The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST All the history that came before the development of Hudson Yards, Manhattan’s skyline-altering new project. Hudson Yards is America’s largest private real estate development, a gleaming collection of office towers and apartments overlooking a self-contained plaza with a shopping mall and a selfie-friendly, architectural curio known as The Vessel. By design, Hudson Yards feels international,… Read More
PODCAST Newark Liberty International Airport or LaGuardia Airport? Which do you prefer? (Or is the answer — none of the above. Give me JFK!) In this episode, we present the origin stories of New York City’s airports and airfields. The skies over New York have been graced with aircraft for almost 110 years. In fact the… Read More
PODCAST What was it like to experience that epic symbol of New York City – the world famous New York City subway system – for the first time? In this episode, we imagine what opening day was like for the first New York straphangers. We begin by recounting the subway system’s construction and registering the excitement of New… Read More
It’s a vivid image (for some bleak, other romantic) that most New Yorkers cannot imagine. But a few people still living today remember it quite well — the Bowery underneath an elevated train line. The Third Avenue Elevated was constructed in 1878, connecting South Ferry with Harlem via a sturdy, darkening railroad track, hoisted over… Read More
Above: Protect this station from the rueful blight of subway advertisements! (Pic NYPL) There once was a time, believe it or not, when the city was so concerned for the aesthetic beauty of the subway that an early controversy broke regarding the scandalous inclusion of advertisements in subway stations. The stations designed for those very… Read More
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was memorialized in dozens of ways following his assassination on November 22, 1963. None of these are more vital to the daily lives of New Yorkers than John F. Kennedy International Airport — or Kennedy Airport or simply JFK — the business airport in the… Read More
PODCAST The era of the Zeppelin, how it shaped the New York skyline and the disastrous crash of the Hindenburg on an airfield in New Jersey. On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, New Yorkers looked overhead at an astonishing sight — the arrival of the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world, drifting calmly across… Read More
Decades in the making, the Second Avenue Subway finally opened to the public this week, its glimmering new stations at 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets heralded with the pomp and circumstance of a movie premiere. Of course, the subway doesn’t immediately come to mind as a photogenic movie star, but in fact, the various tunnels and… Read More
Imagine a city where the High Line isn’t just a novel park, but the primary form of urban conveyance. In 1913, with the proliferation of the automobile, it seemed humans were being crowded out at ground level. Â People were beginning to think of themselves as removed from the street. Â Daredevils were experimenting with flight, and… Read More
One hundred years ago today, — a horrifying disaster on Seventh Avenue endangered the lives of New Yorkers on their way to work. Excavations for the new Seventh Avenue subway line (the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue line, aka the 1-2-3 trains) were proceeding well below an active thoroughfare. On the morning of September 22, 1915, two detonations… Read More
On January 6, 1915, a seemingly minor incident under the streets of Midtown caused a terrible panic, “the worst disaster in the history of the New York subway” up to that date, injuring hundreds of commuters and killing one. That morning, two electrical cables feeding into manholes at Broadway and 52nd Street suddenly shorted out,… Read More
Crowds at the now-defunct City Hall Station of the brand new New York subway system. (NYPL) One hundred and ten years ago today, the first train of the New York City subway system began its first trip underneath the city, filled with eager and excited passengers. Â Thousands lined up to take this revolutionary new ride,… Read More
The fate of an automobile at Breezy Point, 1973 (Courtesy US National Archives) The abandoned car, that most dramatic symbol of urban blight, is a sight that has pretty much vanished from most New York City streets. (Most, not all.) In a city refitted for the automobile by the mid 20th century, people just began… Read More
Aging beauty: The entrance of Penn Station, photographed by James Burke in 1957 for Life Magazine. — Tonight on PBS’s American Experience: The Rise and Fall of Penn Station, the story of McKim, Mead and White’s Midtown masterpiece and how its tragic demolition in the 1960s forced New Yorkers to consider the importance of historic… Read More
The halls of Pennsylvania Station, conjuring the grandeur of a Roman temple, would have created an otherworldly echo at rush hour on January 22, 1914. Thousands of commuters hurrying across the marble floors of McKim, Mead and White’s steel-latticed terminal, rushing to arriving trains pulling into the sunken boarding area from deep tunnels beneath Manhattan… Read More