The Bowery Boys: New York City History
What is Thanksgiving without the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? The annual march through Manhattan — terminating at Macy’s Department Store — has delighted New Yorkers for a century and been a part of the American tradition of Thanksgiving since it was first broadcast nationally on television in the 1950s. Macy’s began the parade in 1924… Read More
In 1886, during a miles-long parade celebrating the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, office workers in lower Manhattan began heaving ticker tape out the windows, creating a magical, blizzard-like landscape. That tradition stuck. Today that particular corridor of Broadway — connecting Battery Park to City Hall — is known as the “Canyon of Heroes”… Read More
What was Times Square before the electric billboards, before the Broadway theaters and theme restaurants, before the thousands and thousands of tourists? What was Times Square before it was Times Square? Today it’s virtually impossible to find traces of the area’s 18th and 19th century past. But in this episode, Tom and Greg will peel away… Read More
Baseball, as American as apple pie, really is “the New York game.” While its precursors come from many places – from Jamestown to Prague – the rules of American baseball and the modern ways of enjoying it were born from the urban experience and, in particular, the 19th-century New York region. The sport (in the… Read More
PODCAST Your ticket to Truman Capote’s celebrity-filled party at the Plaza. This month FX is debuting a new series created by Ryan Murphy — called Feud: Capote and the Swans — regarding writer Truman Capote‘s relationship with several famed New York society women. And it’s such a New York story that listeners have asked if we’re going… Read More
On the latest episode of The Gilded Gentleman, returning guest Esther Crain, author and creator of Ephemeral New York, joins Carl for a look at how New Yorkers stayed cool on summer days in the Gilded Age. As New York continued its march up the island of Manhattan, there were few places where New Yorkers that couldn’t escape… Read More
New York City subway riders in the mid 20th century knew who Miss Subways was. The beauty pageant, spotlighting “every day” New York women, featured placards which hung on all the trains (like the one above for 1948 winner Thelma Porter). Well, Miss Subways is back, hosted by the City Reliquary Museum in a fabulous,… Read More
What happens when P. T. Barnum, America’s savviest supplier of both humbug and hoax, decides that it is time to go legit? The result is one of the greatest concert tours in American history. The Gilded Gentleman hosts this special presentation from the Bowery Boys podcast, recorded in 2020. Listen to it here or subscribe… Read More
It has become a name so associated with American sports and entertainment that you barely think about it. In New York City, when you say you are going to The Garden, you aren’t going to see flowers. Most likely, you’re going to see the Knicks. Or possibly Billy Joel. New York City’s many actual gardens… Read More
PODCAST Coney Island is back! After being closed for 2020 due to the pandemic, the unusual attractions, the thrilling rides and stands selling beer and hot dog have finally reopened. So we are releasing a very special version of our 2018 show called Landmarks of Coney Island — special, because this is an extended version of… Read More
The Paris Theater, as glamorous and as eccentric as any film it’s ever played, has the benefit of having the Plaza Hotel and Central Park to ensure it never goes out of style. But the history of this romantic and occasionally radical movie house, the longest running single-screen movie theater in New York, is as… Read More
I’m a sucker for severe electric-laden art-deco theaters like the Trans-Lux Modern Theater which was once located in Midtown Manhattan on the corner of 58th Street and Madison Avenue. Most every Midtown movie theater by the 1920s dabbled into electric signage to grab attention. But Trans-Lux worked in the opposite direction. To underscore the importance… Read More
For more information on the history of Times Square’s New Year’s celebrations, listen to our show A New Year In Old New York: One hundred years ago, Americans rang in the new year in an entirely new way — without legal liquor. “New Year’s Eve Agreeably Dull,” declared the New York Herald. “Sober Crowds Jam… Read More
PODCAST The tale of one of the 19th century’s most unusual superstars, a man who spent his entire life in the media spotlight — thanks to promoter and friend P.T. Barnum and to his highly publicized ‘wedding of the century’ to Lavinia Warren at Grace Church. EPISODE #339 Charles Stratton, who would become world famous… Read More
Women received the right to vote 100 years ago today with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Tens of thousands of women from all walks of life spent hard-fought decades working for this moment. Many of the most prominent suffragettes were wealthy white women of the Fifth Avenue set. It was… Read More