Party, followed by the Democrats.

James Brooks remained editor-in-chief of the paper until his death in 1873, and in June 1877 Erastus gave over control to a group led by John Kelly (a boss of Tammany Hall) and Augustus Schell, though he still made contributions to the paper. In late 1881 Cyrus West Field acquired the Express (which had a coveted New York Associated Press membership) and merged it into the New York Evening Mail, creating the New York Evening Mail and Daily Express. The Evening Mail survived until 1924 (it dropped the "Express" part of its name completely by 1904).

Historian Richard Schwarzlose has referred to the Evening Express as "never an outstanding newspaper" (1990). This agrees with Frederic Hudson's colorful observations about the paper in Journalism in the United States (1873), though Hudson was also managing editor of the rival New York Herald from 1846 to 1866. Hudson remarked that the Express was "remarkable for its politics, its numerous editions, and its strangers' lists" (list of daily arrivals at local hotels). The "Strangers' List" was popular with merchants looking for customers, which led Herald editor James Gordon Bennett, Sr. to once call the paper the Drummer's Gazette.