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Gilded Age New York Podcasts

Boss Tweed’s House of Corruption: A Tale of Crooked Schemes and Unchecked Power

PODCAST: How the Tweed Courthouse became a symbol for everything rotten about 19th century American politics. The roots of modern American corruption traces themselves back to a handsome — but not necessarily revolutionary — historic structure sitting behind New York City Hall. The Tweed Courthouse is more than a mere landmark. Once called the New York County… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf Landmarks

Courting New York’s Legal Landmarks

Civic buildings are often beautiful architecture in plain sight. Their uniformity — many rendered in classical styles — often finds them less appreciated than other forms of urban architecture. In a city like New York, skyscrapers, hotels and brownstones are more likely to get the attention of camera-wielding tourists over courthouses. After all, doesn’t every… Read More

A ‘Door of Return’ opens near City Hall

The ground underfoot downtown Manhattan gave the developers of the new federal courthouse in 1991 a rather morbid surprise — the remains of 415 people, in a burial ground for enslaved and free blacks in the 17th and 18th century. Unknown and unmarked for decades, the site was declared a national landmark in 1993, and… Read More

(Not) everybody loves a parade

As I was threading through the city streets yesterday I stumbled upon New York’s annual Muslim Day Parade which marched down Madison Avenue with a few thousand supporters in costumes, floats and some really unusual mascot wear(see above). Depending on what you believe, the date of the parade (two days before 9/11) was either a… Read More