The Bowery Boys: New York City History
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
ABOVE: Looking south along a newly opened section of the East River Park promenade, which the city debuted over the July 4th holiday. It now extends down underneath the Williamsburg Bridge and continues slightly south. This section along the water has been closed for what seems like eternity, but the city projects the entire promenade… Read More
Above: Willowbrook State School in central Staten Island. Looks innocent enough…. 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 as well as any reference or history book. Other entries in this… Read More
You know it’s a good night at Xenon when you’re drunk on the dance floor, and all of a sudden, the actress Valerie Perrine and the Village People appear (source) 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… Read More
A Grand Central-centric Rand McNally map of transporation options in 1918, “the subway, elevated and surface lines” available for residents of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. (Sorry, Queens. Your borough would not be extensively served by New York’s centralized train system for years.) For a much clearer view, click into the picture or click here… Read More
Above: a freaky face hanging from the former mansion of Sinclair Oil tycoon Harry F. Sinclair (today, the Ukrainian Institute at 2 East 79th St.)Here’s a great little diversion for your day — the photo website Gargoyles of New York, cataloguing all the grotesque grace adorning the nooks and corners of city skyscrapers, cathedrals and… Read More
Pic Courtesy NYPL Benjamin Franklin is, of course, awesome for many reasons. An often overlooked quality about Franklin in his early years was his ambition and fearlessness at solo traveling among the major cities along the eastern seaboard — from Boston to New York, then, in 1723, to Philadelphia. It can’t have been very easy;… Read More
Above: George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin And another from the former New York Yankees owner, who died of a heart attack today: “As I’ve always said, the way New Yorkers back us we have to produce for them.” Photo courtesy AP
Above: The Third Avenue Line as it looked running along the Bowery, changing the nature of New York street life, even as its innovations helped expand the city. PODCAST Before there were subways, New York City transported travelers up and down the length of Manhattan by elevated railroad, an almost unreal spectacle to consider today.… Read More