Author: GY

Parkways and the Transformation of Brooklyn

Post author By GY
Post date May 9, 2025
1 Comment on Parkways and the Transformation of Brooklyn

When Prospect Park was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York’s Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — weren’t finished.

This park came with two grand pleasure drives, wide boulevards that emanated from the north and south ends of the park. Eastern Parkway, the first parkway in the United States, is the home of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its leafy pedestrian malls running through the neighborhood of Crown Heights.

But it’s Ocean Parkway that is the most unusual today, an almost six-mile stretch which takes drivers, bikers, runners and (at one point) horse riders all the way to Coney Island, at a time when people were just beginning to appreciate the beach’s calming and restorative values.

The lands along Eastern Parkway were unevenly developed in the first few decades. This image was taken between 1903-1910 (Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)

Due to its wide, straight surface, Ocean Parkway even became an active speedway for fast horses. When bicycles became all the rage in the late 1880s, they also took to the parkway and avid cyclists eventually got their first bike lane in 1894 — the first in the United States.

By the 20th century, parks commissioner and ‘power broker’ Robert Moses reinvented the idea of the parkway, in many ways the very opposite of Olmsted’s original intentions. Today the parkways fit awkwardly into New York’s sprawling highway system, making the streets dangerous for neighborhood residents.

And right at a time when Ocean Parkway, in particular, has suddenly become one of the most religious streets in the country.

FEATURING: A tale of two cemeteries — one that was demolished to make way for one parkway, and another which apparently (given its ‘no vacancy’ status) thrives next to another.

LISTEN NOW: PARKWAYS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF BROOKLYN

Are you free on Saturday, May 31st, 2025? Join Tom and Greg from the Bowery Boys, along with the Gilded Gentleman Carl Raymond, for a three-hour dinner cruise around lower Manhattan through New York Harbor and up to the Statue of Liberty.

Get information and book your tickets at likemindstravel.com.

CLARIFICATION: As sent in by listener Lewis, today the Garden State Parkway is partially open to some commercial traffic. This does support my claim that the word ‘parkway’ is what you want it to be!

“Garden State Parkway had that restriction for something like the first 50 years. Sometime in the last 15 years, they did start to allow some limited trucks. No semis. Nothing big.”

FURTHER LISTENING

Other Bowery Boys podcasts with similar or related themes:

Ford to City – Drop Dead: The Story Behind The Headline

Post author By GY
Post date April 25, 2025

On October 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford walked into a press conference at the National Press Club and, using more precise, more eloquent words than legend remembers, but in no uncertain terms, told New York City to drop dead.

The following day the New York Daily News — the city’s first tabloid newspaper summarized his blunt, castigating speech into one succinct and memorable headline — FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

Of course, the president never actually said DROP DEAD. But his words did signal the severity of New York City’s problem — the city was on the brink of bankruptcy.

In this episode, Greg dives into life in New York City during the year 1975 and the circumstances surrounding its most dire financial crisis, one which threatened the livelihoods of its millions of residents and damaged New York City’s reputation for decades.

Directors Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn join Greg to discuss their new film on the New York financial crisis Drop Dead City, which uses gritty archival footage and a series of special guests (such as Harrison J. Goldin, Charlie Rangel, Betsy Gotbaum and former Bowery Boys guest Kevin Baker) to explain this complicated story.

If Michael’s name looks familiar, that’s because his father Felix Rohatyn played a critical role in bailing out the bankrupt city.

LISTEN NOW–FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD

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The film Drop Dead City is currently playing at the IFC Center in New York and coming soon to other theaters and to streaming. Visit their website for additional screening dates.

FURTHER LISTENING

If you liked the subject of this week’s show, you might like checking out these shows with similar themes

New Amsterdam Podcasts

We won! Webby Award for Best History Podcast (Individual Episode) 2025

Post author By GY
Post date April 22, 2025
1 Comment on We won! Webby Award for Best History Podcast (Individual Episode) 2025

The first part on our Amsterdam/New Amsterdam series — called Empire of the Seas — was just awarded the 2025 Webby Award for Best History Podcast (Individual Episode)

A big thank you to our brilliant producer and editor Kieran Gannon, who pulled this together from about a dozen hours of audio footage. And our fabulous guest Jaap Jacobs, who led us around Amsterdam and allowed us to peer back in time to the 17th century.

Tags New Amsterdam

Bowery Boys Bookshelf Neighborhoods Podcasts Uncategorized

Walking New York: Manhattan on Foot with Keith Taillon

Post author By GY
Post date April 18, 2025

Join Tom for an interview with Instagram historian Keith Taillon (@keithyorkcity), whose detailed posts about New York’s history have earned him nearly 60,000 followers and launched a successful tour business.

Keith shares the story behind his remarkable pandemic project of walking every single block of Manhattan in 2020, capturing the empty city in photographs that now appear in his first book, “Walking New York: Manhattan History on Foot.”

From his childhood fascination with urban history to his graduate studies at Hunter College, Keith reveals how his personal journey led him to become one of the city’s most engaging historical storytellers. You’ll hear how he crafts walking tours that go beyond landmark-hopping to explain why New York looks and functions the way it does.

Plus: Listen to Keith’s appearances on The Gilded Gentleman Podcast episodes on The Real Mamie Fish, The Hidden World of Gramercy Park, and a Gilded Age Tour up Manhattan.

LISTEN NOW: Walking New York

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ON TELEVISION Podcasts

Daredevil and the Bowery Boys: On the Official Marvel Comics Podcast

Post author By GY
Post date April 14, 2025

It’s a Bowery Boys Podcast/Marvel Comics Podcast crossover for the ages! Greg was a guest on this week’s episode of the Official Marvel Comics Podcast, talking about the New York City origins of Daredevil.

The character first appeared in Marvel Comics in April 1964 and has always been rooted in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen.

Even though the Midtown west side neighborhood is quite different from what it was in the 1960s, the Marvel TV show Daredevil: Born Again series does keep a bit of its original grit intact.

Extra bonus: The series features a contentious mayoral election with controversial political figures and a subplot featuring the rezoning of Red Hook, Brooklyn (which is also being considered in real life).

Tune in — especially if you’re watching the show on Disney Plus.

Here’s the YouTube link but you can download it as a podcast as well. I’m in around the 15 minute mark:

And here’s our catalog podcast on the history of comic books in New York City — featuring Daredevil, Spider-Man, Annie, Superman and many more:

Gilded Age New York Museums Podcasts

The House of Beauty: The Story of The Frick Collection

Post author By GY
Post date April 11, 2025

We invite you to come with us inside one of America’s most interesting art museums – an institution that is BOTH an art gallery and a historic home.

This is the Frick Collection, located at 1 East 70th Street, within the former Fifth Avenue mansion of Gilded Age mogul Henry Clay Frick. The museum containing many pieces that the steel titan himself purchased, as well as many other incredible works of art from master painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Turner and Whistler.

Frick himself had a rather complicated legacy. As a master financier and chairman of Andrew Carnegie‘s massive steel enterprise, Frick helped create the materials for America’s railroads and bridges.

But his intolerance of labor unions led to a bloody confrontation in the summer of 1892, making him, for a time, one of the most hated men in America.

New Yorkers’ love for the Frick Collection, however, remains far less complicated. The institution, which has been a museum since 1935, allows visitors to experience the work of the great master painters in an often regal and intimate setting, allowing people to imagine the fanciful life of the Gilded Age.

The Frick Collection reopens this month after an extensive renovation (temporarily relocating the collection to the Breuer Building for a few years) and we’ve got a sneak preview, featuring Frick curator and art historian Aimee Ng.

LISTEN NOW: THE STORY OF THE FRICK COLLECTION

The story continues next week on the Gilded Gentleman podcast — Inside The Frick Collection: The Upstairs Downstairs World of a Gilded Age Mansion

Carl talks with managing educator Caitlin Henningsesn about her work researching the domestic staff that worked in the mansion, just who they were and what they did. Caitlin and Carl also discuss, thanks to extraordinary archival records, how the Fricks entertained in a grand Gilded Age style in the very dining room visitors see today.

American History Landmarks Planes Trains and Automobiles Podcasts

Special Delivery: A History of the Post Office in New York City

Post author By GY
Post date March 28, 2025
2 Comments on Special Delivery: A History of the Post Office in New York City

O'Halloran, Thomas J, photographer. New York Post Office. , 1957. Library of Congress

The history of the United States Postal Service as it plays out in the streets of New York City — from the first post road to the first postage stamps.

From the most beautiful post office in the country to the forgotten Gilded Age landmark that was once considered the ugliest post office.

The postal service has always served as the country’s circulatory system, linking the densest urban areas to the most rural outposts, a necessary link in moments when the country feels very far apart in other ways. The early American colonies knew this. Benjamin Franklin knew this The Founding Fathers who placed the postal service within the Constitution knew this.

And inventions such as the stagecoach, the steamship, the railroad, the pneumatic tube and even the electric car have helped keep the mail steadily flowing over the centuries.

The City Hall Post Office at the southern tip of City Hall Park

New York has even played a pivotal role in the development of the American mail service, from the creation of the Boston Post Road (the first mail road which snaked through Manhattan and the Bronx) to the first mail boxes. Even the first postage stamps were sold in New York — within former church-turned-post office in lower Manhattan.

Why are there so many post offices from the 1930s? Why is New York’s largest post office next to Penn Station? And why does New York City have so many individual ZIP codes? And who, pray tell, is Barnabas Bates?

LISTEN NOW: A HISTORY OF THE POST OFFICE IN NEW YORK

All The Beauty In The World: Guarding the Met with Patrick Bringley

Post author By GY
Post date March 21, 2025

A special bonus episode! Two years ago we featured Patrick Bringley on the show, the author of All The Beauty In The World, regarding his experiences as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the life lessons he learned strolling silently past priceless works of art.

The book has become a massive best-seller worldwide and has even become a cultural phenomenon in South Korea, selling more than a quarter million copies in that country alone. So we thought we’d bring Patrick back to the show, on the occasion of his new off-Broadway show based on the book.

How do you transform an off-Broadway stage into the Metropolitan Museum of Art? What life lessons can you absorb from walking around museums?

As it turns out, the routines and responsibilites of a museum security guard can stand in for many types of professions, offering peaceful ritual and possibilies for deeper reflection of the beautiful things surrounding us.

LISTEN NOW: ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD

Get information and tickets to Patrick Bringley’s new show here and further ticket information here

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Tags Metropolitan Museum of Art

American History New Amsterdam Podcasts Wartime New York

How New York Got Its Name: A Tale of Adventure and Betrayal with Russell Shorto

Post author By GY
Post date March 14, 2025

The Fall of New Amsterdam, painted in 1932 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

It’s one of the most foundational questions we could ever ask on this show — how did New York City get its name?

You may know that the English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland (and its port town of New Amsterdam) in 1664, but the details of this history-making day have remained hazy — until now.

Russell Shorto brought the world of New Amsterdam and the early years before New York to life in his classic history The Island At The Center of The World.

His new book Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America functions as a sequel of sorts, revisiting the moment when New Amsterdam ceased to be — and New York was born.

Shorto joins Greg and Tom for a very spirited discussion of international warfare, displaced princes, frantic letter writing and ominous warships in the harbor.

At the end of this story, you will not only know how New York — the city, the state, the whole place, from Buffalo to Long Island — got its name, you will know the exact forgotten historical figure who gave it that name.

More details NIEUW AMSTERDAM OFTE NUE NIEUW IORX OPT TEYLANT MAN by Johannes Vingboons (1664),

Stadt Huys, the first City Hall on Pearl Street

The Duke of York Charter, 1886 illustration

King Charles II, portrait by John Michael Wright,

The Duke of York and future King James II, portait by John Riley

FURTHER LISTENING

Our mini-series on New Amsterdam, featuring Russell Shorto, recorded in 2024

Tags Duke of York, England, New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, Russell Shorto

Podcasts The Jazz Age Writers and Artists

The New Yorker Magazine: Talk of the Town for 100 Years

Post author By GY
Post date February 28, 2025

The New Yorker turns one century old — and hasn’t aged a day! The witty, cosmopolitan magazine published its first issue on February 21, 1925. And even though present-day issues are often quite contemporary in content, the magazine’s tone and style still recall its glamorous Jazz Age origins.

The New Yorker traces itself to members of that legendary group of wits known as the Algonquin Round Table — renowned artists, critics and playwrights who met every day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel.

And in particular, to two married journalists – Harold Ross and Jane Grant – who infused the magazine with a very distinct cosmopolitan zest. High fashion, martinis and Midtown Manhattan mixed with the droll wit of a worldly literati.

A new exhibition at the New York Public Library — “A Century of the New Yorker” — chronicles the magazine’s history, from its origins and creation by Ross and Grant to its current era, under the editorship of David Remnick.

Greg and Tom interview the show’s two curators Julie Golia and Julie Carlsen about the treasures on display from the New Yorker’s glorious past — from the magazine’s first cover (featuring everybody’s favorite snob Eustace Tilly) to artifacts and manuscripts from the world’s greatest writers.

LISTEN NOW: THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE

A Century of the New Yorker

Through February 21, 2026, third floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 42nd Street and 5th Avenue

“The New York Public Library’s new major exhibition A Century of The New Yorker draws on NYPL’s collections, including the magazine’s voluminous archives and the papers of many of its contributors, to bring to life the people, stories, and ideas that made The New Yorker.”

FURTHER LISTENING

Tags Algonquin Hotel, New York Public Library, New Yorker

Film History Podcasts Side Streets

At The Movies with Meyers and Young: Celebrating New York City on the big screen

Post author By GY
Post date February 21, 2025

Greg and Tom have taken off their historian hats for a minute and have suddenly become — movie critics? Close but not quite!

This week we’re giving you a ‘sneak preview’ of their Patreon podcast called Side Streets, a conversational chat show about New York City and, well, whatever interests them that week.

In honor of the Academy Awards, the Bowery Boys hosts pay homage to the great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert while looking at five award-worthy films with strong New York City connections:

— Anora with its captivating south Brooklyn locations

— A Complete Unknown, taking us back 1960s Greenwich Village

— Wicked, a spritely interpretation of the Broadway musical

— The Brutalist, an epic about more than just architecture

— Saturday Night, a frenetic tribute to the comedy-show icon which turns 50 years old this year

NOTE There are light spoilers (especially to locations used in some of these films) but nothing that will ruin your enjoyment of these movies.

LISTEN NOW: AT THE MOVIES

To listen to all episodes of Side Streets, support the Bowery Boys on Patreon

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

Harlem in the Jazz Age: A Renaissance in New York, a Revolution on Swing Street

Post author By GY
Post date February 14, 2025

The wait staff at Small's Paradise, 1929. The venue, on 134th Street and today's Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, was the rare Black-owned nightclub that was integrated. It became one of Harlem's most enduring hot spots, closing in 1986. New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images

For the Bowery Boys episode number 450, we’re looking at the glamour and mystery of Harlem during the 1920s, a decade when the predominantly black neighborhood, in the words of Langston Hughes, “was in vogue.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke’s classic essay “The New Negro” and the literary anthology featuring the work of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen and other significant black writers of the day.

The rising artistic scene would soon be known as the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important cultural movements in American history.

And centered within America’s largest black neighborhood — Harlem, the “great black city,” as described by Wallace Thurman, with a rising population and growing political and cultural influence.

The Survey Graphic, published in March 1925, focusing on “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” and featuring the writing of Alain Locke.

And during the 1920s, Harlem became even more. Along “Swing Street” and Lenox Avenue, nightclubs and speakeasies gave birth to American music and fostered great musical talents like Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.

Ballrooms like the Savoy and the Alhambra helped turn Harlem into a destination for adventure and romance.

While Harlem was truly the largest and most prominent African-American neighborhood in America, it was still tied to — and even reliant upon — the white New Yorkers who became fascinated by black culture. Many Harlem nightclubs (notably The Cotton Club) were not open to the black residents who lived around them.

What were these two worlds like — the literary salons and the nightclubs? How removed were these spheres from the every day lives of regular Harlem residents? How did the neighborhood develop both an energetic and raucous music scene and a diverse number of churches — many (like the Abyssinian Baptist Church) still around today?

FEATURING the stories of Sugar Hill, the Dunbar Apartments, and Hamilton Club Lodge Ball

PLUS lots of great music!

LISTEN TODAY: HARLEM IN THE JAZZ AGE

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Harlem Night Life map in 1933, Campbell, E. Simms (Elmer Simms), cartographer. Dell Publishing Company, publisher.

Get tickets to our March 31 City Vineyard event Bowery Boys HISTORY LIVE! here

And join us for our Gilded Age Weekend in New York, May 29-June 1, 2025. More info here.

Harlem scene, 1927, George Rinhart / Getty Images

FURTHER LISTENING

Tags Billie Holiday, Harlem, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, speakeasys, Swing Street

Events

The Bowery Boys History LIVE: Get tickets to our new ongoing live event at City Vineyard

Post author By GY
Post date February 4, 2025

City Vineyard, the Tribeca sister location of City Winery, presents Bowery Boys History: Live!, a live storytelling cabaret event on Thursday, March 13th, 2025 at 7:30 PM! Tickets here

Calling all history geeks, New Yorkers, and lovers of great storytelling.

LIVE FROM 400 YEARS OF NEW YORK CITY HISTORY — it’s the Bowery Boys with an all-new, ongoing live event! Join Greg Young from the Bowery Boys Podcast and a rotating roster of the city’s greatest historians, tour guides and personalities for a fascinating evening of history, a storytelling cabaret of all-true tales and spellbinding secrets from the past.

Bowery Boys History Live is like a cabaret night for historians! Or a variety show for local history lovers. Featuring the histories of famous New York people, neighborhoods and landmarks. With some hilarious detours and maybe even a song or two. Sit back, grab a drink and a bite, and join us for a fun-filled tribute to New York City.

Greg will be joined on stage by three special guests, all former guests on the Bowery Boys podcast:

— Krikor Daglian (truetalesnyc on Instagram) from the Bowery Boys episode Walking The East Village
—Ann McDermott from the Bowery Boys episode The Ramones at CBGB
— Kyle Supley from the Bowery Boys episode The Story of Flushing and Treasures from the World’s Fair

PLUS a few more surprises. Join us at City Vineyard!

THE BOWERY BOYS HISTORY LIVE! Greg Young with Krikor Daglian, Ann McDermott and Kyle Supley
CITY VINEYARD
233 West Street (Pier 26), on the Hudson River waterfront
Thursday, March 13, 7:30 pm, doors open 6pm

Tickets $40, with a $25 per person minimum for food and drink

Tickets here

Greg with Ann McDermott on Extra Place near the old CBGB

Greg with Krikor Daglian in the East Village

Greg with Kyle Supley at Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Tags City Vineyard, events

Neighborhoods Podcasts Religious History The Immigrant Experience

The Story of Italian Harlem: New York’s Forgotten Little Italy

Post author By GY
Post date January 31, 2025
15 Comments on The Story of Italian Harlem: New York’s Forgotten Little Italy

Daniel Celentano, Festival, 1934. Celentano was born and raised in East Harlem.

One of America’s first great Italian neighborhoods was once in East Harlem, populated with more southern Italians than Sicily itself, a neighborhood almost entirely gone today except for a couple restaurants, a church and a long-standing religious festival.

This is, of course, not New Yorks’ famous “Little Italy,” the festive tourist area in lower Manhattan built from another 19th-century Italian neighborhood on Mulberry Street. The bustling street life of old Italian Harlem exists mostly in memory now.

If you wander around any modern American neighborhood with a strong Italian presence, you’ll find yourself around people who can trace their lineage back through the streets of Italian Harlem. Perhaps that includes yourself.

But it’s not all warm nostalgia and fond recollections. Life could be quite hard in Italian Harlem, thanks to the nearby industrial environment, the deteriorating living conditions and the street crime, the early years of New York organized crime.

So who were these first Italian settlers who left their homes for what would become a hard urban life in upper Manhattan? What drew them to the city? What traditions did they bring? And in the end, what did they leave behind, when so many moved out to the four corners of the United States?

Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts or listen right here:

LISTEN NOW Italian Harlem: New York’s Forgotten Little Italy

a street vendor with wares displayed, during a festival in Italian Harlem. 1915, Bain Services/Library of Congress

We’re not done with Harlem! In fact we’re building up to an epic new 450th episode for our next show.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Past Bowery Boys episodes with close links to this current show:

Tags classic restaurants, immigrants, Italian Harlem, Italians, Little Italy, pizza

Bowery Boys Bookshelf Podcasting Podcasts

Inside the Memory Palace with Nate DiMeo

Post author By GY
Post date January 10, 2025

There were very few history podcasts around back in the year 2008, but the Bowery Boys Podcast was certainly here … and so was the Memory Palace, hosted by Nate DiMeo, presenting small, often forgotten vignettes from history in a descriptive narrative format.

In this special interview episode, Greg talks with Nate on the occasion of his new companion book The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past which features many of his fable-like historical portraits, including many from New York City history — from revolutionary amusements on Coney Island to less frequented corridors within the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And Greg and Nate go deep on the relationship between history and memory, on the reliability of memory to help us relive the past and how our own experiences can help fill in the gaps within histories that seem lost to us today.

Featuring a couple of elephants, the Wallendas, Parks and Recreation, the X-Men, a very large painting of Versailles, and the big secret about the monster hiding in your closet right now.