The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Manhattan’s 13-mile stretch of Broadway — as you’ve heard us say many times — has an extraordinary history. Thanks to its unique path up the length of the island, it crosses through a wide variety of fascinating neighborhoods and historical eras. And as it turns out — it also makes for a beautiful stroll. WALKING… Read More
By the 1930s, New York City’s thriving garment industry had moved from the Lower East Side to Midtown Manhattan*, housed within nondescript buildings with hundreds of showrooms and shop floors. The streets were lined with idling trucks, racks of dresses pulled along the sidewalk by loaders and truck men. The streets where American fashion was… Read More
While traipsing through Red Hook a couple months ago, I happened upon a family of raccoons camped out underneath a pick-up truck. New York City is actually a bit of a zoo — if you open your mind to what constitutes a star attraction. Sure, we don’t have lions wandering around (thankfully), but what zoo… Read More
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, Henrietta Wood sued the man who kidnapped her and sold her back into slavery. In his lifetime, that man — a prison warden and general scoundrel named Zebulon Ward — often bragged about losing the case, saying “he was the last American ever to pay for a… Read More
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died from his injuries by the assassin John Wilkes Booth who shot the president the previous evening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. It was a fate promised to him by Southern sympathizers from the moment he was first elected on November 6, 1860. At no point was… Read More
Over ten years ago, the New York Post and the New York Daily News were locked in a battle for tabloid dominance, wrestling and rolling around just as an apocalypse – the digital revolution — was descending upon American newsrooms. Newspapers across the country have either folded or become absorbed into national conglomerates. America’s best-selling… Read More
When it comes to artistic creation, we take many fundamentals of law for granted. Most people might not understand the particulars of ‘intellectual property’ but they sure benefit from it. The very review you are reading — and the website that publishes it — are protected by laws that were hammered out and fought for… Read More
Looking for a good book? Here are a few recent releases I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few weeks. All are currently available at your local book retailer: SPY SITES OF NEW YORK CITYH. Keith Melton and Robert WallaceGeorgetown University Press In what is easily the coolest New York City guide book of recent memory,… Read More
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
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
I finished reading Virginia A. McConnell‘s true-crime page-turner The Belle of Bedford Avenue and promptly went to listen to my favorite musical cast album — Chicago. Florence Burns, the ‘bad girl’ of McConnell’s tale, easily could have been the inspiration for Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly had she been a 1920s flapper. Burns’ real-life troubles, however, predate those of… Read More
Oh what a glamorous party! Those ‘midnight sailing parties’ along the Hudson River piers, partygoers boarding luxury ocean liners as the sun set, drinking and dining with passengers before the ship set sail for destinations abroad. One hot summer evening of 1935, the crew of the SS Bremen welcomed almost 5,000 non-passengers aboard the jewel of the German ocean… Read More
The 1896 landmark Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson embedded and legitimized the practice of “separate but equal” into American life in the 20th century. The decision built racism into the fiber of everyday activities — schooling, housing, medical care, public transportation — and elevated personal prejudices into the realm of legality. It raised white and… Read More
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