The Bowery Boys: New York City History
House on the hill: the stark and mysterious convent of Central Park, 1861 In tomorrow’s podcast, I’ll be spending a bit of time in 1861 and will be briefly mentioning Central Park. So I thought I’d give you a look at what it looked like then. Pictured above is a structure that once dominated the… Read More
As if one needed any more examples of the importance of New York’s immigrant culture to the history of music, today is the centenary of the birth of Bernard Herrmann, arguably the most important film music composer in history. Bernard was born (and prematurely at that) to immigrants from Russia. His father, Abraham Dardick, came to… Read More
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast celebrates its FOURTH ANNIVERSARY this week! And we’re using the occasion to debut a trilogy of summer podcasts, starting July 1st, featuring New York City’s involvement during the Civil War as a dramatic backdrop. The secession of Southern states starting in February 1861 brought out the best in New… Read More
Above: From a great photo stream of images from the 1971 parade by Me In San Fran/Flickr (check them out here) I happened across some rather extraordinary archival videos on YouTube posted by Randolfe Wicker, recorded in 1971 at New York’s second Gay Pride festivities ever, initially called the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day. In those… Read More
One hundred years ago today (June 23), the big news was the coronation of England’s King George at Westminster Abbey. Judging from the New York papers, American fascination with this event makes the recent royal nuptials of William and Kate seem like a forgettable folly. The June 23, 1911, issue of the New York Tribune is… Read More
If this were 1914, we would be in the midst of a week-long celebration of New York babies! Actually, the occasion was a bit more somber. According to the photo caption, Greater New York Baby Week was initiated “to reduce the toll of preventable infant deaths by calling city-wide attention to needs met and needs… Read More
Happy first day of summer! Who doesn’t want to run down a street, streaking through bursts of water emanating from old-style fire hydrants? Although I’m pretty sure nobody has ever tried to guess the identity of the very first ragamuffins to break into a fire hydrant, common sense and a rote knowledge of teenage behavior can… Read More
A century-old party: ghoulish revelers from the 1911 parade An even larger collection of freaks and aquatic oddities than Coney Island’s everyday normal assortment will come slithering down Surf Avenue this Saturday with the 29th annual Mermaid Parade. The parade is the heart of Coney’s modern freak-show aesthetic, Christmastime for the tattooed and glittery. Most… Read More
If you love perusing lists of books that you’ll never get a chance to read in your lifetime, please check out the Guardian’s list of the 100 greatest non-fiction books ever written. And when they say ever, they mean it. (The oldest entrant is dated c400 BC.) The works on their list cover the entire… Read More
Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring 20sBy David WallaceLyons Press REVIEW ‘Capital of the World’ is a delicious but high-calorie Whitman’s sampler of New York City delights during the 1920s. It is no surprise to find that it is authored by journalist David Wallace, whose publishing career is… Read More
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born two hundred years ago today in Litchfield, Connecticut. Although I don’t believe she ever lived in New York for any significant length of time, her younger brother Henry Ward Beecher was the city of Brooklyn’s most famous resident, a towering religious figure who came to exemplify the dignified society of… Read More
Above: Brooke Shields admires her caricature, 1995 (courtesy Google LIFE images)Thanks for listening to our breezy, kind of giddy tale of Sardi’s Restaurant. We might sound a little strange at a couple points, as we were recording it in 95 degree weather, and our studio isn’t adequately air conditioned! A little delirium might be evident.… Read More
The answer to the question in the headline is absolutely, without a doubt, yes. This story begins with a Minnesotan named Leo Shull, who moved to New York in the 1930s to become a playwright. He never wrote anything of note for the stage, but he wrote plenty about the stage, various guides to playwriting,… Read More
Trafalgar Square, by way of Park Row, in an imagined universe of American domination “If London Were Like New York” — as this 1902 article from Harmsworth’s Magazine imagines — it would be twenty times more spectacular. [Lubin] (Thanks to Chris Perriman for sending this via Twitter) A walk down Jamaica Avenue in Queens. I… Read More
Above: Eleventh Avenue in 1911, pre-High Line. This photo disturbs me greatly. This is courtesy, of course, of Shorpy, so click in to admire (and cringe) at the detail. One loose horseshoe on a train track, and it’s no longer pretty! The High Line, an experimental and highly successful park using the elevated train tracks… Read More