The Bowery Boys: New York City History
There is no place in New York City quite like the converted factory building at 538 Johnson Avenue in Bushwick*, Brooklyn. At the same time, it evokes in mysterious ways a compelling truth about this city — that every building has a story, if only it had a storyteller to share it. For 538 Johnson, that storyteller is Bryan Sears,… Read More
Nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale was born 200 years ago today in Florence, Italy. And it got me thinking about my favorite Nightingale-related landmark in New York. Just locate the remnant of little Cannon Street in the Lower East Side (it’s between Delancey and Broome Streets) and you’ll find a building most fowl—or rather, most owl.… Read More
EPISODE 325 In 1858, during two terrible nights of violence, the needs of the few outweighed the needs of the many when a community, endangered for decades and ignored by the state, finally reached its breaking point. In Staten Island, just south the spot of today’s St. George Ferry Terminal, where thousands board and disembark… Read More
EPISODE 324 At last! The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast looks at one of the strangest traditions in this city’s long history — that curious custom known as Moving Day. Every May 1st, for well over two centuries, from the colonial era to World War II, rental leases would expire simultaneously, and thousands… Read More
EPISODE 321 The Hollywood icon and Broadway star Lauren Bacall lived at the Dakota Apartments on the Upper West Side for 53 years. Her story is intertwined the Dakota, a revolutionary apartment complex built in 1884. In this episode, we tell both their stories. Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, the daughter of Jewish Eastern European… Read More
Few people are allowed to go onto Hart Island, the quiet, narrow island in the Long Island Sound, a lonely place in sight of the bustling community of City Island. For over 150 years, Hart Island has been New York’s potter’s field, the burial site for over one million people — unclaimed bodies, stillborn babies,… Read More
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died from his injuries by the assassin John Wilkes Booth who shot the president the previous evening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. It was a fate promised to him by Southern sympathizers from the moment he was first elected on November 6, 1860. At no point was… Read More
EPISODE 319 In simpler times, thousands of tourists would flock to the northern tip of Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan to take a picture with a rather unconventional New Yorker — the bronze sculpture Charging Bull by Italian-American artist Arturo Di Modica. Bull is a product of the 1980s New York art scene, delivered as… Read More
“Do you love him, Loretta?” “Aw, ma, I love him awful.” “Oh God, that’s too bad.” Moonstruck, the 1987 comedy starring Cher and Nicolas Cage, not only celebrates that crazy little thing called love, but also pays tribute to the Italian working class residents of the old “South Brooklyn” neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill… Read More
Over ten years ago, the New York Post and the New York Daily News were locked in a battle for tabloid dominance, wrestling and rolling around just as an apocalypse – the digital revolution — was descending upon American newsrooms. Newspapers across the country have either folded or become absorbed into national conglomerates. America’s best-selling… Read More
The Hall of Fame for Great Americans, founded in 1900, was a precursor to the Nobel Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a vaunted tribute to those who have contributed greatly to the development the United States of America. Located on the campus of Bronx Community College in the University Heights neighborhood of the… Read More
EPISODE 314 — London Terrace, an English-inspired apartment complex, is a jewel of apartment living in the neighborhood of Chelsea. In 1929, a set of unusual townhouses — also named London Terrace — were demolished to construct this spectacular set of buildings. That is, all townhouses but one — the home of Mrs. Tillie Hart,… Read More
When it comes to artistic creation, we take many fundamentals of law for granted. Most people might not understand the particulars of ‘intellectual property’ but they sure benefit from it. The very review you are reading — and the website that publishes it — are protected by laws that were hammered out and fought for… Read More
For the next several weeks, the Bowery Boys Podcast will be going live two times a week — every Tuesday and Friday. Read our announcement here. EPISODE 313 “No man likes to have his hat snatched from his head by somebody he has not yet been introduced to.” During the month of September 1922, as… Read More
During this period of social isolation and the perpetual concerns of health and economic well-being that you might be feeling now, we here at the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast want to make sure that we are doing our part in providing you with the distraction and camaraderie you might be looking for.… Read More