A stroll through haunted ruins: North Brother Island

Pic courtesy NYC.gov I just noticed that Thirteen/PBS’s The City Concealed did a great video piece exploring the rarely seen abandoned hospital structures of North Brother Island. Creepy! Watch it here. North Brother Island, today a bird sanctuary located in the crowded channel between Queens and the Bronx, is best known for its 19th-century smallpox… Read More

Martling’s Long Room: power plays, power drinkers

Well, would you?Illustration from sheet music 1908 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 Martling’s… Read More

Salute to Ulmer Park, short-lived Brooklyn beer getaway

All aboard the train to Coney Island, Ulmer Park and Bath Beach Above pic courtesy NYPL Next weekend on Coney Island is the annual Siren Festival, sponsored by the Village Voice. Are you going? Believe it or not, over a 100 years ago, there was once a time you could get your beer, music and… Read More

Execution Corner: 13th Street and 2nd Avenue

Public hangings were a rare but grisly part of 19th Century New York life. The one illustrated above is from 1862. Another would famously haunt the area near an East Village intersection. I pass through the intersection of 13th Street and 2nd Avenue fairly frequently on my way home from work. The plain intersection is… Read More

Augustus Saint-Gaudens calmly graces the Met

The summer exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have gone blatantly carnal, from the churning, desolate voids of gore featured in the Francis Bacon retrospective to the pristine glamour of female flesh in the “Model As Muse: Embodying Fashion.” But you’ll have to swing down to the American wing for a bit of New… Read More

Independence Day 1876! (Where are you, Mr. Tweed?)

(Click for greater detail) The city of New York unfurled its patriotism in a lavish celebration of America’s 100th birthday. The illustration above pictures a great rally at Union Square. Later revelers would gather at City Hall for an elaborate fireworks display with “volumes of sulphurous vaper wreath[ing] the City Hall until it seemed some… Read More

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Podcasts Those Were The Days

William ‘Boss’ Tweed and the bitter days of Tammany Hall

Hail to the thief: an imposing man with money on his mind ___________________________________ You cannot understand New York without understanding its most corrupt politician — William ‘Boss’ Tweed, a larger than life personality with lofty ambitions to steal millions of dollars from the city. With the help of his ‘Tweed Ring’, the former chair-maker had… Read More

Charming mayor A. Oakey Hall: coy, clueless or corrupt?

An early portrait of A. Oakey Hall as photographed by Matthew Brady 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 A. Oakey Hall In office: 1869-1872 Few leaders of… Read More

Storytime in Hudson Park: West Village 1910s

ABOVE: Children young and quite old gather around this Hudson Park storyteller. Can’t quite place where Hudson Park is? Check here. Tom and I are hard at work on this week’s podcast. I’ll be updating the blog later in the day on Wednesday!

The days before DUMBO: Brooklyn Bridge, June 29, 1909

From a pamphlet celebrating the Brooklyn Bridge’s 50th anniversary in 1933. (Click photo for larger view.)

Michael Jackson at the Museum of Natural History 1984

Michael Jackson 1984: The singer relaxes at a New York hotel, preparing to visit the Museum of Natural History. Not to buy any ancient bones, but to be honored for two entries in the Guinness Book of World Records — for selling the most popular album in history (Thriller) and then winning the most Grammy… Read More

Mistresses and misnomers: the story of Gay Street

There are few streets in Manhattan as beautiful as Gay Street, that preciously bent path in the West Village that’s been the home to speakeasies and scandals, linking Waverly Place to Christopher Street. Due to its proximity to Christopher, the original heart of New York’s gay and lesbian culture, it also happens to have one… Read More

Greenwich Village, when it was green and a village

Above: Macdougal Alley in 1936. The plantation home of New Amsterdam director-general Wouter van Twiller would have been situated very close to where this picture was taken. (Find the alley here.) NAME THAT NEIGHBORHOOD Some New York neighborhoods are simply named for their location on a map (East Village, Midtown). Others are given prefabricated designations… Read More

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Anybody need a nurse?

New nurses on Roosevelt Island, circa 1938 (courtesy Life Magazine)

Underground: Pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian New York

Girls will be girls: lesbians in the 1920s For the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the New York Blade asked me to do a brief article on the history of New York’s gay and lesbian scene in the years before the riots. You can read the article, entitled STONEWALL 40: Our History Before Pride… Read More