The Bowery Boys: New York City History
I just caught up on all my Mad Men episodes last night and feel foolish that I never mentioned the episode from a couple Sundays ago entitled ‘Love Among The Ruins.’ The AMC TV show, set in the early 1960s Madison Avenue ad agency Sterling Cooper, frequently offers us peeks into classic New York landmarks… Read More
French sailors in Central Park, June 1943 (Pic courtesy Library of Congress) Tres tragique! The Café des Artistes, a 92 year old staple of the Upper West Side, originally opened as a haven for literally starving artists, closed for good over the weekend. [Eater] Meanwhile, in Central Park, Tavern On The Green isn’t going away,… Read More
Currier and Ives’ flamboyant and unnatural depiction of an afternoon in Central Park in 1869. The building with the flag is the Arsenal, years before it became part of the Central Park Zoo. We don’t have any regular podcast this week; however I am reposting our first Central Park episode called ‘The Creation of Central… Read More
ABOVE Co-op City: the housing development most likely to be seen from space 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 pasts. Other entries in this… Read More
Before Time Warner, before Trump International Hotel, before the Museum of Art and Design (click on photo for much greater detail) And even further back (1921) …
ABOVE Queens Castle: the Bodine Castle once stood in Long Island City at 4316 Vernon Boulevard, a private villa owned by a wealthy banker. The building was unfortunately demolished in 1966. Read more about it here Uptown flair: An interview with Alan Stillman, who opened the world’s very first TGI Friday’s in 1965 — in… Read More
KNOW YOUR MAYORS Our modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in our mayoral survey can be found here.Mayor C. Godfrey GuntherIn office: 1864-1865 His past glories were built on a mountain of fur pelts, and his future would wash up… Read More
Top: the Brooklyn Bridge in 1925. Bottom: Underhill on the boardwalk: the photographer captures a seemingly meloncholy day in Coney Island, with Childs Restaurant at right Nobody in New York’s early history captures the romance of early city life more than the first photographers — the men and women who wiled away with expensive, limited… Read More
In last Friday’s podcast on the Hotel Chelsea, I mentioned a building that was located very near by called the Grand Opera House, at the northwest corner of 23rd Street and 8th Avenue. Here it is: The opera house sprang up in 1868, the project of Samuel N. Pike, who purchased the land directly from… Read More
The Bowery Boys finally exist in the Twitter world! But how, exactly, do you apply what we do to a medium that’s brief, spontaneous and decidedly unhistoric? On top of updates and previews about our podcasts, we’ll also attempt to highlight history-related activities in the city, as well as observations as we walk around researching… Read More
Berniece Abbott looks up to the Chelsea, 1936 Arguably New York’s least conventional hotel, the Chelsea Hotel (or rather, the Hotel Chelsea) is the one of New York’s culture centers, a glamorous, art-filled Tower of Babel for both creativity and debauchery. From Mark Twain to Andy Warhol, it’s been both inspiration and accommodation for artistic… Read More
The lovely ladies of Long Island City 1898 CALL FOR SUGGESTIONS! We’re planning out our podcast episodes for the remainer of the year and we’d like your suggestions. We are readily aware that most of our shows are very Manhattan and Brooklyn centric. Since our show is very landmark or personality-centric, sometimes the other boroughs… Read More
We didn’t have a podcast last week, but to tide you over, please check out a new podcast from Tablet Magazine about the 100th anniversary of the Grand Concourse, the lofty and defining Bronx thoroughfare built as a New York homage to the grand boulevards of Europe. Tablet presents a conversation with Constance Rosenblum, author… Read More
FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER To get you in the mood for the weekend, every other Friday 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 Cafe Wha?115 Macdougal St, at Minetta Lane Occasionally,… Read More
Old Hester Street: Could that gentlemen be the murderer*? Grim news today from the Lower East Side: the residents of 128 Hester Street have been forced to evacuate their home due to the structure being declared ‘unsafe’ by the Department of Buildings. And boy, is it. The terribly dilapidated tenement suffered “cracks on the wall,… Read More