Bowery Boys Podcast Collection
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The history of the New York City fashion industry and how it found its home south of Times Square aka The Garment District. The Garment District in Midtown Manhattan has been the center of American fashion…
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42 episodes
Why is the West Village both historically important and incredibly expensive? In the final part of our West Village mini-series, we look at the elements that define the modern neighborhood — from battles with Robert…
In Part Two of our mini-series, The Streets of the West Village, we turn to the people who gave the neighborhood its character and vitality. From Irish longshoremen on the docks to actors on the…
Why are the streets of Manhattan’s West Village so unusually charming and romantic? Why does it make such an excellent place for a night out in New York City? Why is the real estate so…
Today’s New York neighborhood called NoHo, wedged between Greenwich Village and the East Village, holds many captivating stories from the 19th century, and the tales of many people and places that then went on to…
People who live in Inwood know how truly special it is. Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood (aside from Marble Hill) feels like it’s outside of the city — and in some places, even outside of time and space. Unlike…
Join Tom for an interview with Instagram historian Keith Taillon (@keithyorkcity), whose detailed posts about New York’s history have earned him nearly 60,000 followers and launched a successful tour business. Keith shares the story behind…
PODCAST Hell’s Kitchen, on the far west side of Midtown Manhattan, is a neighborhood of many secrets. The unique history of this working class district veers into many tales of New York’s criminal underworld and…
For the Bowery Boys episode number 450, we’re looking at the glamour and mystery of Harlem during the 1920s, a decade when the predominantly black neighborhood, in the words of Langston Hughes, “was in vogue.”…
One of America’s first great Italian neighborhoods was once in East Harlem, populated with more southern Italians than Sicily itself, a neighborhood almost entirely gone today except for a couple restaurants, a church and a…
Greenwich Village is one of America’s great music capitals, an extraordinary distinction for an old neighborhood of tenements, townhouses, dive bars and a college campus. So many musical titans of jazz, folk, pop and rock…
The energy and personality of New York City runs through its local businesses — mom-and-pop shops, independently run stores and restaurants, often family run operations. We live in a world of chain stores, franchises, corporate…
PODCAST This episode focuses on the special relationship between New York City and Puerto Rico, via the tales of pioneros, the first migrants to make the city their home and the many hundreds of thousands…
On January 1, 1898, Greater New York was formed from the union of two cities – New York and Brooklyn, along with other towns and villages of the region, creating the five boroughs we know…
Ida Wood had a secret. Born Ida Mayfield in New Orleans, Ida moved to New York in the 1850s and through her marriage to Benjamin Wood, publisher of the New York Daily News, she entered…
What was Times Square before the electric billboards, before the Broadway theaters and theme restaurants, before the thousands and thousands of tourists? What was Times Square before it was Times Square? Today it’s virtually impossible to…
Follow along with Greg and Tom in this travelogue episode as they visit several historic cities and towns in the Netherlands — Utrecht, De Bilt, Breukelen and Haarlem — wandering through cafe-filled streets and old…
The story of a filthy and dangerous train ditch that became one of the swankiest addresses in the world — Park Avenue. For over 100 years, a Park Avenue address meant wealth, glamour and the…
Few areas of the United States have as endured as long as Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood with almost over 375 years of history and an evolving cultural landscape that includes Quakers, trees, Hollywood films, world…
PODCAST The rebirth of the East Village in the late 1970s and the flowering of a new and original New York subculture — what Edmund White called “the Downtown Scene” — arose from the shadow…
Before 1955 nobody used the phrase “East Village” to describe the historic northern portion of the Lower East Side, the New York tenement district with a rich German and Eastern European heritage. But when the…
In this special episode, we look at the history of New York City as seen through one corner of the Lower East Side. Created by the intersections of several streets, this is a place that…
What wonderful surprises await the Bowery Boys in Little Caribbean? The Brooklyn enclave in Flatbush is one of the central destinations for Caribbean-American life and culture in New York City. Since the 1960s, thousands of…
Over 350 years ago today’s Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush was an old Dutch village, the dirt path that would one day become Flatbush Avenue lined with wheat fields and farms. Contrast that with today’s Flatbush,…
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…
PODCAST A history of the Bowery in the 20th century when this street became known as the most notorious place in America. And the stories of the lonely and desperate men whose experiences have been…
Just south of the World Trade Center district sits the location of a forgotten Manhattan immigrant community. Curious outsiders called it Little Syria although the residents themselves would have known it as the Syrian Colony.…
EPISODE 332 The Manhattan neighborhood of Yorkville has a rich immigrant history that often gets overlooked because of its location on the Upper East Side, a destination usually associated with wealth and high society. But…
PODCAST: The history of the Dyker Heights Christmas lighting extravaganza, Brooklyn’s fabulous and flashy celebration of the holiday season. EPISODE 305 There’s a special kind of magic to Christmas in New York City. From that…
PODCAST A tour of historic sites in Washington Heights and Inwood, an unusual set of landmarks and curious destinations that comprise almost 400 years of Upper Manhattan history. In Washington Heights and Inwood, the two Manhattan neighborhoods above West…
“By the pricking of my thumbs / something wicked this way comes” — Macbeth PODCAST In old New York, one hundred and seventy years ago, a theatrical rivalry between two leading actors of the day…
This is the story of Greenwich Village as a character — an eccentric character maybe, but one that changed American life — and how the folky, activist spirit it fostered in arts, culture and the…
PODCAST Tribeca (or TriBeCa, Triangle Below Canal) is a breathtaking neighborhood of astounding architectural richness. But how much do you know about this trendy destination and its patchwork of different histories? You’ll be surprised to learn about the…
Columbus Circle, a center of media and shopping at the entrance to Central Park, has a history that, well, runs against the grain. Counter-clockwise, if you will. LISTEN TO OUR NEW EPISODE HERE: When the…
PODCAST The history of SoHo, New York’s 19th century warehouse district turned shopping mecca Picture the neighborhood of SoHo (that’s right, South of Houston) in your head today, and you might get a headache. Crowded…
PODCAST A flavorful walk through the Lower East Side, exploring the neighborhood’s most famous foods. Join Tom as he experience the tastes of another era by visiting some of the oldest culinary institutions of the…
PODCAST The history of the Gowanus Canal, at the heart of a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood today, once used to be quite beautiful and non-toxic. Brooklyn’s Gowanus — both the creek and the canal — is…
PODCAST: The big, brash history of St. Mark’s Place, the East Village’s most interesting street. St. Mark’s Place may be named for a saint but it’s been a street full of sinners for much of…
PODCAST The Lower East Side is one of the most important neighborhoods in America with a rich history as dense as its former living quarters. Thousands of immigrants experienced American life on these many crowded…
PODCAST Little Italy is the pocket-neighborhood reminder of the great wave of Italian immigration which came through New York City starting in the late 1870s.  This was the home of a densely packed, lively neighborhood of…
The opening of Siegel-Cooper department store, 1896, created one of the great mob scenes of the Gilded Age. Today, TJ Maxx and Bed Bath and Beyond occupy this once-great commercial palace. PODCAST Ladies’ Mile —…
Above: The Church of the Holy Communion — and once the quite infamous nightclub Limelight — as the less lauded follow-up, called Avalon. Within a couple years, the club would be transformed again —…
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION Until May 21st, you can vote every day in the Partners In Preservation initiative, which will award grant money to certain New York cultural and historical sites among 40 nominees. Having trouble deciding which…
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