The Bowery Boys: New York City History
“I am here to show what the serum will do,” said the visiting doctor from Berlin. “That is my only answer to those who have natural doubts before they have made observations.” Dr. Friedrich Franz Friedmann had come to New York in February 1913 to tackle one of the city’s most persistent scourges upon its… Read More
The neighborhood converging at the intersections of Essex Street, Rutgers Street, Canal Street and East Broadway on the Lower East Side — officially called Straus Square** — somehow seems exactly as it might have looked 125 years ago. Anchored by Seward Park and its beautiful Carnegie library, it retains some of its turn-of-the-century character, while… Read More
Join Greg Young of the Bowery Boys for a very special New York City trivia competition this St. Patrick’s Day! Get together a small team (no more than 4 players) and compete for fabulous prizes as you make your way through a series of New York City-themed trivia questions. This special night of trivia will… Read More
We are pleased to announce a new partnership in 2020 with the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, the city’s oldest museum and one of its most important cultural institutions. Throughout the year, we will be hosting several live events at the New-York Historical, bringing together our podcast subjects with the latest exhibitions at the… Read More
Beach’s pneumatic subway — the first in the United States — opened 150 years ago today. To celebrate this anniversary, we are re-representing our 2016 show on the history of Alfred Ely Beach and his shortlived (but truly marvelous) invention. PODCAST The unbelievable story of Alfred Ely Beach’s Pneumatic Transit, a curious solution from 1870… Read More
PODCAST (EPISODE 310): New York’s 369th Infantry Regiment was America’s first black regiment engaged in World War I. The world knew them as the Harlem Hellfighters. On February 17, 1919, the Hellfighters – who had spent much of the year 1918 on the frontline – marched up Fifth Avenue to an unbelievable show of support… Read More
Before it closed in 2011, the Coliseum Cinema in Washington Heights proclaimed itself to be the ‘New York City’s oldest operating movie theater’. When it was first constructed in 1920, its stage would have hosted vaudeville acts as well as silent motion pictures. But few films that ever premiered at the Coliseum would depict events… Read More
Love graphic novels? Love the Brooklyn Bridge? Join Greg Young from the Bowery Boys podcast as he moderates this month’s Van Alen Book Club — hosted by the Van Alen Institute, on Friday, February 28. The book we’re discussing is The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York by Peter J. Tomasi, illustrated… Read More
The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon. The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support… Read More
Consider this one of the America’s strangest national landmarks — Fort Conger, a scientific research post originally built in 1881 by an American expedition in a remote and frozen area of Nunavit, Canada. Some might call it the world’s most northern haunted house. Over two dozen men — fronted by Civil War vet Adolphus Greely… Read More
EPISODE 309 They’re tearing down your favorite old building and putting up a condo in its place. How is this even possible? New York City is so over. Before you plunge into fits of despair, you should know more about the tools of preservation that New Yorkers possess in their efforts to preserve the spirit… Read More
“The Raven” was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, and would come to define the morbid brilliance of its author Edgar Allan Poe. Poe and his sickly young wife Virginia arrived in New York in 1844, lodging at a dairy farm at today’s West 84th Street, between Broadway and… Read More
EPISODE 308 In the final decades of his life, steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie — one of the richest Americans to ever live — began giving his money away. The Scots American had worked his way up from a railroad telegraph office to amass an unimaginable fortune, acquired in a variety of industries — railroads, bridge… Read More
Below is a picture, facing east, of Seward Park Library in the Lower East Side at 192 E. Broadway (picture taken in 1911). This spectacular branch library, funded by Andrew Carnegie, opened in November 1909, two years before the 42nd Street main branch opened. All of the housing behind the library to the east has… Read More
EPISODE 307 The Holland Tunnel, connecting Manhattan with Jersey City beneath the Hudson River, is more important to daily life in New York City than people may at first think. Before the creation of the Holland Tunnel, commuters and travelers had painfully few options if they wanted to get to and from Manhattan. And for… Read More