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American History Museums Podcasts

Theodore Roosevelt’s Wild Kingdom: American conservation history with Ken Burns

Theodore Roosevelt was a New Yorker and a rugged outdoorsman, a politician and a naturalist, a conservationist and a hunter. His connection with the natural world begin at birth in his Manhattan brownstone home and end with his death in Sagamore Hill. He killed thousands of animals over his lifetime as a hunter-naturalist, most notably… Read More

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American History Politics and Protest The Immigrant Experience

The Making and Remaking of the Pledge of Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance feels like an American tradition that traces itself back to the Founding Fathers, but, in fact, it was only written in 1892. And the version you may be familiar with from elementary school — featuring the most recent phrase “under God” — is less than 70 years old. This is the… Read More

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American History On The Waterfront Podcasts

The Titanic and the Fate of Pier 54

In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. the White Star ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg en route to New York City and sank in the Atlantic Ocean. Survivors were rescued by the Cunard liner Carpathia and brought to their berth at Pier 54 at the Chelsea Piers. On that very spot… Read More

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American History Podcasts The Immigrant Experience

When The Irish Came To New York: An Immigrant Story

One of the great narratives of American history — immigration — through the experiences of the Irish. We just reedited and reworked our 2017 show on Irish immigration in time for St. Patrick’s Day and a celebration of all things Irish! So much has changed in our world since 2017 and this history feels more… Read More

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American History New Amsterdam Podcasts

How Wall Street Got Its Name: Stories from New Amsterdam and Early New York

Wall Street, today a canyon of tall buildings in New York’s historic Financial District, is not only one of the most famous streets in the United States, it’s also a stand-in for the entire American financial system. One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall… Read More

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American History True Crime

Insanity: Congressman Daniel Sickles shot and killed the son of Francis Scott Key

On the 160th anniversary of the killing of Phillip Barton Key, I’m reposting this article from 2014 which originally ran on the 100th anniversary of Daniel Sickle’s death. We don’t have large, parade-like funeral processions marching up the avenues as they once did during the Gilded Age and in the early years of the 20th… Read More

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American History

The doctor, the heiress and the accidental nanny: New York women who survived the Titanic

Over fifteen hundred people died the night the Titanic sank, April 14-15, 1912. The early reports from the New York newspapers, of course, spent their time mourning the city’s most connected figures to society. Even from some of the most obsessive sources on the Titanic, the details on the lives of dozens of men and… Read More

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American History Landmarks

The Statue of Liberty turns 135 years old: Eleven facts about her 1886 dedication

The Statue of Liberty celebrates her 135th birthday today. Technically, I suppose, it’s the anniversary of her dedication, a star-studded, pomp-laden ceremony that took place on Friday, October 28, 1886. But for many months previous, she was a fierce presence in the harbor, as the copper monument was arduously stitched together from far flung pieces —… Read More

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American History

The New York Brownstone Inauguration of Chester A. Arthur

There are several enemies in Candice Millard‘s Destiny of the Republic, the terrific 2011 narrative history of the assassination of President James Garfield during the summer of 1881. The most obvious foe is the delusional Charles Guiteau, who believed himself the nation’s savior when he shot President Garfield twice at a Washington DC train station… Read More

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American History Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘An Open Secret’: A gay life in Jazz Age Chicago

Robert Allerton lived without a care thanks to his family’s Gilded Age fortune, built from the stockyards of Chicago’s meat processing district. As a young man, Allerton used his inherited wealth to maintain the family estate near Monticello, Illinois, cultivating a garden escape where he could be left to his own devices. And then, in… Read More

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American History Long Island

Road Trip to Long Island: A new Bowery Boys three-part podcast series

The Bowery Boys podcast is going on a road trip. Presenting a new three part podcast series, exploring three historic places outside of New York City.  It’s a Bowery Boys Road Trip to Long Island! Listen to the trailer here: Greg Young · Long Island Trailer We’re headed to the lands beyond Brooklyn and Queens… Read More

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American History Food History Podcasts

Who Wrote the First American Cookbook?

PODCAST One of America’s most important books was published 225 years ago this year.  You won’t find it on a shelf of great American literature. It was not written by a great man of letters, but somebody who described herself simply as ‘an American orphan.’ EPISODE 354 In 1796 a mysterious woman named Amelia Simmons published American Cookery,… Read More

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American History Podcasts

The City in Flames: The Great Fire of 1835

PODCAST This month marks the 185th anniversary of one of the most devastating disasters in New York City history — The Great Fire of 1835. This massive fire, among the worst in American history in terms of its economic impact, devastated the city during one freezing December evening, destroying hundreds of shops and warehouses and changing… Read More

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American History

Remembering the Wall Street bombing of 1920

On a usual day, lunchtime down on Wall Street today is chaotic mess of brokers and bankers on cell phones, tour groups, messengers on bikes, police officers, construction workers, people delivering lunch and perhaps a stray older lady walking her dog. One hundred years ago today, in 1920, it would have practically been the same, sans… Read More

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American History Bronx History

The United States Capitol Dome was built in the Bronx

In the fall of 1783 Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence, helpfully suggested in a letter to the Continental Congress that his own bucolic estate Morrisania (in today’s area of the South Bronx) would make a fine home for the new capital of the United States. That didn’t happen, of course, but the Bronx… Read More