The Bowery Boys: New York City History
A special presentation of our live show Bowery Boys History Live, recorded at City Winery, July 2, 2025, with a very unusual theme — Gilded Age Golden Girls. Whatever could it mean? *cue the song Thank You For Being A Friend* Bowery Boys History Live is a storytelling cabaret of all-true tales and spellbinding secrets from the past,… Read More
On a new episode of The Gilded Gentleman, prepare for a very chilling exploration of spiritualism with Carl and a man very attuned to the spirit world. Many people throughout the 19th century were fascinated with the idea of connecting with the beyond. Even the famous ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt was intrigued with the notion. Historian Anthony Bellov joins Carl… Read More
PODCAST A history of the comic book industry in New York City, how the energy and diversity of the city influenced the burgeoning medium in the 1930s and 40s and how New York’s history reflects out from the origins of its most popular characters. In the 1890s a newspaper rivalry between William Randolph Hearst and… Read More
TERROR ON THE BEACH! Seaside resorts from Cape May, New Jersey, to Montauk, Long Island, were paralyzed in fear during the summer of 1916. Not because of the threat of lurking German U-boats and saboteurs. But because of sharks.On July 1, 1916, Charles Epting Vansant was killed by a shark while swimming at a resort in Beach… Read More
We bring you a classic episode of The Gilded Gentleman, hosted by social and culinary historian Carl Raymond, just in time for a new season of HBO’s The Gilded Age. In The Real Mrs. Astor, Carl looks at one of the most legendary figures of the period – Caroline Astor, or the Mrs Astor, the ruler and creator of… Read More
So we don’t know if you’ve heard, but New York City is an expensive place to live these days. So we thought it might be time to revisit the tale of the city’s most famous district of luxury — Fifth Avenue. For about a hundred years, this avenue was mostly residential— but residences of the most… Read More
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 the lower Manhattan’s flat avenues and organized streets, Inwood varies wildly in elevation and its streets wind up hills and… Read More
While you may know the Brooklyn Museum for its wildly popular cutting-edge exhibitions, the borough’s premier art institution can actually trace its origins back to a more rustic era — and to the birth of the city of Brooklyn itself. On July 4, 1825, the growing village laid a cornerstone for its new Brooklyn Apprentices… Read More
In 1939, Robert Moses sprung his latest project upon the world — the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge, connecting the tip of Manhattan to the Brooklyn waterfront, slicing through New York Harbor just to the north of Governor’s Island. To build it, Moses dictated that the historic Battery Park would need to be redesigned. And its star attraction… Read More
A long, long time ago in New York — in the 1730s, back when the city was a holding of the British, with a little over 10,000 inhabitants — a German printer named John Peter Zenger decided to print a four-page newspaper called the New York Weekly Journal. This is pretty remarkable in itself, as… Read More
When Prospect Park was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York’s Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — weren’t finished. This park came with two grand pleasure… Read More
On October 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford walked into a press conference at the National Press Club and, using more precise, more eloquent words than legend remembers, but in no uncertain terms, told New York City to drop dead. The following day the New York Daily News — the city’s first tabloid newspaper summarized his… Read More
The first part on our Amsterdam/New Amsterdam series — called Empire of the Seas — was just awarded the 2025 Webby Award for Best History Podcast (Individual Episode) A big thank you to our brilliant producer and editor Kieran Gannon, who pulled this together from about a dozen hours of audio footage. And our fabulous… Read More
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 his remarkable pandemic project of walking every single block of Manhattan in 2020, capturing the empty city in photographs that… Read More
It’s a Bowery Boys Podcast/Marvel Comics Podcast crossover for the ages! Greg was a guest on this week’s episode of the Official Marvel Comics Podcast, talking about the New York City origins of Daredevil. The character first appeared in Marvel Comics in April 1964 and has always been rooted in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s… Read More