News from the podcast: Super Deluxe Library Edition
A Welcome Debut: Our podcast this week was on the history of New York University, an institution which spent decades in the Bronx neighborhood today called…
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History, stories, and deep dives from the Bowery Boys.
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Tammany Hall hosts the city’s first Democratic Convention: Susan B. Anthony, the KKK, and a reluctant nominee
September 6, 2012
Many of you may remember New York's sole Republican National Convention, held in 2004 at Madison Square Garden, celebrating the re-election bid of George W. Bush. Some may recall any one of New York's three recent Democratic National Conventions -- two (1976, 1980) for…
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Don’t douse the glim! Four infamous dancehalls and dives which made the notorious reputation of Bleecker Street
"There are no lower outcasts in New York than the women who nightly creep out of the darkness and swarm the pavement of Bleecker Street..." L.…
New York transit system stymied by women’s skirt styles
A lady in a relatively normal skirt boards a Broadway streetcar in July 1913. Now imagine trying this in a hobble skirt! (Courtesy Library of Congress)…
Notes from the podcast: (#141) New York Beer History
Year-Round Brews: This calendar from 1895 celebrates the Harlem breweries of James Everard. An older Everard brewery building on W. 28th Street was converted into a Turkish…
‘Staten Island Has Many Charms Worthy Of Consideration’: Ten ways to sell a borough (and a proposed subway) in 1912
The sky's the limit: Staten Island from the vantage of a hot air balloon, August 1906. (Courtesy LOC)"God might have made a more beautiful place than…
Thank you, Tooth Brush Lady! Newsies get their teeth fixed
Above: Newsboys and bootblacks playing craps, photographed by Lewis Hines in 1912. Some of these were most likely recipients of free dental care, provided at the…
Pop Culture
Your friendly neighborhood tour guide: New York as seen through 50 years of Amazing Spider-Man comic book covers
Today is the fifth birthday of this blog, which modestly began on July 4, 2007 and has grown more steadily out of control and independent of…
Notes from the podcast (#140) Rockaway Beach
Behold the insanity: (Above) A lithograph of the Rockaway Beach Hotel, one of the most notorious failures in American historyA Song About Brooklyn: I gave you…
Union busted: Hotel and restaurant workers end their strike
Above: Restaurant workers walk off the job at Sherry's Restaurant at Fifth Avenue in 1912One hundred years ago today, a rather peculiar worker's strike ended, a…
Beware the New York vampires: A seductive film star inspires an army of ‘golden haired’ Broadway sex goddesses
Maneater: Theda Bara in an unconventional portrait. Her publicist claimed it was her lover and that 'not even the grave could separate them'."A vampire is a…
The legend of bank robber ‘Red’ Leary, his wife Kate, and the greatest jail break in Lower East Side history
'Red' Leary was one of the famous bank robbers of the 1870s, assisting in heists all along the Northeast. Above is an illustration of a bank…
The Bowery Boys podcast turn 5 years old today!
And so our little history podcast experiences a little bit of a historical milestone itself.Five years ago today, Tom Meyers and I sat down to record…