Love graphic novels? Love the Brooklyn Bridge? Join Greg Young from the Bowery Boys podcast as he moderates this month’s Van Alen Book Club — hosted by the Van Alen Institute, on Friday, February 28. The book we’re discussing is The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York by Peter J. Tomasi, illustrated… Read More
Author: Greg Young
The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon. The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support… Read More
Consider this one of the America’s strangest national landmarks — Fort Conger, a scientific research post originally built in 1881 by an American expedition in a remote and frozen area of Nunavit, Canada. Some might call it the world’s most northern haunted house. Over two dozen men — fronted by Civil War vet Adolphus Greely… Read More
EPISODE 309 They’re tearing down your favorite old building and putting up a condo in its place. How is this even possible? New York City is so over. Before you plunge into fits of despair, you should know more about the tools of preservation that New Yorkers possess in their efforts to preserve the spirit… Read More
“The Raven” was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, and would come to define the morbid brilliance of its author Edgar Allan Poe. Poe and his sickly young wife Virginia arrived in New York in 1844, lodging at a dairy farm at today’s West 84th Street, between Broadway and… Read More
EPISODE 308 In the final decades of his life, steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie — one of the richest Americans to ever live — began giving his money away. The Scots American had worked his way up from a railroad telegraph office to amass an unimaginable fortune, acquired in a variety of industries — railroads, bridge… Read More
Below is a picture, facing east, of Seward Park Library in the Lower East Side at 192 E. Broadway (picture taken in 1911). This spectacular branch library, funded by Andrew Carnegie, opened in November 1909, two years before the 42nd Street main branch opened. All of the housing behind the library to the east has… Read More
EPISODE 307 The Holland Tunnel, connecting Manhattan with Jersey City beneath the Hudson River, is more important to daily life in New York City than people may at first think. Before the creation of the Holland Tunnel, commuters and travelers had painfully few options if they wanted to get to and from Manhattan. And for… Read More
Wow it’s been a busy time on the podcast this year. Twenty-seven new episodes of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcasts in 2019 — along with seven episodes of the Bowery Boys Movie Club, four of The Takeout and other bonus audio for those who support us on Patreon. That’s a lot of talking! We visited the neighborhoods of Downtown… Read More
EPISODE 306 Recorded live at the WNYC Greene Space In this special episode, the Bowery Boys podcast focuses on the delicious treats that add to the New York experience. These aren’t just the famous foods that have been made in New York, but the unique desserts that make the city what it is today. The origins of some of these… Read More
Last week former mayor Michael Bloomberg very unofficially — and somewhat belatedly — entered the 2020 presidential race by filing paperwork for next year’s Alabama primary. This over a month after current New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio entered and dropped out of the race this year, never catching fire with the Democratic electorate.… Read More
A toast to the great 20th-century architect Eero Saarinen! The Modernist icon was born on this date in 1910 in Finland. He immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was thirteen years old. His father Eliel Saarinen was himself a brilliant architect; his son would learn from the best. Eero Saarinen was a versatile furniture designer… Read More
Herman Melville, one of America’s greatest writers of the 19th century, was born 200 years ago today. Here are five New York-centric facts about Melville that you may not have known: 1) Melville was born at 11:30 pm on August 1, 1819, at 6 Pearl Street. Today, across the street from that approximate location of the address sits a… Read More
It seems like a conspiracy theory from 2019 — a government plot to conjure weather conditions favorable to New York City by literally seeding the sky from government planes. But it really did happen in 1950. The results, however, were a bit more — shall we say — chilling. Howell’s StormNew York City’s Official Rainmaker and… Read More
Eugenics, as with any creation from a mad scientist, was developed to advance the human race, built from the studies of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel. Shouldn’t we pass only mankind’s most laudable attributes to the next generation? Who wouldn‘t want to weed out disease and deformity? Instead, it became one of the most insidious tools of the 20th… Read More