The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The name Stuyvesant can be found everywhere in New York City. — in the names of neighborhoods, apartments, parks and high schools. Peter Stuyvesant, the last director-general of New Amsterdam, is a hero to some, a villain to others — and probably a caricature to all. What do we really know about Peter Stuyvesant? In… Read More
Tom visits the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side to walk through the reconstructed two-room apartment of an African-American couple, Joseph and Rachel Moore, who lived in 1870 on Laurens Street in today’s Soho neighborhood. Both Joseph and Rachel moved to New York when they were about 20 years old, in the late 1840s… Read More
NEW from The Gilded Gentleman podcast — some overlooked history of the 19th century, the story of black life and social class in New York City. Dr. Carla Peterson, author of Black Gotham: Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, joins Carl to share her research and perspective on the growth and… Read More
What wonderful surprises await the Bowery Boys in Little Caribbean? The Brooklyn enclave in Flatbush is one of the central destinations for Caribbean-American life and culture in New York City. Since the 1960s, thousands of immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations have made this historic area of Flatbush (mostly… Read More
PODCAST New York City has an impressive collection of historic homes, but none as unique and joyful as the Louis Armstrong House and Museum, located in Corona, Queens. What other historic home in the United States has aqua blue kitchen cabinets, bathroom speakers behind silver wallpaper, mirrored bathrooms and chandeliers over the bed? The Louis… Read More
There once was a modest basement nightclub in an old West Village building which opened the door to a revolutionary (and now obvious) idea in New York City music and delivered one of the most significant moments in all of music history. In the 30s Midtown Manhattan clubs were alight with the bourgeoisie, tuxes and… Read More
PODCAST “If we were to offer a symbol of what Harlem has come to mean in a short span of twenty years, it would be another statue of liberty on the landward side of New York. Harlem represents the Negro’s latest thrust towards Democracy.” — Alain Locke EPISODE 353 This is Part Two of our… Read More
PODCAST How did Harlem become Harlem, the historic and spiritual center of Black culture, politics and identity in American life? This is the story of radical change — through radical real estate. By the 1920s, Harlem had become the capital of Black America, where so many African-American thinkers, artists, writers, musicians and entrepreneurs would live… Read More
I’m very pleased to be able to join author Eric K. Washington in a special ‘virtual history’ discussion of the Silent Parade of 1917 — courtesy a special event sponsored by Green-Wood Cemetery. Join Eric and I on Wednesday, August 19 at 5pm for an illustrated discussion of this important moment in New York City… Read More
PODCAST The history of African-American settlements and neighborhoods which once existed in New York City Today we sometimes define New York City’s African-American identity by the places where thriving black culture developed – Harlem, of course, and also Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, neighborhoods that developed for groups of black residents in the 20th century. But… Read More
PODCAST The story of Harlem’s hair care queen and her daughter A’Lelia, a patron of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1867, Sarah Breedlove was born to parents who had once been enslaved on a Louisiana plantation. Less than fifty years later, Breedlove (as the hair care mogul Madam C.J. Walker) would be the richest African-American woman… Read More