History, stories, and deep dives from the Bowery Boys.
Latest Article
American HistorySeptember 16, 2020
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…
→ Read ArticleBrowse by Category
More Articles
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…
UPDATE FOR 2020: It was announced today that Lord & Taylor, America's first department store, has announced it will go out of business after 193 years.…
Astoria Pool is the largest venue for swimmers in New York, outside of the Hudson and East Rivers and, of course, the ocean. Its location in…
Women received the right to vote 100 years ago today with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Tens of thousands of women…
Howard Philip Lovecraft — aka H.P. Lovecraft — was born 130 years ago this week (on August 20, 1890) in Providence, Rhode Island. The pulp-fiction storyteller, known for…
Owney Madden was one of New York's most infamous gangsters, a bootlegger and murderer who seemed to cross paths with every major cultural marker of the…
It may be some time before we all get to truly enjoy the inside of a movie theater again. Hopefully soon! But outdoor movies -- in…
Without moving images or sound recordings to guide us, it can be hard to imagine the lives and careers of famous theater actors from the 19th…
The notion of organized 'ocean bathing' -- actually going into the water for health, relaxation and enjoyment -- was really a 19th century invention, first popularized…
The devastating results of the monstrous Great Fire of 1835 helped change the course of Manhattan -- hastening the residential migration up the island, rewriting the…
By the 1930s, New York City's thriving garment industry had moved from the Lower East Side to Midtown Manhattan*, housed within nondescript buildings with hundreds of…
While traipsing through Red Hook a couple months ago, I happened upon a family of raccoons camped out underneath a pick-up truck. New York City is…
