The Bowery Boys: New York City History
EPISODE 321 The Hollywood icon and Broadway star Lauren Bacall lived at the Dakota Apartments on the Upper West Side for 53 years. Her story is intertwined the Dakota, a revolutionary apartment complex built in 1884. In this episode, we tell both their stories. Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, the daughter of Jewish Eastern European… Read More
Few people are allowed to go onto Hart Island, the quiet, narrow island in the Long Island Sound, a lonely place in sight of the bustling community of City Island. For over 150 years, Hart Island has been New York’s potter’s field, the burial site for over one million people — unclaimed bodies, stillborn babies,… Read More
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died from his injuries by the assassin John Wilkes Booth who shot the president the previous evening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. It was a fate promised to him by Southern sympathizers from the moment he was first elected on November 6, 1860. At no point was… Read More
EPISODE 319 In simpler times, thousands of tourists would flock to the northern tip of Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan to take a picture with a rather unconventional New Yorker — the bronze sculpture Charging Bull by Italian-American artist Arturo Di Modica. Bull is a product of the 1980s New York art scene, delivered as… Read More
In the picture above: People in Sunday finery stroll past the New York Public Library building. The library had not even been open two years by the time this picture was taken in March 23, 1913. New York City’s time-honored Easter custom — the Sunday morning Fifth Avenue Easter bonnet stroll — once turned the… Read More
“Do you love him, Loretta?” “Aw, ma, I love him awful.” “Oh God, that’s too bad.” Moonstruck, the 1987 comedy starring Cher and Nicolas Cage, not only celebrates that crazy little thing called love, but also pays tribute to the Italian working class residents of the old “South Brooklyn” neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill… Read More
Over ten years ago, the New York Post and the New York Daily News were locked in a battle for tabloid dominance, wrestling and rolling around just as an apocalypse – the digital revolution — was descending upon American newsrooms. Newspapers across the country have either folded or become absorbed into national conglomerates. America’s best-selling… Read More
The Hall of Fame for Great Americans, founded in 1900, was a precursor to the Nobel Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a vaunted tribute to those who have contributed greatly to the development the United States of America. Located on the campus of Bronx Community College in the University Heights neighborhood of the… Read More
EPISODE 314 — London Terrace, an English-inspired apartment complex, is a jewel of apartment living in the neighborhood of Chelsea. In 1929, a set of unusual townhouses — also named London Terrace — were demolished to construct this spectacular set of buildings. That is, all townhouses but one — the home of Mrs. Tillie Hart,… Read More
When it comes to artistic creation, we take many fundamentals of law for granted. Most people might not understand the particulars of ‘intellectual property’ but they sure benefit from it. The very review you are reading — and the website that publishes it — are protected by laws that were hammered out and fought for… Read More
For the next several weeks, the Bowery Boys Podcast will be going live two times a week — every Tuesday and Friday. Read our announcement here. EPISODE 313 “No man likes to have his hat snatched from his head by somebody he has not yet been introduced to.” During the month of September 1922, as… Read More
During this period of social isolation and the perpetual concerns of health and economic well-being that you might be feeling now, we here at the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast want to make sure that we are doing our part in providing you with the distraction and camaraderie you might be looking for.… Read More
PODCAST It’s time for a Gilded Age murder mystery, true-crime podcast style! The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 — perpetrated by the killer known as Jack the Ripper — inspired one of the greatest cultural hysterias of the Victorian era. The crimes were so publicized in newspapers around the world that many believed that the Ripper… Read More
Looking for a good book? Here are a few recent releases I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few weeks. All are currently available at your local book retailer: SPY SITES OF NEW YORK CITYH. Keith Melton and Robert WallaceGeorgetown University Press In what is easily the coolest New York City guide book of recent memory,… Read More
“I am here to show what the serum will do,” said the visiting doctor from Berlin. “That is my only answer to those who have natural doubts before they have made observations.” Dr. Friedrich Franz Friedmann had come to New York in February 1913 to tackle one of the city’s most persistent scourges upon its… Read More