The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The Bowery Boys Podcast’s new mini-series Road Trip to Long Island featuring tales of historic sites outside of New York City. In the next leg of our journey, we visit Jones Beach State Park, the popular beach paradise created by Robert Moses on Long Island’s South Shore. Well before he transformed New York City with […]
PODCAST Relive a little Jazz Age luxury by escaping into the colossal castles, manors and chateaus on Long Island’s North Shore, the setting for one of America’s most famous novels. This is the first part of our new mini-series Road Trip to Long Island featuring tales of historic sites outside of New York City. Many […]
The Bowery Boys podcast is going on a road trip. Presenting a new three part podcast series, exploring three historic places outside of New York City. It’s a Bowery Boys Road Trip to Long Island! Listen to the trailer here: Greg Young · Long Island Trailer We’re headed to the lands beyond Brooklyn and Queens […]
PODCAST Nature and history intertwine in all five boroughs — from the Bronx River to the shores of Staten Island — in this special episode about New York City’s many gardens. A botanical garden is more than just a pretty place; it’s a collection of plant life for the purposes of preservation, education and study. […]
The residents of the Lower East Side one century ago would probably have never have said to themselves, “What a grand place to plant flowers!” But it would be their very tenement lots that would later lead to the sprouting of so many East Village neighborhood gardens, some of the most wonderful community gardens in […]
It has become a name so associated with American sports and entertainment that you barely think about it. In New York City, when you say you are going to The Garden, you aren’t going to see flowers. Most likely, you’re going to see the Knicks. Or possibly Billy Joel. New York City’s many actual gardens […]
PODCAST In celebration of 125 years of movie exhibition in New York City — from vaudeville houses to movie palaces, from arthouses to multiplexes. On April 23, 1896 an invention called the Vitascope projected moving images onto a screen at a Midtown Manhattan vaudeville theater named Koster and Bial’s Music Hall. The business of movies […]
A ghost hangs over an American media empire. Over one hundred years ago, a Brooklyn-based movie impresario named William Fox helped shape the direction of the nascent motion picture industry, building a film-production empire in New Jersey and New York and operating a string of theaters that would introduce millions to the possibilities of moving […]
The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film Coming to America and the gritty historical context of late 1980s New York City. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon. Eddie Murphy plays an optimistic African prince looking for the love of his life in the 1988 film Coming […]
You’re cordially invited to a virtual Gilded Age dinner party! Who: Food historian Carl Raymond, joined by Greg and Tom, hosts of the Bowery Boys Podcast When: Tuesday, April 13, 2021 at 5 pm (EST) How: We will send you a Zoom link on the day of the event Where: In the Gilded Age, so dress appropriately (if you […]
PODCAST New York’s upper class families of the late 19th century lived lives of old-money pursuits and rigid, self-maintained social restrictions — from the opera boxes to the carriages, from the well-appointed parlors to the table settings. It was leisure without relaxation. EPISODE 357 In this show we examine the story of Edith Wharton — […]
The origin of a true Brooklyn ‘start up’ — Charles Pfizer and Co, who went from developing intestinal worm medication in 1849 to being a leader in vaccine distribution in the 21st century. This is story of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals before the 1950s, a tale of German immigration and of early medical practices and concoctions that […]
EPISODE 311 Nobody had seen anything quite like it. In late November 1909, tens of thousands of workers went on strike, angered by poor work conditions and unfair wages within the city’s largest industry. New York City had seen labor strikes before, but this one would change the city forever. The industry in question was […]
PODCAST Welcome to your tour of New York City nightlife in the 1890s, to a fantasia of debauchery, to a “saturnalia of crime,” your journey to a life of amoral delights! Courtesy a private detective, a blond-headed naif nicknamed “Sunbeam” and — a prominent Presbyterian minister. In this episode, we’re going to Sin City, the […]
The grim, bloody wonderful business known as The Knick — primarily set in a New York City hospital at the start of the 20th century — only got two seasons but they were great fun. This virtuoso dark drama, created by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, was directed by Steven Soderbergh in a shadowy and […]