The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Pandemonium on Wall Street during the stock market crash of 1929A special illustrated version of our podcast on the New York Stock Exchange(Episode #63) is now available on our NYC History Archive feed. Just hit play and images of the things we’re talking about appear on any compatible media player. We look at the early… Read More
Write that man a ticket! This rebel might have had a different cause had he been at yesterday’s New York city council meeting. The big news in the city yesterday was the massive smoking ban passed by the City Council that prohibits smoking in public places like Times Square and Central Park, a total of… Read More
Getting ready for its 100th birthday on May 23, the main branch of the New York Public Library — I guess we’re calling it the Stephen A Schwarzman Building now — has been free of most of its oppressive scaffolding for a couple weeks. This was the scene in the morning fog yesterday:And what the… Read More
The Villard Houses, a Madison Avenue masterpiece by the firm McKim, Mead and White, was mostly the inspiration of their associate Joseph Wells, according to the author. [courtesy NYPL] Triumvirate: McKim Mead & WhiteArt, Architecture, Scandal, and Class In America’s Gilded Ageby Mosette BroderickAlfred A. Knopf, New York, PublisherBOOK REVIEW I’ve been going back and… Read More
And a little something silly for Friday: The Hotel Seville was a brilliant Beaux-Arts jewel exemplar of the glory days of Madison Avenue, opening in 1904 — just days before the New York subway — and designed by Harry Allen Jacobs. The architect was a master of the ebullient Beaux-Arts style, applying it to apartment… Read More
Above: The slow, bitterly aggravating work of clearing the streets of New York during the blizzard of 1888.The second largest snow-filled month in New York City history! The snowiest January ever! The eighth biggest snowstorm ever! These are some of the records being thrown out this morning after last night’s wild thunder-filled snow apocalypse. Most… Read More
Frozen farm: The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm waits out the weather for a better day. (Courtesy Scott Nyerges) NAME THAT NEIGHBORHOOD Some New York neighborhoods are simply named for their location on a map (East Village, Midtown). Others are given prefabricated designations (SoHo, DUMBO). But a few retain names that link them intimately with their… Read More
One hundred years ago: here comes the RMS Olympic, sailing into the harbor at right. The lead ship in the White Star line, the Olympic would be cruising the Atlantic several months later, on the morning of April 15, 1912, when its sister ship the Titanic sent out a distress call, having hit an iceberg… Read More
With Fort Wadsworth to its side, the last of Othmar Ammann’s New York bridges jets out over the Narrows. PODCAST The longest suspension bridge in the United States, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was one of Robert Moses’ most ambitious projects, a commanding structure that would finally link Staten Island with Brooklyn. Today it soars above New… Read More
The newly built High Bridge over the Harlem River, as it looked in 1849. (NYPL) Here’s a handy primer to ten of the most strangely named bridges in the New York City metropolitan area. Most of these names are probably familiar to you, and you probably pass over many of these bridges without giving a… Read More
Sure, the Narrows looks all nice and calm, until an axe murderer comes along. (Pic courtesy Library of Congress) The image above is an 1861 illustration — a Currier & Ives illustration, no less — of the lovely waters of the Narrows and, behind it, the bucolic loveliness of Staten Island, as seen from the… Read More
We’re putting together the first new podcast of the year right now, involving a major traumatic event in south Brooklyn history. As I’m getting that together, enjoy this blog posting from summer 2009 about one of southern Brooklyn’s long forgotten pleasure destinations, Ulmer Park. You can find the original article here. Over a 100 years… Read More
ABOVE: Satisfied New York filmgoers exit into the lobby, May 1943. WHAT lobby, pray tell? This is the massive 6,000-seat Roxy Theatre, at 153 W. 50th Street, “often cited as the most impressive movie palace ever built” according to Cinema Treasures. Movies at the Roxy were presented with live orchestras and vocals. In this case,… Read More
A beat in Times Square: Ben Carruthers drifts through the city in ‘Shadows’ BOWERY BOYS RECOMMEND is an occasional feature where we find an unusual movie or TV show that — whether by accident or design — uniquely captures an era of New York City better than any reference or history book. Other entrants in… Read More
A rather startling title card from ‘Birth of a Nation’ [courtesy the Liberty Lamp]The question posed in the headline is a fascinating urban legend I’ve been obsessed with proving (or disproving) for about a year. It pops up occasionally during discussions about New York film history. And I think I’ve come up with an answer.… Read More