The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Every Monday I’ll try and check in with the Mad Men episode from the night before and focus in on one or two historical references made on the show. Spoilers aplenty, so read no further if you don’t want to know…. Last night’s episode of ‘Mad Men’ spent one half of the episode in California… Read More
PODCAST In the fourth part of our transportation series BOWERY BOYS ON THE GO, we finally take a look at the birth of the New York City subway. After decades of outright avoiding underground transit as a legitimate option, the city got on track with the help of August Belmont and the newly formed Interborough… Read More
Two forlorn shots of the IRT’s 28th Street Station, utterly untouched by throngs, 1904. One hundred and six years later, hundreds boarding the 4 and 6 trains would enter here. Photos courtesy LOC
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this video before, but as a preparation for tomorrow’s new podcast, I thought it was worth another look. A rather tranquil look down the subway tunnels, 105 years ago…. June 5, 1905: the Interborough Rapid Transit line from 14th Street to 42nd Street, not yet in operation a year.
Like the set of a future German expressionist film, the brand new power station for Interborough Rapid Transit’s underground train service sits ready for use, 1904. (Actually the station isn’t ‘underground’; it sat on the far west side on 58th Street and 11th Avenue) The gleaming yet strangely spooky City Hall Station, still under construction… Read More
Two images of New York subway tunnels from 1904, before regular service began in October. Original photos courtesy Library of Congress, cleaned up editions at Shorpy (The top one is 14th Street station)
Every Monday I’ll try and check in with the Mad Men episode from the night before and focus in on one or two historical references made on the show. Spoilers aplenty, so read no further if you don’t want to know…. It’s Christmastime, December 1964, and our favorite upstart ad agency, in order to impress… Read More
A special illustrated version of our podcast on the Pan Am Building (Episode #61) is now available on our NYC History Archive feed. Today it’s the Met Life Building. It’s been called the ugliest building in New York City. It sits like a monolith behind one of the city’s most enduring icons Grand Central Terminal.… Read More
ABOVE: St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in 1928, ten years after the first service was held in its scarcely completed chapel and eighty-two years before Angelina Jolie plays the title role in the action thriller “Salt” where she blows part of it up with explosives. You can find a nicely written short history… Read More
The photo above shows the southwest corner of Union Square in the year 1906. For many years prior, this corner was the scene of several brutal accidents between cable cars and pedestrians. When the Metropolitan Traction Company (now doing business as the powerful New York City Railway Company) ripped out the cable lines and replaced… Read More
Taking their lives in their hands: riders of the City Island Monorail On Friday’s podcast, I briefly talked about the Pelham Park & City Island Railroad (or, in the parlance of the day, Monoroad), an actual monorail system, three miles in length, linking the small fishing community of City Island with the Bronx mainland. This… Read More
postcard from Old New York With Mad Men making its return last night on AMC, myself and many other bloggers (like the fabulous Natasha Vargas-Cooper and the folks over at the City Room) are scouring the episodes for fun New York City history references. One of my favorite buildings in the city made an appearance… Read More
ABOVE: The Boynton Bicycle Railway, combining the best of the locomotive and the spinning wheel. This narrow little hot wheel took riders on a short ride through Coney Island. For the third part of our Bowery Boys On The Go summer series, looking back at the history of New York City public transportation, it’s a… Read More
“The bicycle path from Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Coney Island.” Illustration above an 1896 issue of Munsey’s magazine (Courtesy NYPL)You have been warned! From an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, dated May 11, 1896: “Several thousand men and women rode on bicycles in this neighborhood yesterday. Possibly twenty of them were injured in one… Read More
Abandoned railroad tracks dart along the cobblestones of the Brooklyn waterfront. Walker Evans 1960 (Courtesy LIFE images) Mad Men starts on Sunday, speeding the story up to Thanksgiving 1964. What was going on in the city then? [City Room] You think it’s hot down in the subway today? Imagine what it was like several decades… Read More