The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Our adventure in the Netherlands continues with a quest to find the Walloons, the French-speaking religious refugees who became the first settlers of New Netherland in 1624. Their descendants would last well beyond the existence of New Amsterdam and were among the first people to call themselves New Yorkers. But you can’t tell the Walloon… Read More
The epic journey begins! The Bowery Boys Podcast heads to old Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to find traces of New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement which became New York. We begin our journey at Amsterdam’s Centraal Station and spend the day wandering the streets and canals, peeling back the centuries in search of New… Read More
The Bowery Boys Podcast is headed to Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands for a very special mini-series, marking the 400th anniversary of the Dutch first settling in North America in the region that today we call New York City. But before they go, they’re kicking off their international voyage with a special conversation… Read More
The New York City subway system turns 120 years old later this year so we thought we’d honor the world’s longest subway system with a supersized overview history — from the first renegade ride in 1904 to the belated (but sorely welcomed) opening of one portion of the Second Avenue Subway in 2017. New Yorkers… Read More
The story of a filthy and dangerous train ditch that became one of the swankiest addresses in the world — Park Avenue. For over 100 years, a Park Avenue address meant wealth, glamour and the high life. The Fred Astaire version of the Irving Berlin classic “Puttin’ on the Ritz” revised the lyrics to pay… Read More
Few areas of the United States have as endured as long as Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood with almost over 375 years of history and an evolving cultural landscape that includes Quakers, trees, Hollywood films, world fairs, and Asian immigrants. In this special on-location episode of the Bowery Boys, Greg and special guest Kieran Gannon explore… Read More
The Brooklyn waterfront was once decorated with a yellow Domino Sugar sign, affixed to an aging refinery along a row of deteriorating industrial structures facing the East River. The Domino Sugar Refinery, completed in 1883 (after a devastating fire destroyed the original), was more than a factory. During the Gilded Age and into the 20th… Read More
So much has happened in and around Madison Square Park — the leafy retreat at the intersections of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street — that telling its entire story requires an extra-sized show, in honor of the Bowery Boys 425th episode. Madison Square Park was the epicenter of New York culture from the years… Read More
We love talking about parks on the Bowery Boys podcast because they are an excellent way to experience history and recreation at the same time. In February we will be bringing you two all-new episodes related to two New York City parks — one park which traces back to the founding of the United States… 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
The Kosciuszko Bridge is one of New York City’s most essential pieces of infrastructure, the hyphen in the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that connects the two boroughs over Newtown Creek, the 3.5 mile creek which empties into the East River. The bridge is interestingly named for the Polish national hero Tadeusz Kościuszko who fought during the American… Read More
Thank you for making 2023 another excellent year for the Bowery Boys podcast. This year our shows spanned hundreds of years of history — from the Dutch wall of New Amsterdam in the 1650s to the paparazzi woes of Greta Garbo in the 1950s — and looked at many forgotten aspects of city life like… Read More
On the morning of November 14th, 1943, Leonard Bernstein, the talented 25-year-old assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, got a phone call saying he would at last be leading the respected orchestral group — in six hours, that afternoon, with no time to rehearse. He later recalled, “I don’t remember a thing from that… Read More
Manhattan’s Grace Church sits at a unique bend on Broadway and East Tenth Street, making it seem that the historic house of worship is rising out of the street itself. But Grace is also at another important intersection — where religion and high society greeted one another during the Gilded Age. Grace is one of… Read More
The Brooklyn Bridge, which was officially opened to New Yorkers 140 years ago this year, is not only a symbol of the American Gilded Age, it’s a monument to the genius, perseverance and oversight of one family. This episode is arranged as a series of three mini biographies of three family members — John Roebling,… Read More