PODCASTFrederick Law Olmsted, America’s preeminent landscape architect of the 19th century, designed dozens of parks, parkways and college campuses across the country.
With Calvert Vaux, he created two of New York City’s greatest parks — Central Park and Prospect Park.
Yet before Central Park, he had never worked on any significant landscape project and he wasn’t formally trained in any kind of architecture.
In fact, Fred was a bit of a wandering soul, drifting from one occupation to the next, looking for fulfillment in farming, traveling and writing.
This is the remarkable story of how Olmsted found his true calling.
The Central Park proposal drafted by Olmsted and Vaux — called the Greensward Plan — drew from personal experiences, ideas of social reform and the romance of natural beauty (molded and manipulated, of course, by human imagination).
But for Olmsted, it was also created in the gloom of personal sadness. And for Vaux, in the reverence of a mentor who died much too young.
PLUS: In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Olmsted’s birth, Greg is joined on the show by Adrian Benepe, former New York City parks commissioner and president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
LISTEN NOW: FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED AND THE PLAN FOR CENTRAL PARK
Thank you Adrian Benepe for appearing on the show and to everybody over at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for your help in putting things together.
Charles Trask, Charles Loring Brace, Fred Kingsbury, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Hull Olmsted at 1846Forty Years of Landscape Architecture; being the Professional Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Senior. 1922-28. Contributed in BHL from the University of California Libraries.
Fred’s brother John Olmsted
From Olmsted’s personal collection of photographs, The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Mass. Source
The Burning of the Henry Clay, in a lithograph by Nathaniel Currier, 1852
Calvert Vaux
Egbert Ludovicus Viele
The Greensward Plan will be on display at The New York City Department of Records and Information Services/Municipal Archives Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23.
After listening to this episode of Frederick Law Olmsted, jump back into these earlier Bowery Boys Podcasts which discuss similar themes or situations from the show:
FURTHER READING
The Central Park: Original Designs for New York’s Greatest Treasure / Cynthia S. Brenwell, New York City Municipal Archives Central Park: The Birth, Decline and Renewal of a National Treasure / Eugene Kinkead A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century / Witold Rybczynski Creating Central Park / Morrison H. Hecksher Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted / Justin Martin Parks for the People: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted / Julie Dunlap The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of National Parks / Dennis Drabelle
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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
Temple Emanu-El, home to New York’s first Reform Jewish congregation and the largest synagogue in the city, sits on the spot of Mrs. Caroline Astor‘s former Gilded Age mansion. Out with the old, in with the new.
The synagogue shimmers with Jazz Age style from vibrant stained-glass windows to its Art Deco tiles and mosaics. When its doors opened in 1929, the congregation was making a very powerful statement. New York’s Jewish community had arrived.
This story begins on the Lower East Side with the first major arrival of German immigrants in the 1830s. New Jewish congregations splintered from old ones, inspired by the Reform movement from Europe and the possibilities of life in America.
Congregation Emanu-El grew rapidly, moving from the Lower East Side to Fifth Avenue in 1868. Their beautiful new synagogue reflected the prosperity of its congregants who were nonetheless excluded from mainstream (Christian oriented, old moneyed) high society.
Why did they move to the spot of the old Astor mansion? What does the current synagogue’s architect say about its congregation? And where in the sanctuary can you find a tribute to the congregation’s Lower East Side roots?
Rabbi Joshua Davidson’s Shabbat Remarks on Ukraine from February 25, 2022. For more information on Congregation Emanu-El’s efforts to assist refugees in Ukraine, visit their website.
Children stand in the bathtub left behind within the ruins of the Astor mansion demolition. The house, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, was demolished in 1926 and replaced with Temple Emanu-El.
Windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Courtesy Temple Emanu-ElRabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Courtesy Temple Emanu-ElCourtesy Temple Emanu-ElTemple Emanu-El Womens’ Auxiliary Tea
Images From a Colorful Guide Announcing Its Construction, 1927
SYNAGOGUES MENTIONED ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW
Emanu-El’s first home at Grand and Clinton streets
Courtesy Temple Emanu-El
Emanu-El’s second home — a remodeled Methodist church on Chrystie Street
Emanu-El’s third home — Twelfth Street Baptist Church (later St. Ann’s)
George F. Arata. Museum of the City of New York.George Stacy photographer, 1863, Library of Congress
Believe it or not, the face of this building still exists. The rest of the building has been replaced with an apartment building. More information on the website Ephemeral New York.
Illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia (1906—1913).Temple Beth-El, as seen from Central Park, 1900. Library of Congress
Central Synagogue
Park East Synagogue
FURTHER READING
Stephen Birmingham / Our Crowd Stephen Birmingham / The Rest of Us Michael A. Meyer / Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism Deborah Dash Moore / Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People Marc Lee Raphael / Judaism In America Steven R. Weisman / The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became An American Religion The Jewish Metropolis: New York City from the 17th Century to the 21st Century / Edited by Daniel Soyer
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this week’s episode on Temple Emanu-El, dive back into past episodes which intersect with his story.
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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
In the 1850s, New York City had become the third largest German-speaking capital in the world, topped only by Berlin and Vienna. In just thirty years — since the first significant influx of immigrants in the 1820s — Germans had helped to transform the city’s cultural life.
But today, even as we celebrate a tapestry of ethnic neighborhoods around the five boroughs, that vibrant concentration of German community which once defined New York is essentially gone (barring a few historic businesses in places like Yorkville.)
THE GREAT DISAPPEARING ACT Germans in New York City 1880-1930 Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson Rutgers University Press
“Where did all the Germans go?” asks Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson, a German research scientist and public historian, in her new book on the assimilation and ‘disappearance’ of German culture into American life.
Ziegler-McPherson sets up her story with a description of German New York that seems almost unimaginable, a universe of churches, cafes, beer gardens, theaters, newspapers and verein (or social clubs) where German was freely spoken and newly arrived immigrants could revel in a taste of their former homes.
So much German culture has become infused into the American landscape (from common words with German origins to foods like hot dogs and pretzels) because Germans themselves sought to blend in.
For a time Germans — even the most prosperous — saved the space outside their English-speaking interactions for a private life that preserved their former heritage.
“But by the 1880s,” Ziegler-McPherson writes, “fewer Americans of German heritage spoke German (or spoke it well). German Americans’ adoption of English as their primary language continued as the end of the century approached.”
She even dispels a popular theory (one might even call it an urban legend) — that the explosion of the General Slocum steamship in 1904 effectively spelled the end of the former German neighborhood of Kleindeutschland, the original enclave in today’s Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods.
In truth most Germans were already on the move.
“When the General Slocum burned, New York City’s German community had long been defined more by its institutions than is geographic location, and German New Yorkers had recreated Kleindeutschland all over the city.”
During World War I, most Germans had good reason to disguise their heritage amid suspicion and discrimination after many decades of seeming harmony. “A long process of disappearing into American culture rapidly turned into an effort to hide in plain sight or become invisible.”
By 1930 — long before World War II — vibrant examples of German culture had disappeared in most corners of New York except in isolated neighborhoods (such as Yorkville). But in a way, an outline of its heritage — cultural markings long adopted by the mainstream — still remain.
“Just as Germans became more ‘American,’ so had other Americans become more ‘German,’ and nowhere was this more clearly seen than in New York City.”
The New York restaurant Delmonico’s became famous for bringing elegant, luxurious dining and sophisticated French dishes to American tables.
The culinary genius behind these dramatic dishes was Delmonico’s celebrity chef — the Frenchman Charles Ranhofer — who guided their kitchens from 1862 to 1896.
Ranhofer left us with his extraordinary cookbook published at the height of the Gilded Age in the 1890’s, called The Epicurean, detailing the ingredients and preparations of Delmonico’s classic dishes.
Carl and his guest — creative director and food stylist Victoria Granof — take a look at this extraordinary chef and some of the most outrageous dishes from Delmonico’s tables – including a peacock.
Any new film which features an interview with the always hilarious and candid comedy legend Mel Brooks should be seen and celebrated.
Now add interviews with Carl Reiner, Colin Powell and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, three individuals who have since died since participating in said new film.
What could possibly bring all of these fascinating people together in one place? Their love of automats.
Director Lisa Hurwitz’s new film The Automat is ostensibly about the curious Horn & Hardart lunchrooms which ruled the everyday dining scene of New York and Philadelphia for several decades during the 20th century.
But it’s really a sweet and kind-hearted look at the nostalgia of eating itself, of the ways memory makes even the most commonplace food and drink extraordinary.
Did the automat really have the best coffee (according to Brooks)? What was so magical about this novel eatery — with compartments of Salisbury steak, creamed spinach and coconut creme pie, arranged in neat rows — that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz keeps a framed picture of an automat in his office? (He also claims in the film to have partially modeled his coffee shops on the adventure and romance of the automat.)
Hurwitz allows us all to salivate at the prospects of this magical restaurant concept which turned affordable dining into a wondrous game of sorts. Brooks and others, for instance, marvel at the talents of women who dispensed a dollar’s worth of nickels to patrons.
Automats were a truly democratic way of enjoying a cheap meal and their neon-drenched restaurants became a joyful part of the New York City landscape. A certain aspect of the city’s personality died with the final Horn & Hardart’s closed in 1991.
The Automat, for a moment, allows us to marvel again at the magical glass cases full of pie and the dolphin-headed spouts of coffee.
Marin Hinkle and Rachel Brosnahan seen on the set of 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' in on May 27, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
Midge, Joel, Susie and the gang are back! The world seemed like a much simpler place the last time we saw a new episode of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel back in December of 2019.
The fourth season of the award-winning New York City-based comedy starts Friday, February 18, with new episodes each week. And it appears that our favorite plucky and glamorous stand-up (played by Rachel Brosnahan) is about to experience some pretty seismic changes too — welcome to the year 1960.
We know a little bit about New York City in the 1960s. To get yourself in the mood for the return — the costumes! the sets! the music! — here’s a few episodes of the Bowery Boys podcast that explore themes from Maisel‘s past seasons and things we might expect to see this season:
We released this show in 2018 to celebrate Maisel‘s second season. A breezy history on the history of stand-up in New York City — from the vaudeville stage to Rodney Dangerfield and Richard Pryor.
UNITED STATES – FEBRUARY 19: Patrons at the gaslight, 116 McDougal St. Greenwich Village (Photo by Charles Payne/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
Midge Maisel’s already very familiar with the Village comedy club scene. The bohemian district goes through some fascinating changes in the 1960s thanks to folk music, political activism and experimental theater.
Among the show’s most distinctive and interesting depictions are those in the Garment District which moved to Midtown Manhattan during the 1920s and 30s from the Lower East Side. Explore the history of the industry, a major backdrop in Maisel.
The gang goes to Coney Island at some point this season — they were spotted on the boardwalk filming back in May — and I hope they indulge themselves on several of the amusement district’s most famous ride.
Julius Bar, April 21, 1966. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)
This episode will give you some insights into what the West Village was like in the mid 1960s. From some episode details that we already know, it looks like Midge will be spending a bit more in the neighborhood.
Our favorite episodes always have at least one or two scenes in distinctive New York eateries. The classic diner is as American as the apple pie it serves, but the New York diner is a special experience all its own, an essential facet of everyday life in the big city.
Louis Armstrong in Corona. Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
PODCAST New York City has an impressive collection of historic homes, but none as unique and joyful as the Louis Armstrong House and Museum, located in Corona, Queens.
What other historic home in the United States has aqua blue kitchen cabinets, bathroom speakers behind silver wallpaper, mirrored bathrooms and chandeliers over the bed?
Louis and Lucille Armstrong, 1960s (SAS Scandinavian Airlines)
Louis Armstrong is one of the most influential and most popular musicians in American history. Louis, like jazz itself, was born in New Orleans; in 1943, Armstrong moved to this house in Corona, thanks to the influence of his wife Lucille Armstrong, a former Cotton Club dancer and a fascinating personality in her own right.
In this episode Greg charts Armstrong’s path to fame — and then his journey to becoming a New Yorker. And pays a visit to the house itself, a magnificent treasure on a quiet street in Queens. Joining Greg on the show today are the museum’s executive director Regina Bain and director of guest experience Adriana Carrillo
FEATURING audio of Louis and Lucille courtesy the Louis Armstrong House and Museum. And lots of music!
LISTEN NOW: THE WONDERFUL HOME OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG
A big thanks to Ricky Riccardi, the Director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum, for providing all the marvelous audio clips you heard in this week’s show.
Visit the Louis Armstrong House and Museum website for further information about taking a tour and participating in other events. And head over to their Virtual Exhibits page, curated by Riccardi, for more insights and stories about Louis and Lucille.
And be on the lookout later this year for the opening of the Louis Armstrong Center. The center will feature a permanent exhibition Here To Stay by Jason Moran.
Louis and Lucille at home. May 1970. Photo by Yuzo Sato. Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
One of Lucille Armstrong’s final interviews in 1983, recorded in her Corona home:
Lucille and Louis on the May 26, 1970 episode of “The Mike Douglas Show”:
Photo by Greg YoungPhoto by Greg Young
FURTHER READING
Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans by Thomas Brothers Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong by Gary Giddens Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong by Ricky Riccardi What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years by Ricky Riccardi Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this show on the Louis Armstrong House and Museum, dig back into the back catalog and listen to these shows with similar themes
MUSICAL CUES HEARD IN THE SHOW
“When The Saints Go Marching In” “Chimes Blues” by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band “Heebie Jeebies” by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five “Ain’t Misbehavin'” by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five “Weather Bird” by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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.
On a new episode of The Gilded Gentleman, it’s time to board the elevated train down to New York City’s premier commercial district to experience a day of luxurious shopping.
During the 1870’s and 1880’s New York’s famous Ladies’ Mile shopping district took hold along Broadway, and grand palaces of retail grew, filled with splendors and luxuries to tempt the glittering clientele that swept through their doors.
Meet me at the fountain! Siegel-Cooper’s famous interior landmark. (Library of Congress
Join host Carl Raymond and special guest Emma Guest-Consales PhD, art historian and master guide, for a unique and fascinating Gilded Age shopping trip.
Listen here or subscribe to The Gilded Gentleman Podcast
The Gilded Gentleman Podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.
PODCASTDorothy Parker was not only the wittiest writer of the Jazz Age, she was also obsessively morbid.
Her talents rose at a very receptive moment for such a sharp, dour outlook, after the first world war and right as the country went dry. Dorothy Parker’s greatest lines are as bracing and intoxicating as a hard spirit.
No wonder she so droll and morose. Her most successful verse often veers into somber moods, loaded with thoughts of self-destruction or wry despair.
In fact, she frequently quipped about the epitaph that would some day grace her tombstone. Excuse my dust is one she suggested in Vanity Fair.
In this episode, Greg pays tribute to the great Mrs Parker, the most famous member of the Algonquin Round Table, and reveals a side of the writer that you may not know — a more engaged, politically thoughtful Parker.
Death did not end the story of Dorothy Parker. In fact, due to some unfortunate circumstances (chiefly relating to her frenemy Lillian Hellman), her remains would make a journey to several places before reaching their final home — Woodlawn Cemetery.
Joining Greg on the show is author and tour guide Kevin Fitzpatrick of the Dorothy Parker Society who has now become a part of Parker’s legacy.
Fitzpatrick brings Dorothy Parker’s remains to Woodlawn Cemetery. Photo by Joe Conzo
FEATURED ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW
https://youtu.be/VHawzGr05CQ?t=135
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this show on the life (and afterlife) of Dorothy Parker, dive into these related Bowery Boys podcast (especially the one on the Algonquin Round Table, also featuring an interview with Kevin Fitzpatrick):
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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.
Bowery Boys Podcast listeners will recognize a familiar voice on HBO’s “Official Gilded Age Podcast,” set to launch on Monday, January 24 as a companion podcast to the network’s upcoming TV series The Gilded Age.
Tom Meyers, of the Bowery Boys Podcast, co-hosts the HBO podcast series alongside TCM’s Alicia Malone.
“I think Bowery Boys listeners are in for a fun ride,” Meyers said. “The series is so much fun to watch, and then on the podcast we get to sort through all the history that we just saw play out. Plus, we’ll have a chance to talk one-on-one with the show’s cast and creators.”
The Gilded Age, created and written by Julian Fellowes, features an all-star cast that includes Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Nathan Lane,Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Denée Benton and Louisa Jacobson.
The show debuts on Monday, January 24, 2022 on HBO and HBO Max. Podcast episodes will be released Mondays through the run of the series.
Calling all fans of Downton Abbey! The newest episode of The Gilded Gentleman podcast, hosted by Carl Raymond, features a very special guest.
New York Times bestselling author Carol Wallace discusses her just published novel of the Gilded Age called Our Kind of People as well insights on her book To Marry an English Lord which served as an inspiration for Downton Abbey.
Her new book explores a story of Gilded Age romance in late 19th century New York — from the ballrooms to the elevated railroad.
Wallace describes her writing process and inspirations and how the adventures of her fictional characters rise from the real-life vitality of Old New York.
According to Publishers Weekly: “Wallace does full justice to the era’s conventions, and her characters’ attempts to navigate meteoric social and technological change are recognizably and deliciously modern.”
PODCAST What does the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea mean to you? Religion and architecture? Art galleries and gay bars? Shopping and brunch after a stroll on the High Line? Tens of thousands of people, of course, call it home.
But before it was a neighborhood, it was the Colonial-era estate — the home of a British military officer who named his bucolic property after a London veterans hospital.
His descendant Clement Clarke Moore would distinguish himself as a theologian and writer; he invented many aspects of the Christmas season in one very famous poem. But he could no longer preserve his family estate when New York civic planners (and the Commissioners Plan of 1811) came a-calling.
Chelsea House, home of Clement Clarke Moore
Moore parceled the estate into private lots in the 1820s and 30s, creating both the exclusive development Chelsea Square and the grand, beautiful General Theological Seminary.
Slowly, over the decades, this charming residential district (protected as a historic district today) would be surrounded by a wide variety of urban needs — from heavy industrial to venues of amusement. One stretch would even become “the Bowery of the West Side.”
Further change arrived in the late 20th century as blocks of tenements were replaced with housing projects and emptied warehouses became discotheques and art collectives. Then came the Big Cup.
Join us as we celebrate over 200 years of urban development — how Chelsea the estate became Chelsea the neighborhood.
Photo by Greg YoungTwo gorgeous townhouses on Chelsea Square. Photo by Greg YoungPhoto by Greg Young
Photos from the General Theological Seminary. Leave your ID at the front desk and you can go on a tour of this lovely site yourself…..
The seminary in 1900, Detroit Publishing Co, courtesy Library of CongressLondon Terrace 1919 / New York Public LibraryLondon Terrace in 1931.London Terrace today. Photo by Greg YoungThe Grand Opera House, 23rd and 8th Avenue, Courtesy the Museum of the City of New YorkSome older structures along Ninth Avenue. Photo by Greg YoungPhoto by Greg YoungGreg on the unfinished part of the High Line with the Starrett-Lehigh Building in the background, 2012Starrett-Lehigh Building todayCaptivating Lamartine Place on West 29th Street with Hudson Yards looming in the distance.The Big Cup on Eighth Avenue. Picture courtesy the Facebook group THEN & NOW: Uncle Charlie Remembers Our LGBT Memories of NYC
A short documentary on the nightclub called Tunnel:
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this episode on the history of the Chelsea neighborhood, check out these past episodes with similar themes and subjects
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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.
The Ansonia Hotel in 1905, Detroit Publishing Co., courtesy the Library of Congress
PODCAST The strange, scandalous and sex-filled story of The Ansonia, an Upper West Side architectural gem and a legendary musical landmark.
In the television show Only Murders in the Building, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez play podcasters attempting to solve a mystery in a building full of eccentric personalities.
Their fictional apartment building is called The Arconia, a name partially inspired by The Ansonia, a former residential hotel with a history truly stranger than fiction.
Built by the copper scion W.E.D Stokes, the lavish Ansonia remains one of the grandest buildings on the Upper West Side. But its hallways have seen some truly dramatic events including one of the greatest sports crimes in American history.
Today the Ansonia is still known as the home for great musicians and many of the most famous composers and opera stars have lived here.
But it’s the music legacy of the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse once in its basement, that may resonate with pop and rock music lovers as the launching pad for one of America’s great performers.
PLUS: The hedonistic disco delights of Plato’s Retreat.
NOTE: This show feature discussions of adult sex clubs and bathhouses. Although the show does not linger on the specifics, parental guidance is nonetheless suggested.
LISTEN NOW: THE ANSONIA
The Ansonia 1904, Detroit Publishing Co., Library of CongressW.E.D. Stokes — Notable New Yorkers of 1896-1899 (1899)1920 advertisement, courtesy Clock History
Bette Midler at the Continental Baths:
A television commercial (!!!) for Plato’s Retreat
Eleanor Steber’s album recorded at the Continental Baths
The New York Herald article mentioned in the podcast where Stokes explains why women from Chicago have such large feet.
FURTHER READING
The Ansonia: A Pictorial History of Manhattan’s Beaux-Arts Masterpiece / The Cardinals Built to Last: 100+ Year Old Hotels in New York / Stanley Turkel “Design Notebook: Rescuing the Ansonia from the Rescuers” by Paul Greenberger Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series / Eliot Asinof Here Lies the Heart / Mercedes de Acosta Live At The Continental / Steve Ostrow The Sky’s The Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan / Steven Gaines “That Wacky Little Waif, Bette Midler” by Rex Reed (New York Daily News) “A Troubled Transition for the Ansonia” by Shawn G. Kennedy A View from a Broad / Bette Midler Vision and Enterprise: Exploring the History of Phelps Dodge / Carlos A. Schwantes
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to this episode on the history of the Ansonia, check out these past episodes with similar themes and subjects
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our 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 several different pledge levels. 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.
There’s one more new Bowery Boys Podcast to come in 2021 (look for it on New Year’s Eve) — but we wanted to take a moment to thank you for making 2021 another fantastic year. Twelve months, 28 brand new episodes and a live show. And of course — a new spin-off!
It’s a pretty special way to go into the new year — where we will celebrate our 15th year of producing the Bowery Boys podcast.
And of course an extra, extra special thank you to those who support us Patreon. We were able to produce these shows because of your support and encouragement.
Our annual holiday history-book gift guide is here! Of course that also means gifts for you. You don’t have to give these away at all. Treat yourself or that history lover in your life to one of these fascinating 2021 releases, some of our favorite reads of the year.
NOTE: Some of them have been reviewed during the year and you can find the full length review in the provided links below.
The Barbizon The Hotel That Set Women Free Paulina Bren
So many great women thrived in New York City in the 20th century because of the freedoms afforded by the Upper East Side’s Barbizon Hotel, a residential hotel where no men were allowed. Women from Sylvia Plath to Grace Kelly lived here and thousands more — from the late 1920s to the 1980s.
As Bren writes in this charmer of a book, “Women did not come to the Barbizon to network but that’s what they did anyway. They helped each other find work, they talked over problems with one another, they applauded each other’s success and gave solace to those with disappointment and heartbreak.”
Building the Brooklyn Bridge 1869-1883 Jeffrey I. Richman
This thrilling and richly arranged coffee-table volume by Green-wood Cemetery historian Jeffrey I. Richman with re-ignite your love of the Brooklyn Bridge. Bringing together a trove of archival images, Richman explores the extraordinary story of the bridge’s construction — grand, marvelous and sometimes tragic.
Richman’s epic visual treatment of the bridge’s development rightly centers it as one of the greatest engineering achievements in American history.
Oh and I should add — sections of the book are in 3-D. It even comes with 3-D glasses!
Death In New York History and Culture of Burials, Undertakers & Executions K. Krombie
New York City is full of life surrounded by death, a metropolis of mausoleums and memorials, with ancient burial grounds tucked between apartment buildings and rural cemeteries with classic works of architecture.
Krombie surveys the ways in which city dwellers interact with those who have passed. This is not a depressing read but really a guide to how memory and reverence are interpreted (and sometimes ignored) in a thriving cityscape — from regal tombs in the Bronx to forgotten Black burial grounds in Staten Island. (For just a 190 page book, Death in New York is generously packed with information.)
“KEEP ‘EM IN THE EAST” Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance Richard Koszarski
“Calling all movie buffs! Koszarski’s latest movie-industry history is an essential resource for your bookshelves, a detailed inspection of critical film work in the New York City area from the 1930s to 1950s and the release of Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront.
As Koszarski reveals, one key to the continued existence of a local New York film industry was a City Hall friendly to the business, with business-minded mayors like William O’Dwyer attempting to lure filmmakers with financial incentives and streamlined permits.
With the rise of film noir and crime pictures, New York became a perfect physical backdrop and many classic examples (The Naked City being the best known) feature actual city landmarks and locations.”
Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age Debby Applegate
A genuine rags-to-riches tale, beautifully told. The Jazz Age is best explored from the perspective of a rule-breaker, and very few people broke the roles quite like Polly Adler, a Polish Jewish immigrant who thrived in Prohibition New York as the city’s most successful madam.
Adler’s clever business acumen allowed her to negotiate both the criminal and legal worlds, and her parlor brothels were filled the most sinful, most famous men of the 1920s.
“Slumming intellectuals and Broadway Bohemians were tickled by her blunt realism and lightly louche wisecracks,” writes Adler. “Everyone, from Park Avenue aristocrats to Lower East Side hooligans, appreciated her ironclad discretion.”
Applegate’s prose has won her honors before — her superb biography on Henry Ward Beecher won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize — and it may do so again. The story dances off the page.
An Open Secret The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton Nicholas L. Syrett
But the parameters of Allerton’s personal life might be considered obscured today — concealed by the polite vestiges of post-Gilded Age social decorum, cushioned by the privilege of his vast wealth.
In An Open Secret, author Nicholas Syrett takes the reader into a maze of social norms redefined by the comforts of wealth and a collection of personal mysteries as well-kept as a display case of ancient art.
A Revolution in Three Acts The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay and Julian Eltinge David Hadju & John Carey
In this fabulously illustrated graphic novel, writer David Hadju and artist John Carey bring to life three of the most enigmatic and unique entertainers of the vaudeville era — gender bending Julian Eltinge, chanteuse Eva Tanguay and Black superstar Bert Williams.
Although I would say it achieves an even loftier goal — capturing the spirit of vaudeville itself, the stage as a laboratory of cultural experimentation.
Above a triumphant image of Tanguay, Hadju writes, “When the Lincoln-head penny was introduced, Tanguay had a costume made of pennies glued onto bodysuit.” On the next page, she flicks the pennies off her form-fitting suit, to the delight of audiences. And the reader.
Republic of Detours How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America Scott Borchert
Scott Borchert’s fascinating survey of this unconventional New Deal program, packed with literary greats, brings FDR’s optimistic political strides of the 1930s in line with the realities of the American landscape — from the mountains of Idaho to the swamplands of Florida.
The American Guides — tour guides of each state and many cities, often quirky and elegantly written — were the signature achievements of the project, employing thousands of writers from a wide spectrum of talents and ideologies to produce a snapshot of the United States in the late 1930s.
Rogues’ Gallery The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York John Oller
Oh the evils of late 19th century crime in New York! Why are they so fascinating? Oller’s adventure-filled history of the underworld explores Thomas F. Byrnes and a world of criminal activity which inspired his ‘rogue’s gallery’ (an actual collection of photographs used by detectives).
Byrnes’ tenure ushered in a new kind of detective work at a moment when crime itself was beginning to change. “For Gilded Age gang members and thieves,” Oller writes, “crime was just business. The new criminals were low-life mirror images of the more exalted robber Barrons, who cut corners to earn their untold riches.”
By the book’s final pages, a sinister new enterprise would emerge in New York City — organized crime. And you’ll enjoy every scoundrel along the way.
Saving Stuyvesant Town How One Community Defeated The Worst Real Estate Deal In History Daniel R. Garodnick
In 2006, when MetLife announced it was selling Stuyvesant Town (eventually to real estate behemoth Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion), tenants feared that the complex’s famous middle-class affordability was about to disappear.
Fortunately one of those tenants was Daniel Garodnick, longtime resident and a newly elected city councilman.
In his new book Saving Stuyvesant Town, Garodnick reveals the backstory behind the unexpected and financially complicated events which followed the announcement, a battle between a community and the real estate world during one of the most volatile financial periods in American history.
