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Bowery Boys Bookshelf

Happy birthday Herman Melville! Some New York City trivia Plus: News on our upcoming podcasts

“Of a Sunday, Wall-Street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness.” — Herman Melville, Bartelby the Scrivener.  The lithograph above is what Wall Street would have looked like in Melville’s day. (NYPL) Herman Melville, one of America’s greatest writers of the 19th century, was born 195 years ago… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles Podcasts

The Bowery Boys High Line audio walking tour, featuring tales of the Titanic, the Manhattan Project and 1,000 Stevies

Cookie heaven: Trains pull into a factory owned by the National Biscuit Company, between W. 15th and 16th streets, July 30, 1950. Could those cars be filled with crates of freshly made Oreo cookies? (See comments section below for the anser.) By 1958, the snack company had pulled all production from New York’s west side.… Read More

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Revolutionary History

To Mr. Alexander Hamilton, on his birthday

“A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden.” Alexander Hamilton, in a letter to South Carolina statesman Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, regarding Hamilton Grange Today’s the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, New… Read More

Name That Neighborhood: TriBeCa not so triangular

Some New York neighborhoods are simply named for their location on a map (East Village, Midtown). Others are given prefabricated real-estate designations (SoHo, DUMBO). But a few retain names that link them intimately with their pasts. Other entries in this series can be found here. For all the New York City neighborhoods with wonderful old… Read More

The sexy secret underneath ‘Little Flatiron’

Some of the most interesting buildings in New Yorks are the triangular ones, those that sit at the intersection of diagonal streets that cut through the grid system. The Silas C. Herring Lock and Safe Company Building, more affectionately known as the L’il Flatiron Building or simply the Triangle Building, is probably the ‘cutest’ example… Read More