THE FIRST PODCAST This is the history of the future.
Robots conjure up thoughts of distant technological landscapes and even apocalyptic scenarios, but the truth is, robots are a very old creation, tracing back to the ancient world.
We can thank science fiction writers for inventing new serious ideas about robots, automatons previously relegated as mere amusement. But they remained an unimaginable concept — rendered in a corny, campy fashion in the 1940s and 50s — until the development of computing and cybernetics.
In 1961 the first industrial robot named Unimate not only changed the automobile industry, but it opened the door for the vast, realistic possibilities of robotics in our everyday lives.
Writer and photographer Bill Hayes moved to New York in 2009 and experienced what many of us have already learned: Â the nights are magic and the subway is a wilderness.
He began jotting down his observations of peculiar experiences, the strange behaviors of others existing in their own little New Yorks. “Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise,” writes Hayes, “a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two — a living Rubik’s Cube.”
Above and below: A couple of the many strange and captivating photographs by Bill Hayes featured in the book.
During the day he would aim a friendly camera towards New Yorkers of all shapes and affinities. Hayes left San Francisco after the tragic death of his partner and fortunately seems to have fallen into New York like one of its many prodigal souls. His experiences aren’t unique; they mirror yours and mine.
Except for the fact that, oh yes, he falls in love with a noted British neurologist and author — the late and dearly missed Oliver Sacks.
Oliver Sacks, photographed by Bill Hayes
In Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me, Hayes’ new memoir and urban rumination, we’re presented with a bird’s eye view of New York’s universal appeal to outsiders, paired with a microscopic look at two of those outsiders.
Sacks, a celebrated author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hatand Awakenings (the basis of the Robert De Niro/Robin Williams film), was a guarded individual, coming out to himself late in life and socially removed from non-professional affairs.
Hayes introduces us to Sacks’ extraordinary worldview, an intellectual who brought critical thinking into the slightest of gestures and loved going to the roof to drink wine out of the bottle. The love and reverence Hayes has for Sacks is clear, referring to him throughout the text as just ‘O’, giving us their intimate moments only when they illuminate something of his genius.
Insomniac City is a fragmentary, often poetic look at love of a city and of an individual, told in notes and journal entries. It’s a book one could easily devour in a single sitting but I suggest prolonging the experience, reading a little at a time, allowing the individual anecdotes to inform your own adventures out in the big city.
It take on a set of colossal tasks; it can be poem, a documentary and a tribute on just a single page. Hayes is giving us permission to stare into his life — and into the lives of others — in the same durations of time that we experience each other in our daily lives. Â In those flash moments of bonding on mass transit or on the street, where we may imagine what another person is thinking and feeling before they vanish.
And knowing, in his vignettes, that he’s exposed an intimacy with strangers, he then bares his own to us, his unabashed mix of love, friendship and bewilderment to a wonderful, complicated man, who also came and went.
INSOMNIAC CITY New York, Oliver and Me Bloomsbury Publishing
PODCAST The story of a brutal murder in a New York brothel and the prime suspect’s controversial trial which captivated Americans in the 1830s.
In the spring of 1836, a young woman named Helen Jewett was brutally murdered with a hatchet in a townhouse brothel on Thomas Street, just a few blocks northwest from New York City Hall.
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This was not a normal crime. Helen was a prostitute of great beauty and considerable intelligence, making her living in a rapidly transforming city. Among her client list were presentable gentlemen and rowdy young men alike — their kind fueling the rise of illicit pleasures throughout New York City in the 1830s.
This was the era of the sporting man. Young single men with a little change in their pocket hit the streets of New York after dark, looking for a good time. For some single young women struggling to survive, the sex industry — from the ‘high end’ brothels to the grimy upper tiers of the theater — allowed them to live comfortable, if secretive, lives. But it placed many in great danger.
The prime suspect for Helen’s murder was a young Connecticut man named Richard P. Robinson who worked at a respectable New York firm. His trial would captivate New Yorkers and even interest newspaper readers around the country. But would justice be served?
ALSO: Find out how this incident helped shape the nature of American journalism itself.
New York City in 1830 — at Broadway and Bowling Green. The area just northeast of here would be ravaged by the Great Fire of 1835.
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New York City Hall has it looked in 1830. The events of this story take place just a couple blocks to the north west of here!
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The beautiful Helen Jewett (or Ellen Jewett), “from an original painting taken from life.”
From an original Painting taken from Life. Published May 1836, by H. R. Robinson, 48 Courtlandt St. N.
The prime suspect Richard Robinson, in his wig:
Taken from life as he appeared in the Court of Oyer and Terminer, on his arraignment, Tuesday, the 25th day of May, 1836. Entered according to Act of Congress in the Year 1836, by H.R. Robinson, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States of the Southern District of N.Y
Much of the extant imagery produced following the trial was obviously highly critical of Robinson, mocking him as ‘an innocent boy’, a phrase which was used during the trial.
Courtesy MCNY; Alfred M. Hoffy (1790-1860) John T. Bowen (ca. 1801-1856? ) DATE:1836 Designed & drawn on Stone by Hoffy. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1836 by J. T. Bowen & A. Hoffy, in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the U.S. for the Southern District of New – York
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One of the oldest existing buildings in the Tribeca/upper WTC district is St. Peter’s Church — seen here in a 1916 photograph — which began construction (to replace an older building) in 1836, the year of Helen Jewett’s murder. It sits in the region of the old prostitution district known as ‘the Holy Ground’.
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Some images from the Life of Helen Jewett, one of several pamphlets which came out after the trial, dramatizing the lives of Jewett and Robinson. Most of the tale was fabricated for dramatic purposes.
Many of the bars and taverns found on the Bowery today are unfortunately clean, friendly and even trendy establishments, wonderful safe places to meet with friends and family. Not a ruffian or scoundrel in sight. Where’s the fun in that?!
Of course, for most of its history, the Bowery was one of the most notorious places in America, the location of great vice and debauchery — gambling dens, brothels, dance halls, dime museums, saloons full of soused drinkers hovering around a boxing ring. For many decades, an elevated train line turned the Bowery into a shadowy haven for illicit shenanigans of all sorts.
And so may I turn your attention to an article which ran in the New York Tribune, on April 12, 1903, that touted New York’s reform efforts along the Bowery. This report proudly lists the Bowery’s most “evil resorts” which were successfully wiped away thanks to efforts by Mayor Seth Low.
While these would surely be dangerous places to visit, you can’t deny that these lurid newspaper descriptions make even the most lowly of dives seem rather interesting.
With each address, I’ve put a link to Google Maps, revealing what stands on that spot today. In many cases, the building itself is still standing:
15 Bowery “Known to the criminal ‘under world’ as Spanish Mamie’s. Took its name from the presence of a Spanish girl, the associate of many crooks. This was a dive of the lowest sort.â€
19 Bowery “A back room ‘ginmill,’ the headquarters of ‘Boston Charlie,’ a well known character, and his even more notorious woman pal ‘Boston Clara.’ Boston Charlie was known as a ‘first rate cane man’, that is, a beggar who pretended to be a cripple. He served many terms in the workhouse and gave this place a reputation in his now line. It was the resort of ‘panhandlers’.”
Below: An 1880 photograph of the Bowery at Canal Street
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25 Bowery“The New-York Tavern.  Here was  planned a brutal robbery and assault on a Brooklyn jeweler. A low order of ‘crooks’ made this their ‘hang out.’â€
101 Bowery “A common backroom resort, a place of assignation and the gathering place of ‘crooks’ of an inferior order.”
Below: The Bowery in 1915. The establishments listed below would have been on this block
Courtesy MCNY
114 Bowery “A resort of cheap pugilists, where obscene pictures were exhibited on a screen, best known as Steve Brodie’s” [Read more about Brodie’s dive bar here]
115 Bowery “Little Jumbo. This was a notorious resort and the scene of a brutal murder. Criminals and ‘panhandlers’ made it their headquarters, and sailors were the victims of all sorts of crime, from robbery to murder. It was run for the proprietor by an Italian who was discharged and replaced by an Irishman; soon after the Irishman and the Italian had a fight and the former was killed.â€
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119 Bowery “Flynn’s ‘Black Hole.’ This notorious resort is mentioned by Josiah Flynt as a resort of all sorts of crooks. It had a wide reputation, and went out of business soon after its proprietor, Flynn, was arrested for illegal registration in the last campaign.”
Also* — “‘Eat ’Em Up Jack’ McManus’s Rapid Transit House. This was a well known dive kept by McManus, who was formerly head bouncer for McGurk [most known for the morbid McGurk’s Suicide Hall, see below]. The assertion that no ‘touch’, that is, robbery, was ever made in McGurk’s and that such business was barred there, is somewhat justified by the fact that this place was started by a former employee of McGurk, and was famous for the ‘touches’ made there. McManus was known to his ‘pals’ as a ‘strong arm’ man, one who garrotes victims he is about to rob with his crooked arm.â€
287 Bowery “The Tivoli — A concert hall where women in indecent costumes sang indecent songs on the stage; where assignation was carried on openly, and solders and sailors were dragged in and later taken to disorderly houses.â€
The Bowery in 1905
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291 Bowery “The Volks Garden — The most notorious concert hall in the Bowery, and, like the Tivoli, a resort for prostitutes, a place of indecent stage exhibitions and the largest of its sort on the Bowery. As many as fifty women were attached to this place, and the business was carried on brazenly, numbers of ‘barkers’ and ‘pullers in’ being stationed at the door to drag people in by main force.â€
295 Bowery “McGurk’s ‘Suicide Hall’ The most notorious resort in the Bowery, the ‘hangout’ of a large number of young girls. Solders and sailors frequented the place in large numbers. Carbolic acid suicies were the special of the place and gave it its name.” [Read more about it in my piece on Suicide Hall.]
*Address not specifically listed. May have shared the building with Flynn’s Black Hole
THE FIRST PODCAST In 1907, the professional swimmer Annette Kellerman was arrested on a Massachusetts beach for wearing a revealing bathing suit — a skin-tight black ensemble which covered most of her body.
In this podcast, I’ll tell you what happened to change people’s perception of public decency in those forty years and explain how the bikini represents the best — and the worst — instincts of modern American culture.
One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall Street, that canyon of tall buildings and center of the American financial world, is named for an actual wall that once stretched along this very spot during the days of the Dutch when New York was known as New Amsterdam.
A simplistic but colorful view of “Man Mados” or “New Amsterdam” in 1664 (click in to inspect the detail)
There was most definitely a walled fortification nearby on New Amsterdam’s northern boundary, and it certainly did stretch along about the same area as Wall Street does today.
But the present name seems to be a formation of mixed meanings that only a tangle of languages and hundreds of years of history can create. The Dutch themselves referred to an actual street alongside the waterfront that ran up to and alongside the wall as the ‘Cingel’ — according to an old history, meaning “exterior, or encircling, street.”
But ‘De Waal Straat’, as it was also known, was also the center of a small Walloon community in New Amsterdam, and some believe the name comes from them. The Walloons were French-speaking Belgians who were among the first European settlers, arriving in the New World as part of a contingent hired by the Dutch West India Company.
A map of New Amsterdam, indicating the layout from about 1644, well before a wall was constructed.
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The real reasons for New Amsterdam building its famous wall are also up for grabs. It’s commonly held that an original wooden palisade was erected in 1644 in defense of Indian attacks, and certainly the residents of New Amsterdam did their part to rile the anger of the native landowners.
Below: A fanciful illustration from Harper’s Magazine, 1908, imagining New Amsterdam and the construction of the original ‘wall’.
But the Dutch had been living at the tip of Manhattan for over 25 years by the time the sturdier wall was built in 1653. In truth, it was commissioned to keep out a different sort of enemy.
You’ll be pleased to know that one-legged director-general Peter Stuyvesant was the man who ordered the construction of the wall — in his words, “to surround the greater part of the city with a high stockade and small breastwork” — to replace the inadequate wooden barrier that had previously marked the city’s northern border .
A model of New Amsterdam made in 1933, clearly showing how sudden the city borders stopped thanks to the wall.
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This was an incredibly important year for New Amsterdam in two respects. In February 1653, New Amsterdam was chartered as a official Dutch city. Although Stuyvesant was quite against the outpost receiving such official recognition, he eventually took advantage of it, appointing the first town council himself rather than putting it up to such trivial inconveniences as elections.
But in 1653 the tides of the motherland spilled onto their shores, as the war between England and the Netherlands threatened the remote and undefended new city. The Dutch intended to launch ships from New Amsterdam harbor in battle against the English.
As a result, the English colonies up north were sure to retaliate, either by sea or, feared Stuyvesant, over land, possibly teaming with hostile Indian forces, down through undefended Manhattan island.
Essentially, the wall that helped give us Wall Street was built because Stuyvesant feared attacks not just from Indian tribes, but from the European colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Haven!
Looking at this more well known map of New Amsterdam – the Costello Plan of 1660 — one can see the two gates very clearly.
Stuyvesant called upon the 43 richest residents of New Amsterdam to provide funding to fix up the ailing Fort Amsterdam and to construct a stockade across the island to prevent attacks from the north, while it took New Amsterdam’s most oppressed inhabitants — slave labor from the Dutch West India Company — to actually build the wall.
The barrier was constructed out of earth, rock, and 15 feet timber planks sold to the Dutch, ironically enough, by the “notorious“ Englishman Thomas Baxter. In a turnabout that one would expect from hiring your enemy, Baxter later led a group of “Rhode Island marauders“ and pirated Dutch fishing ships.
Early in the 1660s, the Dutch upgraded its wall to include brass cannons and two sturdy gates — one at today’s intersection of Wall and Broadway (for land), the other at Wall and Pearl Street (according to an early account, a water gate and access to a ‘river road’).
Below: A detail from a map of New Amsterdam’s eastern side, clearly showing the water gate, and a illustration from 1908 of that eastern gate:
Internet Archives Book Images
The British took over New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York, but the wall still remained, becoming more a relic than a serious defense.
By the turn of the century, the fear of land attacks had almost completely subsided and the city was beginning to feel crowded. So in 1699 the wall was torn down with some of the material salvaged to help construct a new City Hall at the corner of Nassau Street and the newly cristened Wall Street. In 1711 a slave market was built on Wall Street along the eastern shore, remaining there until 1762.
When the British were forced out in 1783 by the Americans, the City Hall building was finally renamed Federal Hall — the first official center of American government.
A plaque honoring the old wall sits today at the corner of Wall and Broadway, where the gate to the city once opened:
PODCAST Part Two of our two-part series on New York City in the years following the Revolutionary War.
During a handful of months in 1789 and 1790, representatives of the new nation of the United States came together in New York City to make decisions which would forever affect the lives of Americans.
In this second part of our two-part show on New York as the first federal capital of the United States, we roll up our sleeves and get down to business. (In the first part, he moved the capital to lower Manhattan and inaugurated ourselves a new president George Washington!)
The men of the first Continental Congress — which first met in the Spring of 1789 — had a lofty job in front of them that year. They needed to not only construct the tools and offices of a brand new government, they were also tasked with defining the basic rights of American citizens via a set of amendments to the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights.
Now imagine doing this in your post-Colonial era garments during a hot summer, all crammed into a few rooms at Federal Hall, the former City Hall building on Wall Street.
It was here that the Bill of Rights was introduced, debated and voted upon. But those weren’t the only monumental decisions being made in the city.
When nobody could come to an agreement on two major issues — the assumption of state debt and the location of the permanent federal capital — it was up to Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to craft a deal, made during a legendary dinner party on Maiden Lane. We live today with the critical decisions made by these three men on that night over food and wine.
ALSO: The tale of James Hemings, an enslaved man who became an accomplished French chef and most likely the cook for that very dinner, witness to the events in “the room where it happened.”
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visitour page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!
The setting for much of our show today is Federal Hall, the former City Hall turned headquarters of burgeoning American government.
Peter Lacour delin. A Doolittle sculp. Printed & Sold by A Doolittle New Haven 1790. Re-engraved on copper by Sidney L. Smith. The Society of Iconophiles. New York. 1899.
It was demolished in the 1810s and replaced many years later with the U.S. Customs House (later the Sub Treasury Building).
Courtesy MCNY
Alexander Hamilton, the first head of the Department of Treasury and one of the architects of the Great Compromise of 1790.
Alexander Hamilton. Copy of Engraving, Published Sept. 1804.MCNY
James Madison (depicted here in a pose as the fourth President of the United States) was instrumental in crafting the Bill of Rights and was also involved in the compromise involving the assumption of state debts
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Thomas Jefferson (depicted here in a pose as the third President of the United States) was America’s first Secretary of State and was instrumental in pulling together the ingredients of the Great Compromise.
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It’s likely that James Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings and an enslaved man owned by Jefferson, served the meal that evening in ‘the room that it happened’, aka the Great Compromise.
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An inventory of kitchen tools written out by Hemings that he used at Monticello. More details on Hemings here.
Library of Congress
A plaque marking the spot on Maiden Lane where Thomas Jefferson’s house once stood.
Courtesy Playbill
The sizable home of Alexander Macomb who rented half his house to George Washington in 1790. In addition to his offices and household, many of his enslaved people worked here as well.
Portrait of Hughes by Winold Reiss (AP Photo/National Portrait Gallery)
Since I was a teenager, I’ve had an affinity for writer Langston Hughes, the revolutionary jazz poet who was born 115 years ago today in 1902. I grew up in Springfield, Mo., about an hour away from Langston’s birthplace in Joplin. One of the brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance grew up here?, I frequently pondered in English class.  In fact, Hughes is considered Joplin’s most famous son.*
But you don’t need to follow Langston’s footprints back to the Ozarks. Celebrate his birthday with a mini-walking tour, four Manhattan addresses that were pivotal to Hughes’ development as an iconic African-American voice and a star of the Harlem literary scene–
 Young Langston in college, 1928
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
181 W. 135th Street  — Langston’s first exposure to Harlem’s creative energy was as a Columbia University student in 1921, wandering the street, hoping to see “Duke Ellington on the corner of 135th Street, or Bessie Smith passing by, or Bojangles Bill Robinson in front of the Lincoln Theatre, or maybe Paul Robeson or Bert Williams walking down the avenue.” [source]
Before moving into Columbia’s Hartley Hall (1124 Amsterdam Avenue), however, Langston took a room here at the YMCA, known for its live drama productions and art shows. He didn’t need to stroll around to find Robeson; he got his start acting in productions at the YMCA.
Dapper gentlemen: At a 1924 celebration in Langston’s honor, at the home of Regina Andrews on 580 St. Nicholas Avenue. The author is to the far left, followed by future sociologists Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier; novelist and future doctor Rudolph Fisher; and Hubert T. Delany, who would become a New York justice in 1942, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia.
634 St. Nicholas Avenue — Although Langston would rent out a studio in 1938 down the street at 66 St. Nicholas Avenue, he frequently stayed at this address in the Sugar Hill area of Harlem, the home of his friends Toy and Emerson Harper. (He referred to them as ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’.) Hughes later moved with the couple to another address…
 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (at W. 135th Street) – The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library, is Hughes’ final resting place. His ashes are contained underneath the foyer floor, beneath an inscription: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” But the library always had a long association with Hughes. His ‘poetry-play’ ‘Don’t You Want To Be Free‘ played to sold-out crowds in the basement of the library in 1938. The play co-starred Robert Earl Jones, the father of James Earl Jones.
You can find a far more in-depth walking tour of 1920s Harlem here.
*Another African-American cultural icon, George Washington Carver, was born in the town of Diamond, Mo., fifteen minutes southeast of Joplin. If you’re ever swinging through that area of the world, the George Washington Carver National Monument, where his home was located, is worth a stop.
THE FIRST PODCAST The story of how electricity became a tool of death for the state of New York and the strange circumstances behind the invention of the electric chair.
The harnessing of electricity by the great inventors of the Gilded Age introduced the world to the miracle of light at all hours of the day. But exposure to electricity’s raw power was dangerous to man.  Awful deaths of men on electrical wires terrified New Yorkers. A few thought this might be useful in the employment of the state’s darkest responsibilities — capital punishment.
This is the story of the first electric chair, the peculiar rivalry which helped create it — an epic feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, between DC and AC — and its fateful effects upon the life and punishment upon a man named William Kemmler, the first to be killed in this morbid seat.
ALSO:Â Hear the words of Harold Pitney Brown, an electrician who worked to help sully the reputation of Westinghouse and his collaborator Nikola Tesla by pairing their alternating-current devices with electrical execution.
Or listen to it straight from here: 07Â THE MORBID INVENTION: THE STORY OF THE FIRST ELECTRIC CHAIR
The horrors of the modern world — New York electrician John Feeks is killed on the electrical wires as hundreds watched.
1891 book Physique Populaire by Emile Desbeaux, drawn by D. Dumon.
Harold Pitney Brown, who secretly assisted in diminishing the reputation of alternating current (AC) power on behalf of Edison, who was promoting direct current (DC).
Brown’s bizarre and cruel experiments — proving the dangers of AC — involved killing animals by electrocution. One such experiment at Edison’s lab in New Jersey slaughtered calves and horses to demonstrate his theories.Â
The mechanism of the first electric chair at Auburn Prison. You can see some of these components in the photo below.
A picture of the notorious first electric chair, used in the execution of William Kemmler
An illustration from Scientific American, June 30 1888, showing an ‘ideal’ depiction of electric-chair functioning.
An illustration (not very accurate) of the execution of William Kemmler.
The first episode of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast came out in the middle of June 2007. Â Yes, we’ve been doing this for almost ten years. 220 episodes and going strong!
We will be doing some very special things starting this spring in recognition of our tenth year of recording the show. And we’d love for you to help kick off the celebration.
On April 9th we will be making our debut appearance in the fifth annual NYC Podfest, a weekend of live podcast extravaganzas, hosted by the Bell House, the Gowanus venue best known to New York podcast lovers for hosting events for shows like Stuff You Should Know and Slate Political Gabfest. For this year’s festival, we’ll be joining other shows such as Another Round, Lore, Sidedoor, Risk!, How To Be Amazing with Michael Ian Black and many others.
But this will not be an ordinary event. This will be the kickoff event for The Bowery Boys 10th Anniversary celebration. We’ll be on stage talking about how we managed to make it an entire decade, giving you some hilarious back stories on some of your favorite episodes, with some fun and games thrown in.
There’s a spiral staircase inside the western half of the Washington Square Arch, which grants access to the rooftop and fabulous views straight up Fifth Avenue.
Public entrance is prohibited, of course, although that didn’t stop six fearless malcontents (including the artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan) from breaking in to declare a bohemian revolution late in the evening of January 23, 1917.
Below: A few months after our art revolutionaries take to the arch, it was decorated in support of America’s involvement in World War I.
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The escapade was organized by Gertrude Drick, a poet mostly forgotten today but known at the time by the name Woe (as in Woe is me).
“One night [Drick] discovered the blind, unlocked door of the passage and stairway which leads to the top of the arch. A few nights later she had made all the arrangements, invitations, Chinese lanterns, balloons and refreshments for her privately conducted picnics.”
Once atop the Arch, the group decorated the outdoor space with lanterns and balloons, and spent the entire night around a fire, drinking wine and tea (the beverage of revolution). They shot off cap pistols into the wintry night air.
Below: John Sloan’s classic etching depicting the event. The original is at the Met.
A radical shift in the art scene had already begun in New York, emanating from the streets around Washington Square.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney‘s Studio Club was nearby, as were the apartments of many artists associated with the Ashcan School, including Sloan himself.
Greenwich Village, long a magnet for the unconventional, energized this new wave of painters and playwrights as they bonded in nearby cafes and studios.
It was in this spirit that the so-called Arch Conspirators, shielding their candles from the wind, unfurled an unusual parchment late that night that declared a Free and Independent Republic of Greenwich Village.
The only evidence of this grand proclamation the following morning was the balloons that still clung to the Arch’s violated rooftop. But the Village did become free and independent to an extent, a pocket universe of creativity for the rebellious musicians, artists, and writers of the twentieth century.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Bowery Boys: Adventures In Old New York, now available in bookstores everywhere
PODCAST Part One of our two-part series on New York City in the years following the Revolutionary War.
The story of New York City’s role in the birth of American government is sometimes forgotten. Most of the buildings important to the first U.S. Congress, which met here from the spring of 1789 to the late summer of 1790, have long been demolished. There’s little to remind us that our modern form of government was, in part, invented here on these city streets.
Riding high on the victories of the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers organized a makeshift Congress under the Articles of Confederation. After an unfortunate crisis in Philadelphia, that early group of politicians from the 13 states eventually drifted up to New York (specifically to New York’s City Hall, to be called Federal Hall) to meet. But they were an organization without much power or respect.
The fate of the young nation lay on the shoulders of George Washington who arrived in New York in the spring of 1789 to be inaugurated as the first president of the United States. His swearing-in would finally unite Americans around their government and would imbue the port city of New York with a new urgency.
This is Part One of a two part celebration of these years, featuring cantankerous vice presidents, festive cannonades, and burning plumage! (Part Two arrives in two weeks.)
FEATURING Washington, Adams, Madison, Livingston and, of course, HAMILTON!
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visitour page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!
The signing of the Constitution, September 17, 1787.
George traveling to his inauguration, as depicted in the 1896 book “The Century book of famous Americans : the story of a young people’s pilgrimage to historic homes”
Internet Archive Book Images
And from an 1889 illustration:
Courtesy NYPL
President-Elect Washington crosses floating bridge (Gray’s Ferry) — and through one of many triumphal arches — on his inaugural journey, Philadelphia, April 20, 1789
NYPL
Washington’s reception on the bridge of Trenton in 1789 on his way to be inaugurated 1st president of the U. S.
NYPL
An illustration from 1855 depicts Old City Hall before it was renovated to house the new federal government.
Another view, with Washington’s six-horse coach in the foreground.
NYPL
A depiction of Broad Street and Federal Hall as it looked in 1797, but you can easily picture how filled the streets would have been on Washington’s inauguration just eight years earlier.
NYPL
Here’s how it looked on the 2008 HBO mini-series John Adams:
From an 1899 oil painting (artist unknown)
The presidential mansion on Cherry Street:
NYPL
The lovely Richmond Hill, the vice presidential mansion home of John and Abigail Adams
St. Paul’s Chapel, where Washington worshipped in New York. Â More information at Trinity’s website.
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 town have a courthouse?
But in Robert Pigott‘s engrossing New York’s Legal Landmarks, an extraordinary world of New York’s civic architecture, past and present, comes alive. He focuses specifically on structures pertaining to legal work — courthouses, law schools, law firms, even jails — in a surprising array of architectural forms.
Not every courthouse has Roman columns or cavernous atriums. In New York City, you can find legal buildings in art deco, brutalist and post-modernist styles. In many cases, they fit so well into a city block that you’re hardly aware of their existence.
Here are five of my favorite details from the book which is currently available in bookstores.
Old City Hall
We know the building better today as Federal Hall, the place where the first Constitutional Congress first met in 1789. (The original building was demolished in the early 19th century replaced with this one in 1842.) But the structure was actually New York’s City Hall as well, serving a variety of purposes— it was a very crowded building — until the current City Hall was finally opened in 1812.
From Pigott’s book: “In 1800, four years before their fatal encounter, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr actually served as part of the same defense team in a sensational murder trial held in Old City Hall. When his fiancé was found dead at the bottom of a well, Levi Weeks, a young carpenter, was charge with the murder. After a three-day trial in which 55 witnesses were called, Hamilton, burr and a third lawyer, Brockholst Livingston, secured Week’s acquittal, having succeeded in casting suspicion on another resident of the boardinghouse where Weeks lived.”
Courtesy MCNY
U.S. Realty Building
Linked to the Trinity Building with a tiny sky bridge, the U.S. Realty Building is a pre-zoning law skyscraper that casts a dark shadow over little Thames Street. For most of the 20th century it was the home of the Lawyer’s Club, a social club for the city’s most successful attorneys.
“In 1918, Thomas Masaryk was speaking at the Lawyer’s Club when he received a cable informing him that he had been elected president of the newly-created sate of Czechoslovakia.”
New York County Courthouse
Probably the most recognizable of New York’s civic architecture, the courthouse was built to replace the extravagant Tweed Courthouse. It used to be known not only for its legal decisions, but for its cuisine!
“In its early years, the Justices lunched in a dining room on the seventh floor on meals prepared in a large on-site kitchen by chefs on the courthouse staff.”
The original Bronx Borough Courthouse
The Bronx has some truly dazzling civic architecture, but not all of it is employed in the services of the city today. This 1915 courthouse, now a New York City landmark, was abandoned in 1977.
“[B]y 1988 it had lain vacant for several years and was described by architectural historian Christopher Gray as a ‘large pigeon coop’. In 1998, the City of New York rejected a bit by comment group Nos Quedamos to acquire the building. Instead it was sold at public auction to a private developer, who continues to seek a suitable use for the structure.”
The book also features a few notable addresses including….
Courtesy Brooklyn Public Library
James Madison High School, Brooklyn
According to Pigott, “[f]rom the high school still located at this address, a future Supreme Court Justice graduated in 1950. Born Ruth Joan Bader in 1933, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.”
New York’s Legal Landmarks A Guide to Legal Edifices, Institutions, Lore, History and Curiosities on the City’s Streets By Robert Pigott Attorney Street Editions
Here’s some old fashioned New York City trivia for you — There’s never been a Speaker of the House from the city of New York, although there have been a couple from New York state –  the otherwise unremarkable John W. Taylor, an upstate New Yorker from the Saratoga region, in 1820-21; and a central New York representative, Theodore Medad Pomeroy, who held the post for exactly one day in 1869.
But never fear! America’s very first Speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg, has a New York connection wholely unique and never to be repeated — he is the only Speaker to have served within that role in New York proper, in the months of 1789-1790 when the city was also the nation’s capital, and the center of government sat in Federal Hall on Wall Street.
Below: Federal Hall, home to the first House of Representatives 1789Â [NYPL]
And that was not Muhlenberg’s only tie to the city. Although he served in the House as a representative from Pennsylvania, he had previously lived in New York for two years during a truly volatile moment –Â the years before the Revolutionary War.
His name will probably sound familiar if you’re a Lutheran. His father Henry Melchior Muhlenberg is considered “the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in North America,” coming to the British colonies from Germany in 1742 by request of several American ministers in need of spiritual direction. Henry spread Lutheranism throughout the colonies, principally to German and Dutch settlers, and for a time in 1751 even lived in New York, uniting the Lutheran congregations here.
He spawned a true religious dynasty as three of his sons entered the ministry. Frederick (pictured below), born in 1750 in Trappe, Pennsylvania, trained at several small churches in the state before moving with his family to New York in 1774. Â Lutherans were by no means plentiful in New York during this period, but they worshipped in various small congregations throughout the city, including some services at Trinity Church.
Young Muhlenberg, however, took up with a new church situated just east of the city commons, the newish stone Old Christ Church at the southeast corner of Frankfort and William streets, affectionately referred to as the Old Swamp Church.
When that house of worship was built in 1767, this area of the city, sparsely populated, was called the ‘swamp’, not so much for the topography perhaps as for the grim-smelling leather shops and tanneries that sat here.
Collect Pond, which attracted these sorts of businesses, was but a stone’s throw away, and the area retained its air of industry even as the tanneries moved out and the presses (that would soon comprise Park Row’s newspaper district) moved in.
The congregation didn’t seem to mind however, especially now that they had a venerable Muhlenberg as their leader. And they certainly needed him by this time. In fact, he might had come to New York during this period specifically to reassure a tense congregation amid the tensions that were stewing within the city.
The city of over 22,000 inhabitants was being ripped apart with rebellion, as New Yorkers, caught in an increasing spirit of independence, fought back against British tyranny. From the steps of Old Swamp Church, members would have seen the ‘liberty poles’, hanging in the commons and festooned with banners, and heard (or participated in) regular rallies there.
Below: Civilians defending the liberty pole in 1776
The clandestine Sons of Liberty would conduct secret meetings in nearby taverns, and services would have been interrupted with sounds of the Sons’ many retaliations against British officials.
Congregants felt the inevitability of war; it would surely dominate their prayers by 1774. Having the guidance of Muhlenberg, son of the colonies’ most prominent Lutheran, would certainly be of great relief.
It seems, though, that Muhlenberg himself was at odds with his role. He was not bold or rebellious himself and he initially believed the conflicts were none of his business. Even as his brother Peter Muhlenberg, a Virginian who embraced the rebel conflict, would join the fledgling Continental Army in 1775, Frederick himself was not yet convinced. He wrote his brother: “You have become too involved in matters with which, as a preacher, you have nothing whatsoever to do and which do not belong to your office.” [source]
Revolution was invitable. But Frederick was a theologian, cautious and steady, and he worried not only for his congregation but for his own family. This passivity would soon fall away. When actual bombs began reigning down on the city, he sent his pregnant wife and children away to Philadelphia. He remained for a few months to officiate over a dwindling flock but soon fled himself in the first months of 1776, looking over his shoulder at a city soon to be paralyzed by war.
Below: An illustration from ‘D.T. Valentine’s Manual, 1859’, looking up from William Street from Frankfort. The building immediately to the left was the old Swamp Church, no longer in service and heavily redone by the mid-19th century.
He returned to New York in 1789Â as one of the most powerful men in the new government of the United States. Muhlenberg spent the war in Pennsylvania and soon found his footing there as a political leader, becoming a member of the Continental Congress and later elected as speaker to Pennsylvania’s own state House of Representatives in 1780.
Frederick wasn’t merely heeding a patriotic call. He had grown a little exhausted of the pulpit and wanted to develop his new course, one of his very own.
Muhlenberg’s austere character and unblemished reputation served him well in politics. He led Pennsylvania’s ratification of the Constitution in 1787. When the first national Congress was formed, Muhlenberg represented his state at their first meeting in the new temporary capital and his old home — New York.
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
His election as Speaker made perfect sense; he had a well-known last name that had helped define American spirituality, and he came from a state neatly between that of President George Washington (from Virginia) and Vice President John Adams (from Massachusetts).
The first House of Representatives met on April 1, 1789, at Federal Hall at the junction of Wall and Broad streets, just south of Old Swamp Church (which now thrived under new leadership). Muhlenberg would help shape the first traditions of the House and define the rules as dictated by the Constitution, its ink still dry and untested. Most notably, his was the first signature to grace the Bill of Rights:
He grew into a tolerant and jovial leader, best known for inviting fellow Congressmen over to his home for fairly elaborate ‘oyster suppers’. Muhlenberg would remain Speaker of the House for the entirety of the first Congress, even as they moved out of New York at the end of 1790. He stayed in the House through 1797, become Speaker again for the Third Congress in 1793.
Muhlenberg’s name has been attached to some rather scandalous events. He was one of three men brought into the confidence of Alexander Hamilton during a blackmail scandal involving his mistress Maria Reynolds. Muhlenberg was sympathetic to Hamilton’s predicament; one of the other three men, political enemy and future president James Monroe, was less so.
Three brothers Major General Peter Muhlenberg, The Hon. Frederick Muhlenberg and Dr. Henry Muhlenberg from the 1913 book Lutheran landmarks and pioneers in America
In 1796, during congressional battles over funding for the Jay Treaty, Muhlenberg broke a tie vote authorizing the highly controversial treaty to go forward. As a thank-you, his anti-treaty brother-in-law stabbed him in retaliation. He recovered, but family dinners must have been very awkward after that.
Muhlenberg retired shortly thereafter and died in his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1801.
As for the Swamp Church, its members slowly drifted away, and the property was purchased by tobacco mogul George Lorillard. The Lorillards also have very deep scars due to the Revolutionary War, but that is another story.
THE FIRST PODCAST  Once upon a time there was a country doctor with a love of birds, a milkmaid with translucent skin, an eight-year-old boy with no idea what he’s in for and a wonderful cow that holds the secret to human immunity.
This is the story of the first vaccine, perhaps one of the greatest inventions in modern human history. Come listen to this remarkable story of risk and bravery which led to the eradication of one of the deadliest diseases in human history.
And hear the words of Dr. Edward Jenner himself, written in the first weeks of his experiments!
