The Bowery Boys: New York City History
New Yorkers flock to a public water fountain on a hot day. Taken between 1908 and 1915 I originally ran this story back in July 2007, but it seems pretty apt today, given the circumstances: Its gonna get hot this summer in New York City. Pretty obviously July is the worst month for those in… Read More
Yesterday was Phineas Taylor Barnum‘s 200th birthday. Hopefully you did something outrageous to celebrate it. On top of renovating a railroad shed at Madison Square for one of his circuses (helping create the future Madison Square Garden), Barnum is most familiar to New Yorkers in the 19th century for his outrageous, moralistic, politically incorrect American… Read More
Pic courtesy LOC The caption for the above 1894 illustration, looking back to headier days, reads: “Have we improved upon our manner of celebrating the Fourth? looking south on Broadway from corner of Cortlandt Street, 1834.” Here’s that view today; simply replace those buildings with Liberty Plaza. The proper classes agonized over New York’s Fourth… Read More
Photo by Sean Nowicke/Buzzstew Click pic for larger view Since I’m in a transportation history mindset this summer, I’ll be making it a personal mission to visit a lot of glorious New York ruins with that theme. Staten Island boat graveyard, here I come! But my first stop was a couple weekends ago, exploring the… Read More
Manhattan waterfront property, from Thomas Edison, circa May 1903: an uninterrupted swell of piers, tugs and steamships jutting into the water, the skyline obscured at camera angle by towers of masts. This short film starts immediately north of the Battery Maritime Building (next to the Whitehall Ferry Terminal) and scans the entire waterfront up to… Read More
So I got caught in the rain yesterday afternoon and happened to be by St. Mark’s On The Bowery in the East Village, so I ran inside. And lo and behold, in the church yard, I stumbled upon the crypt marker of Daniel D Tompkins, who I just spoke about in this week’s podcast —… Read More
ABOVE: A detail from an illustration of the northern points of the New Amsterdam colony, 1640. The year 1642 saw the very first regular ferry service in New York Harbor, between the two small villages of Breuckelen and New Amsterdam. The populations of both areas numbered less than 1,000 at most, combined, and most were… Read More
PODCAST The Staten Island Ferry is one of the last remaining vestiges of an entire ferry system in New York, taking people between Manhattan and its future boroughs long before any bridges were built. In Staten Island, the northern shores were spiked in piers, competing ferry operators braving the busy waters of New York harbor.… Read More
Wheels converge: Motor buggies, horse drawn carriages and other conveyances glide and to and from the railroad terminal ferry station at West 23rd Street (i.e. Chelsea Piers) Pic courtesy NYPL Tomorrow we begin our first official summer blockbuster: a set of several podcasts in a row, themed BOWERY BOYS ON THE GO. Every two weeks,… Read More
Edith Shain, the Kissing Nurse, Dies at 91 Photo Life Magazine
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 series can be found here. Rarely do documentaries on New York… Read More
Above: 15 Park Row, today the home of J&R Electronics (between Ann Street and Beekman Street), photography by the Wurts Brothers (NYPL) Slawson & Hobbs was a prosperous New York real estate firm. You can read about their new offices at W. 72nd Street here. That office building is still around — there’s a Cold… Read More
Above: Karyl Norman welcomes you to the Pansy Club!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 warehouse clubs of the mid-1990s. Past entries can be found here. LOCATION:… Read More
Photo courtesy the Hitchcock Papers Fifty years ago today, a movie by a British director that was mostly filmed in Los Angeles made its New York City debut. That film, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, would change the medium forever, from its unrelenting suspense and terrifying soundtrack to that famous shower scene. The movie was first shown… Read More
The morning of June 15 — The steamboat smolders off of North Brother Island Today is the anniversary of undoubtedly one of New York’s most tragic events, a disaster that famously eradicated a neighborhood and became the city’s single largest loss of life in the 20th century — the explosion of the steamboat General Slocum.… Read More