Categories
Podcasts

PODCAST: Barnum’s American Museum

You know PT Barnum from his circus, but he was bringing the freakshow to New York long before then. Come take a tour with us of the craziest museum to ever hit New York City. Listen to it for free on iTunes or other podcasting services. Or you can download or listen to it HERE… Read More

Categories
Uncategorized

The forgotten New York museum of Rubens Peale

What if your best known accomplishment in this world was the fact that you posed for a well-regarded American masterpiece by your more talented older brother? Welcome to the world of Rubens Peale! Philadelphians and American art lovers in general should be quite familiar with Rubens’ father Charles Wilson Peale, one of early America’s pre-eminent… Read More

Know Your Mayors: “The Boy Mayor of New York”

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. The 1910s were a rough time to be mayor of New York City. The decade’s first mayor, William Jay Gaynor, took an assassin’s bullet in… Read More

Know Your Mayors: Fernando Wood

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. And now we come to one of New York’s most notorious, absolutely in the top 10% of the most corrupt mayors ever in our fair… Read More

Categories
Revolutionary History

What’s your favorite Nathan Hale death spot?

Nathan Hale was a 21 year old Connecticut native who volunteered for George Washington’s Continental Army and stayed behind in New York after the Army’s retreat in September 1776 in order to gain intelligence from the British. Hale was unfortunately caught — in Flushing Bay, Queens — brought to Manhattan and hanged, though not before… Read More

A ‘Door of Return’ opens near City Hall

The ground underfoot downtown Manhattan gave the developers of the new federal courthouse in 1991 a rather morbid surprise — the remains of 415 people, in a burial ground for enslaved and free blacks in the 17th and 18th century. Unknown and unmarked for decades, the site was declared a national landmark in 1993, and… Read More