The Bowery Boys: New York City History
From the New York City Marble Cemetery Two rarely seen artifacts of the East Village swung open their iron gates this weekend for Open House NY, New York’s two oldest cemeteries — the New York Marble Cemetery and the New York City Marble Cemetery. (Yes, you read that right.) In a few respects they are… Read More
Green-wood Cemetery is one of New York’s oldest burial grounds, but its development reaches back all the way to the beginning of Brooklyn’s surprising history — in fact, to the founder of Brooklyn Heights. Find out why it took an inventive city planner with a funny name, a dead New York icon, and a few… Read More
Above: a Victorian home in Richmond Hill, Queens If you’re reading this blog, you will obviously find something exciting to do this weekend during the 6th Annual Open House New York, a veritable cornucopia of history and architectural activities relating to the city’s great history. Classic buildings, unique examples of architecture, rarely opened landmarks, neighborhood… Read More
Our modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in our mayoral survey can be found here. Former New York mayors are all around you. No, Ed Koch is not hiding in your closet — maybe not today — but you can… Read More
Lunchtime down on Wall Street today is chaotic mess of brokers and bankers on cell phones, tour groups, messengers on bikes, police, construction workers, people delivering lunch and the stray old lady walking her dog. Eighty-eight years ago, in 1920, it would have practically been the same, sans the cell phones. So it’s particularly disturbing… Read More
We steal this week’s topic straight for today’s headlines! We look at the early days of New York finance and the creation of the New York Stock Exchange, beginning with Alexander Hamilton, some pushy auctioneers, a coffee house and a sycamore tree. And find how this seminal financial institution ended up in its latest home… Read More
Who knew a produce exchange could look so elegant? One of New York’s most important architects was George B. Post, but you would barely know it today. Only a handful of his most important buildings — the New York Stock Exchange being the most famous — still stand, the victim of a rapidly changing city… Read More
There are many of you who read this blog who remember the 1964-65 World’s Fair well — and maybe even a few who remember the 1939-40 World’s Fair — so I thought you might be interested in this event: World’s Fairs in 3-DSaturday September 27, 6 pmThe Gershwin Hotel 7 East 27th StreetBetween Fifth and… Read More
A simplistic but colorful view of “Man Mados” or “New Amsterdam” in 1664 (click in to inspect the detail) One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall Street, that canyon of tall buildings and center of the American financial world, is named for an actual… Read More
Back in March, we speculated on the fate of Thurman Munson’s locker, which had been preserved at Yankees Stadium since the untimely death of the popular Yankees catcher in 1979. Well, Shea Stadium has a far more irreverent but equally treasured fixture that many have been wondering about — the Mets Apple. Will the frail… Read More
I can’t put up a tribute to Shea Stadium without giving a final farewell to that far older sports arena, Yankee Stadium, which will see its last regular season game tomorrow night. If you are a Yankees fan, they’re letting people into the stadium at 1 pm to tour Monument Park and even walk around… Read More
The Mets are movin’ out to Citi Field, but we can’t overlook the great stories contained in their old home, Shea Stadium, a Robert Moses project took years to get off the ground and has been populated with world class ball players, crazed Beatles fans, and one very mysterious black cat. William Shea, who essentially… Read More
Above: Quite a fancy looking team of baseball players! Note the pavilion in the background. Picture courtesy Brooklyn Ball Parks I love finding out where very basic, everyday, take-for-granted concepts were invented. For instance, there is some place on the planet I’m sure that heralds as the first place somebody put a straw in a… Read More
Pic courtesy New York City Department of Parks & Recreation “About half way between West Egg** and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic… Read More
Some New York neighborhoods are simply named for their location on a map (East Village, Midtown). Others are given prefabricated designations (SoHo, DUMBO). But a few retain names that link them intimately with their pasts. Other entries in this series can be found here. I have a friend of Jamaican descent that lives in Jamaica,… Read More