In today’s show, we’ll continue to explore housing in New York, but move far from the mansions of Fifth Avenue to the tenements of the Lower East Side in the 20th Century. Specifically, we’ll be visiting one building, 103 Orchard Street, which is today part of the Tenement Museum. The Bowery Boys: New York City… Read More
‘THE FIRST’ PODCAST The surprisingly rich history of Christmas lights in America. That string of multi-colored Christmas lights wrapped around your tree (or your house) is far more influential to American history than you might think. The first electric Christmas lights debuted in 1882, shortly after the invention of the incandescent light bulb itself, in… Read More
PODCAST The story of how Fifth Avenue, once the ritziest residential address in America, became an upscale retail strip and the home of some of New York’s finest cultural institutions. LISTEN HERE: In this episode, the symbols of the Gilded Age are dismantled. During the late 19th century, New York’s most esteemed families built extravagant… Read More
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, is my bible. It sits with my reference books, not with the other history non-fiction, foundational in its importance to this subject. I’ve read every page, although not in one or even 50 sittings. It winds through about 275… Read More
PODCAST At the heart of New York’s Gilded Age — the late 19th century era of unprecedented American wealth and excess — were families with the names Astor, Waldorf, Schermerhorn and Vanderbilt, alongside power players like A.T. Stewart, Jay Gould and William “Boss” Tweed. They would all make their homes — and in the case… Read More
PODCAST A neon sign blazing on a rainy New York City street evokes the romance of another era, welcoming or mysterious — depending on how many films noir you’ve watched. In 2017, a neon sign says more about a business than the message that its letters spell out. It’s an endangered form of craftsmanship although… Read More
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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