Categories
Planes Trains and Automobiles

Welcome to the ‘subway art museum’: The early battle against ‘disfiguring’ advertisements in the subway

Above: Protect this station from the rueful blight of subway advertisements! (Pic NYPL) There once was a time, believe it or not, when the city was so concerned for the aesthetic beauty of the subway that an early controversy broke regarding the scandalous inclusion of advertisements in subway stations. The stations designed for those very… Read More

Categories
Amusements and Thrills Podcasts

New York and the Dawn of Photography: Mathew Brady, Samuel Morse and the Daguerreotype Craze

PODCAST The saga of the early days of photographic images and how daguerreotypes became all the rage in 1840s New York. We’re taking you back to a world that seems especially foreign today – a world with no selfie sticks, no tens of billions of photographs taken every day from digital screens, a world where the… Read More

Categories
Current Events

Celebrate Central Park and Andrew Haswell Green! This Saturday (November 11)

It’s going to be bright and sunny this weekend in New York City, a perfect time to take part in a glorious Central Park tradition.   Please join Manhattan Borough Historian Michael Miscione and other history lovers in Central Park this Saturday (November 11 at noon) as they raise a toast of apple cider to Andrew… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf Wartime New York

‘Shooting Lincoln’: The Complicated Story Behind America’s First Wartime Photographs

Alexander Gardner is a bit of a Nikola Tesla-like figure in American history in that his contributions were largely overlooked in his day, concealed within a partnership with a famous business titan. That titan was Mathew Brady, the most famous photographer of the 19th century, with studios in New York and Washington D.C. that captured… Read More

Categories
True Crime

Frank Serpico: A new documentary revisits the making of a hero (and a myth)

Frank Serpico is a member of an elite group of important American figures (along with Erin Brockovich and Karen Silkwood) that are almost entirely defined by the actors who played them in movies. Even if you lived in New York City in the early 1970s and remember Serpico from the headlines, most likely you picture… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘Going to Town’: Roz Chast rewrites the guide book

The biggest city in the United States is really a collection of multiverses, full of enshrined anomalies and beloved inconveniences. Every New Yorker has their own list of wisdoms and observations, a batch of beloved eccentricities that make New York City such a perfect place to live for them. (For instance, I love a good bodega… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

The Gargoyle Hunters at the National Arts Club: The author joins the Bowery Boys in conversation

Any plans this Tuesday, November 7th? How about a fun evening of history and literature? The Gargoyle Hunters: An Evening with author John Freeman Gill in conversation with Greg Young from The Bowery Boys Tuesday, November 7 8:00 PM John Freeman Gill’s dramatic novel The Gargoyle Hunters solves the mystery of a brazen, seemingly impossible… Read More

Categories
Mysterious Stories

The Ghost with the Red Hair: Two Hauntings in Long Island City

Long Island City is really a confederation of small villages and hamlets along the northwestern shore of Long Island. The name began essentially as a re-branding of Hunter’s Point then grew to eventually include Astoria, Ravenswood, Sunnyside, Blissville and other communities after the development of the Long Island Railroad improved its land value. “Fifteen years ago, outside of… Read More

Categories
Podcasts Writers and Artists

Edgar Allan Poe in New York: Places where the master of gloom and horror made his mark

PODCAST Edgar Allan Poe was a wanderer — looking for work, for love, for meaning. That’s why so many American cities can lay claim to a small aspect of his legacy. Baltimore, Boston, Richmond and Philadelphia all have their own stories to tell about the great writer. In this show, we spotlight the imprint Poe… Read More

Categories
Mysterious Stories

A new Bowery Boys video for Time Out NY: What’s buried in Washington Square Park?

As a tie-in to our recent ghost stories podcast — The Ghosts of Greenwich Village — we were honored to take part in a new web video for Time Out New York. Give it a view before your stroll through the park then listen to our podcast.  

Categories
The Deuce

Eleven bits of historical trivia from this season of HBO’s ‘The Deuce’

So what do you all think of the HBO’s drama series The Deuce, set in Times Square in the early 1970s? Sexually explicit but literate, with a modern viewpoint that gives rich, nuanced characterizations to women, The Deuce performs a unique negotiation between romanticizing the 42nd Street sex trade and condemning it. Whether or not… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘The Creative Destruction of New York City’: The Tools For Fighting Back Against Unwanted Change

Talk of hyper-gentrification, skyrocketing real estate and the ‘end of New York’ comes bundled with despair and helplessness. Walk down 59th Street and gaze as the super-talls blocking the sun, built for foreign investors who may never once step inside these luxury caverns. Or stroll along Smith Street in Cobble Hill, observing the rows of… Read More

Categories
Mysterious Stories Podcasts

The Ghosts of Greenwich Village: Four tales of haunted houses and forgotten graveyards

For this year’s annual Bowery Boys Halloween ghost stories podcast, we cautiously approach the dark secrets of Greenwich Village, best known for bohemians, shady and winding streets and a deeply unexpected history. You will never look at its parks and townhouses again after this show! The stories featured on this year’s show: — The hidden… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf Revolutionary History

The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: Uncovering New York’s darkest secrets of the Revolutionary War

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, no longer a bustling shipyard, lives on as a vibrant commercial compound of movie studios, bourbon distilleries and organic rooftop farms. Its waterfront, facing into Wallabout Bay, is relatively peaceful today. There are no remnants of its genuinely disturbing past. During the Revolutionary War, New York was a British stronghold, and… Read More

Categories
Mysterious Stories Podcasts

Murder at the Manhattan Well: A shocking crime and a legendary trial with Hamilton and Burr

PODCAST The murder of a young woman in 1799 and the ensuing trial involving two of America’s Founding Fathers There once was a well just north of Collect Pond (New York’s fetid source of drinking water in the late 18th century) in a marshy place called Lispenard’s Meadow, in the area of today’s SoHo. One… Read More