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The Alienist

The Slide, New York’s Most Notorious ‘Fairy Resort’

HISTORY BEHIND THE SCENE What’s the real story behind that historical scene from your favorite TV show or feature film? A semi-regular feature on the Bowery Boys blog, I’ll be reviving this series as we follow along with TNT’s limited series The Alienist. Look for other articles here about other historically themed television shows (Mad… Read More

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Bridges The Alienist

The Construction of the Williamsburg Bridge — History Behind the Scene (The Alienist)

HISTORY BEHIND THE SCENE What’s the real story behind that historical scene from your favorite TV show or feature film? A semi-regular feature on the Bowery Boys website, I’ll be reviving this series as we follow along with TNT’s limited series The Alienist. Look for other articles here about other historically themed television shows (Mad… Read More

Categories
The Alienist

Love history trivia? Follow The Bowery Boys on Twitter during episodes of TNT’s The Alienist

We love it when television shows are set in New York City history — Mad Men in the 1960s, The Knick in the 1900s, Copper in the 1860s, Turn: Washington’s Spies in the 1780s. So how can we say no to TNT’s new limited series The Alienist, a mystery thriller (based on Caleb Carr’s book… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

Welcome to the ‘subway art museum’: The early battle against ‘disfiguring’ advertisements in the subway

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

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

Deconstruction Of The Third Avenue El: A new exhibit at the Transit Museum

Who knew the dismantling of something so filthy and monstrous could be so beautiful? Sid Kaplan is a master print-maker and photography teacher who the New York Times recently called “the darkroom equivalent of the session man, the go-to guy famous musicians revere and want to work with.” Kaplan has been fascinated with photography since his… Read More

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Podcasts Revolutionary History

New York: The first federal capital and birthplace of the Bill of Rights

PODCAST Part Two of our two-part series on New York City in the years following the Revolutionary War. During a handful of months in 1789 and 1790, representatives of the new nation of the United States came together in New York City to make decisions which would forever affect the lives of Americans. Related: Listen… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf

Ten holiday gift ideas for history buffs: The best reads of 2014 with Robert Moses, Coney Island and the Statue of Liberty

Illustration from Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City GIFT GUIDE What do you get for that history fanatic in your life?  Afraid of buying them a book that they may have already read?  Here are nine books published in 2014 that I’ve had the pleasure of reading this year, illustrating wild and colorful… Read More

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Neighborhoods

Inside Gimbels traverse, the secret perch near Herald Square

Looking up to the Gimbels traverse overhead on 32nd Street (Flickr/Docking Bay 93) One of our podcast listeners Alexander Rea sent over the following photographs of a tucked-away place in one of the busiest areas of New York City — the Gimbels traverse on W. 32nd Street, in the Herald Square shopping district. No doubt you’ve… Read More

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Pop Culture

AMC’s ‘Turn’: The next great New York history TV show?

BBC America’s Copper, depicting the grit and crime of 1860s New York, was recently cancelled (although petitions are currently circulating, demanding a Season Three). But the void of history-related television will soon be filled again with Turn, AMC’s Revolutionary War-era drama on George Washington’s spy network, called The Culper Ring.  What do you think? Although… Read More

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Landmarks

What a resume! Cass Gilbert’s three stunning prequels to the Woolworth Building

From this angle, you can see two of Cass Gilbert’s creation, the West Street Building and the Woolworth under construction.  View of his Broadway-Chambers Building is obscured by the building to the left. (LOC)It’s Woolworth Building week here in New York City!  The lights of Frank Woolworth‘s treasured office tower were turned on in an… Read More

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Mad Men

Odds and ends: Mad Men, NY Observer and great books!

Drinks with the Drapers: we may see the end of 1967 in the opening episode. (courtesy AMC)‘Mad Men’ Season 6 begins this Sunday 9EST.  If you’re a fan of late ’60s New York and American pop culture from that period, follow along with me on Twitter at @boweryboys.  As I do with ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and… Read More

Julian Fellowes ‘Gilded Age’, New York’s ‘Downton Abbey’: Some suggestions and a few pipe dreams

It’s a different world: Illustrating the difficulty of a New York TV show set in the 1880s, above is a picture of the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The Reservoir is off to the left, where the New York Public Library is today. More on this photo here. Ever since the announcement that… Read More

City of debauchery: New York history and Sunday night TV

Party at Pompadou’s Bordello: Cocktails and carousing on ‘Copper’ Courtesy BBC America My first ever column for the Huffington Post is available to read on their site. I look at the different ways that three Sunday night ‘prestige’ shows — BBC America’s Copper, AMC’s Mad Men, and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire — approach the task of… Read More

The Civil War Draft Riots, presented in miniature

The BBC America series ‘Copper‘, set in the famed Five Points neighborhood, begins this Sunday at 10pm EST. I’ll be Tweeting along during the show and hope to have a reaction post to it on the blog the next day. The video above gives me hope for a program that takes its historical depiction and… Read More

Odds and Ends: St. Marks, 1930s Harlem, Fernando Wood

Above: A shave for 15 cents and a haircut for a quarter, found in Harlem on 422-424 Lenox Avenue, photographed by Berenice Abbott on this date in 1938. The business next door advertises ‘4 radio photo poses’ for a dime. The stoop on the left leads up to a small church.  Thanks to everybody for… Read More