The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Congratulations to Victoria Johnson for being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her book American Eden, one of our favorite from 2018. Here’s our review from a few months ago: A secluded haven to an age of wonder once sat in mid-Manhattan at the start of the 19th century. “Few New Yorkers had ever seen anything like it,”… Read More
The New York City entertainment world was never the same after Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon met at a rehearsal space in Midtown Manhattan in 1955. Tonight FX Network debuts its tribute to the lives of these collaborators and lovers in the series Fosse/Verdon, based upon the brilliant biography Fosse by Sam Wasson. This look at the complicated lives of two seminal… Read More
On April 8, 1904, the former horse-and-carriage district known as Longacre Square was renamed for a tenant who had just moved to the neighborhood.The New York Times was building a new office tower on the slim odd-shaped block at 42nd Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue. Meanwhile, below ground, the city had built a pivotal new subterranean station for… Read More
This is the story of Greenwich Village as a character — an eccentric character maybe, but one that changed American life — and how the folky, activist spirit it fostered in arts, culture and the protest movement came back in the end to help itself. This April we’re marking the 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village… Read More
Join the Bowery Boys Movie Club! Support us on Patreon at any level and get these Patreon-exclusive, full-length and ad-free podcast. Each month we talk about one classic (or cult-classic) film that says something interesting about New York City. In the new Bowery Boys Movie Club, Tom and Greg visit the year 1978 and a cult classic thriller… Read More
Today (April 30th) is the 230th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington, sworn in atFederal Hallas the first President of the United States. It is also the 80th anniversary of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. That was not an accident. The monumental events of America’s founding would be immortalized by the fair in some rather unusual… Read More
Shea Stadium has been gone ten years now. With mourning fans looking on, the final section of seats were torn out on the morning of February 18, 2009. Awaiting fans a short distance away was the sparkling new Citi Field which would open for business with a thrilling game between the San Diego Padres and the field’s home… Read More
Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer embarks on a modern quest to find the roots of the LGBTQ community in the pages of history. A reader might hope to pick up Ryan’s book and find a reflection of their own world in the back alleys and parlors of Old New York — or rather, Old Brooklyn, the… Read More
UPDATE (March 11, 2019): The city has announced that it will commission a Billie Holiday memorial, joining new statues for Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Katherine Walker and Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías. Graham, the subject of a landmark case that desegregated New York City mass transportation, was also suggested by our readers. The city previously announced the creation of a monument to Shirley Chisholm. Here’s our pitch for a monument to Holiday which ran back… Read More
“Hickok was a celebrity. He was famous. He was feared. He was already a legend. It is estimated that over fifteen hundred dime novels were written just about Buffalo Bill Cody, beginning in 1869, when he was only twenty-three, into the 1930s, and during the early years. Wild Bill was in that category of iconic… Read More
Head over to Chinatown this Sunday afternoon (February 17, starting at 1pm) for the Lunar New Year Parade and Festival, topping off two weeks of celebrations in honor of the Year of the Pig. (Find the parade route here. And get there early for a great spot.) [We also did a podcast episode on the history of New Year’s Eve… Read More
Sometimes an artist’s biography can work on two levels, providing both the sweep of history within the subject matter of the artist’s own output and a grand view of American art history in the artist’s working life. In Mary Schmidt Campbell’s absorbing biography of the painter, illustrator and collagist Romare Bearden, we get to look at… Read More
Events such as these used to be unthinkable, anomalies of history that once played like speculative fiction. But this really did happen. Eighty years ago this month — on February 20, 1939 — over 20,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization, gathered at Madison Square Garden (at its Hell’s Kitchen location on Eighth Avenue) to unite the philosophies of… Read More
A very special episode of the Bowery Boys podcast, recorded live at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn, celebrating the legacy of Walt Whitman, a writer with deep ties to New York and its 19th century sister-city Brooklyn. On May 31, 1819, the world will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Whitman, a journalist who revolutionized American… Read More
NOTE: This post features a slight spoiler of an event which occurs in the film’s first five minutes. The period film Green Book — nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture — goes cross-country with pianist Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) and his chauffeur/bodyguard Tony Lip (played by Viggo Mortensen), depicting the varying gradients of class and race relations in… Read More