The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The early days of Luna Park, 1905, in all its electric-lit glory. The park opened in 1903. (Pic courtesy Shorpy, click here for full-size image) Flying overhead, looking down at Luna Park, 1920 (Courtesy U.S. Army Air Forces) The last days of Luna Park, 1944. A series of fires in the park the next year… Read More
Visitors to pre-20th century Coney Island would have enjoyed a most unusual site — Elephantine Colossus , more famously known as ‘the Elephant Hotel’, an actual guest house which stood watch over the entertainment district’s beach amusements. The hotel opened in 1885, a 12-storey pachyderm with 31 organ-themed guest rooms that faced the ocean and… Read More
Howard Carter with his very favorite king (courtesy Life Images) Years after the Steve Martin novelty hit, King Tut mania returns to New York City. The heavily hyped Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs finally opened last week at the Discovery Times Square Exposition, promising rooms of priceless artifacts from the tomb of… Read More
Earth Day 1970: Girls in Union Square take a sweep at pollution. Photo courtesy AP and National Geographic (who has many more pictures of the environmental holiday’s first year John Lindsay’s “secular revival meeting,†the first Earth Day, has turned into booming business. [New York Times] Coney Island’s Luna Park will return next month! Or… Read More
Above: Mark Twain at Delmonico’s Restaurant One hundred years ago today, Mark Twain died of a heart attack in Connecticut, famously the day after Hailey’s Comet whisked by the earth. Although obviously more known for his reminiscences of Missouri and his later life in Hartford, Conn., New York City figured significantly in his career. Twain… Read More
The villain du jour of the latest financial scandal is investment firm Goldman Sachs, accused of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors on the shady details of certain ‘exotic’ mortgage-backed securities. The magnitude of Goldman Sachs’ ambitions over the past 140 years — its seismic up and downs, through booms and… Read More
Postcard of the elephant house, now the central Zoo Center — and home today to a baby rhino below. (Courtesy NYPL) PODCAST New York City’s most exotic residents inhabit hundreds of leafy acres in the Bronx at the once-named New York Zoological Park. Sculpted out of the former DeLancey family estate and tucked next to… Read More
For those of you looking for the old Bowery Boys — not the podcasters, not the rock band, not the gallery show from last month, not the 19th century gang (the real Bowery Boys) — but the comic movie stars from the 1930s and 40s — Turner Classics Movies now shows their films every Saturday… Read More
A new podcast is on the way and will hopefully be ready by Friday (still navigating through some of our technical difficulties at the moment). In the meantime, check this out! One of our fans on Facebook, Moses Pounds, created a Google map marking all the locations we’ve spoken about in prior podcasts. Much appreciation… Read More
Park Slope, snow and Volkswagen, January 1978, photo by Dinandi Nooney (courtesy Google Life images) Why was Park Slope named the best neighborhood in New York City? Being one of the city’s largest landmarked districts probably helps. [New York Daily News] Say it’s 1900, you’re injured and you happen to be at the Brooklyn Navy… Read More
The 310 Fifth Avenue storefront of International Business Machines (IBM), back in 1927 when they sold weight scales and coffee and meat grinders. [Courtesy IBM] The original company, the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, was actually based in New York City when they changed their name to the present IBM in 1924.My computer officially died… Read More
“A view of a boy hanging out in a tenement and shabby residential street sections.” From a classic Paul Schutzer photo series on high school dropouts, taken April 1960. Check out the whole series of images here here. And if you want to venture into the artice itself, part two can be found here. High… Read More
Here’s a sampling of female entertainers from the last one hundred years, focusing on one particular venue that figures into shaping that person’s professional career. Obviously, most of these women performed in dozens of places throughout the city. I’m just focusing on location pivotal to their beginnings. Billie Holiday in a jam session, 1943 (Gjon… Read More
Sonny and Cher in New York City (picture courtesy Getty Images) June 1, 1970: Sonny and Cher begin a two-week stint at the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria. The Empire was one of the swankiest hotel lounges in Manhattan, usually the site of stars slightly past their prime, pop and jazz musicians of the prior… Read More
March 30, 1974: The Ramones, the pride of Forest Hills, Queens, play their first public concert together at Performance Studio, a small space on East 20th Street* managed by future member Tommy Erdelyi (later Tommy Ramone). For their debut set, there were just three of them, and Dee Dee Ramone sang lead How did it… Read More