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Gilded Age New York Podcasts

Birth of the Five Boroughs: 125 Years of Greater New York

On January 1, 2023, New York City will celebrate a special moment, the 125th anniversary of the formation of Greater New York and the creation of the five boroughs — The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. In honor of this special moment in New York City history, we are celebrating a bit early,… Read More

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Brooklyn History Neighborhoods Podcasts

The Story of Flatbush: Brooklyn Old and New

Over 350 years ago today’s Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush was an old Dutch village, the dirt path that would one day become Flatbush Avenue lined with wheat fields and farms. Contrast that with today’s Flatbush, a bustling urban destination diverse in both housing styles and commercial retail shops. It’s also an anchor of Brooklyn’s Caribbean… Read More

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Parks and Recreation Podcasts

Who was Andrew Haswell Green? Say hello to “the most important leader in Gotham’s long history.”

PODCAST EPISODE 300 — Andrew Haswell Green helped build Central Park and much of upper Manhattan, oversaw the formation of the New York Public Library, assisted in the foundation of great institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo, and even organized the city’s first significant historical preservation group, saving New… Read More

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Health and Living

Dueling ‘perfect babies’ in Brooklyn and Manhattan, pageantry in support of healthy infants in New York

The exaltation of fat, plucky babies via beauty contests stems from a rather grim origin — American infant mortality rates of the 19th century.  During the 1880s, as swelling immigrants and overcrowding in New York created harbors for disease and malnourishment, over one in five infants would die in America, with higher occurrence among poor… Read More

Know Your Mayors: William Lafayette Strong

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. Democrats and Republicans in this year’s election who think they can roll into office on the mantel of “change” may want to look at the… Read More