The Bowery Boys: New York City History
These 1906 Bronx zoo employees won’t let this snake out of sight. (NYPL) Escapes from the Bronx Zoo are relatively rare today, so news of a 20-inch Egyptian cobra slithering away last Friday — its current whereabouts unknown — struck fear and excitement in the hearts of Bronx residents. The slithery beast has even inspired… Read More
New York’s PBS affiliate WNET tonight debuts the documentary ’50th & 8th: A Skyscraper Story’ about the construction of One Worldwide Plaza, the complex of buildings in Hell’s Kitchen that fashioned itself as an architectural pioneer of midtown’s west side. I would not have thought this exemplar of 1980s architecture, a modern try at replicating… Read More
You’ll find these written on the sidewalks all throughout the city today….
Lonely tenement on Avenue C and 13th Street, near many homes of the Triangle Fire victims. photo by Percy Loomis Sperr [NYPL] From cable television to museums and campuses all over the city, you’ve been able to find a host of remembrances of the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory one hundred years ago.… Read More
Above: Liz with Sammy Davis Jr., with her husband Richard Burton kissing (!) another woman*. I’m not sure where this is taken, but as it’s from the LIFE collection by photographer Leonard Mccombe, it’s probably from the evening of October 20, 1964, after the opening of Davis’ hit musical ‘Golden Boy’. Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011), who… Read More
Courtesy Flickr/Harry J. Bizzarro A slight correction:I inferred in this week’s show that the very first Supreme Court — with Chief Justice John Jay — met in Federal Hall. They actually first convened on February 2, 1790, in a building very close by to Fraunces — the Royal Exchange Building. Also called the Merchant Exchange,… Read More
The harbor in 1730, with a view of New York’s Fort George by the engraver John CarwithamIt was 270 years ago this week that a truly foul period in New York history began, starting with a host of fires sprouting up throughout lower Manhattan and ending with several black residents of the city hanged and… Read More
Taking a weekend break from history to offer congratulations to our close friend Nancy Schwartzman who has also occasionally done some research for a few Bowery Boys podcasts in the past. Nancy is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, and she is piecing together her second short film now, called xoxosms. And she just successfully… Read More
The Blue Bell Tavern, a rustic pit stop along Bloomingdale Road, witness to the changing fortunes of war. (Courtesy NYPL) FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER To get you in the mood for the weekend, on occasional Fridays we’ll be featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive… Read More
Above: Fonthill Castle in the neighborhood of Riverdale in the Bronx, built in 1852 as the personal kingdom (if only briefly) of one of the world’s great Shakespearean actors, Edwin Forrest. The actor was born today, 205 years ago. The lavish home has long since been a part of the campus of the College of… Read More
Bergen Street is lovely trek through the borough’s most historic sites and neighborhoods — from its western end through Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill, dipping near Park Slope and up through Prospect Heights, and past old Grant Square and the Weeksville Heritage Center, the remnants of an early 19th century free black community. Indirectly, the… Read More
Trout by Currier & Ives, 1872. Sadly there are no extant images of Mrs. Trout. I could not let this week pass without mentioning a sadness that fell over lower Manhattan 150 years ago today. A lament over the number of Southern states seceding from the union? The grief of Democrats over the inauguration that… Read More
That Gotham glow: The powerful Sperry searchlight drapes the dark city in light. The Woolworth Building is lit up like a candle. A thin, bright streak of light brushes across the sky and dances off the clouds above. With few buildings over fifteen stories and the city’s electrical lights at a fraction of the intensity… Read More
This is not a land of hobbits. Despite looking like an illustration from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, the map above is actual drawing made of early New Amsterdam as it looked to one cartographer in 1661. It’s most likely an alternate image of New Amsterdam by the city’s surveyor Jacques Cortelyou who provides us with… Read More
Mourners filled the streets of New York on April 5th, 1911 , in honor of the victims of the Triangle Factory Fire. This March, modern New Yorkers will get their turn to commemorate the tragedy. Next month is the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific tragedies in New York City history — the… Read More