The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Benjamin Franklin helped to create the modern world. His legacy is all around you — from the electricity which powers and illuminates our homes to the ideas that form our system of government. For the past three episodes of The First: Stories of Inventions and their Consequences (the Bowery Boys spin-off podcast from 2016-2018), Greg… Read More
On November 19, 1895, Calvert Vaux went for a morning walk from his son’s home in Brooklyn. He never returned. The 70 year old architect had helped to create the greatest parks in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. His landscape collaborations with Frederick Law Olmsted had given Manhattan its Central Park and Brooklyn… Read More
When park designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux regrouped after the success of Central Park to design another great park for Brooklyn — encompassing Prospect Hill and the Revolutionary War site Battle Pass — they preserved a greater amount of natural topography than they had in Manhattan. But that doesn’t mean that Prospect Park… Read More
Pictured above is a remarkable structure that once dominated the scenery on the northern side of Central Park. This was the Academy of Saint Vincent on a hill that bore its name. Located on the northern portion of the park, next to the charming Harlem Meer (and nearest 103rd Street), the Academy sat nestled amid a collection… Read More
Theodore Roosevelt Park (77th and 81st Streets, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue), which contains the beloved American Museum of Natural History, is the oldest developed section of the Upper West Side, purchased by the city in 1839 as a possible strolling park to be called Manhattan Square. Central Park was but a gleam in the eye back in… Read More
A tantalizing stretch of New York nightlife history lies in the shadows, illegally operated, often fueled by police bribes — the opium dens of Chinatown and the speakeasies of the Village and midtown. There were also hundreds of illicit gambling rackets, called ‘poolrooms’, throughout the city in the late 19th century, usually alongside the seediest… Read More
“Such is the world, or, rather, one infinitesimal portion of the cosmos, in the year 2015, according to the ancient calendar, or 90 since the Terror.” From the original illustrations of The Doomsman: a look up Park Row in 2015, a decrepit row of deteriorating structures. You can clearly see the ruins of old Post… Read More
This classic episode of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast (originally released in December of 2021) is featured in this week’s episode of the History Channel podcast HISTORY This Week. Since 2011 the Bowery Boys Podcast has revisited a few of the themes featured in this show. After listening to this episode, give… Read More
Jacob Riis changed the world with “How The Other Half Lives.” By using the new technology of flash photography, Riis was able to capture the squalid conditions of Manhattan tenements in a way no mere paragraph, drawing or sermon could. The startling photographs contained in this book did not originate there, however. Riis debuted them… Read More
Above: The arm of the Statue of Liberty stood solitary in Madison Square for six years, from 1876 to 1882. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, one of the forgotten names in Statue of Liberty history was born in Paris. As the godfather of historical restoration, Viollet-le-Duc would rescue countless medieval structures from decay, helping to preserve the… Read More
In 1863, New Yorkers flocked to the waterfront to see a startling sight — Russian war ships in New York Harbor. They were here as a display of force, but not to threaten the United States. The fleet of Russian ships, sailing into New York Harbor in September 1863, as depicted by Harper’s Weekly. Russia’s… Read More
One hundred and fifty years ago this month (more specifically, on January 7, 1872), a shocking assassination took place at the northwest corner of 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue. And it took place at a quite surprising venue — the Grand Opera House. Surprising in the sense that it seems unusual that an opera house… Read More
Today is the 105th anniversary of the Kingsland factory explosion. To mark the occasion I’m reposting this article originally released on the 100th anniversary of this mysterious disaster. On the afternoon on January 11, 1917, workers in downtown Manhattan skyscrapers were jolted from their desks by a startling sight in New Jersey — an exploding… Read More
New York City has a new mayor — Eric Adams! So we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors, becoming familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history. This longtime feature of this… Read More
PODCAST Steven Spielberg’s new version of West Side Story is here — and it’s fantastic — so we’re re-visiting our 2016 show on the history of Lincoln Center, with a new show introduction discussing the film and the passing of musical icon Stephen Sondheim. Warm up the orchestra, lace up your dance slippers, and bring… Read More