The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST New York’s Crystal Palace seems like something out of a dream, a shimmering and spectacular glass-and-steel structure — a gigantic greenhouse — which sat in the area of today’s Bryant Park. In 1853 this was the home to the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, a dizzying presentation of items, great and small,… Read More
Everybody sees Coney Island a little differently. Most people know it for the amusements but not everybody has the same feeling about them. One person craves the beaches, the food. Another prefers a stroll along the boardwalk, fireworks, an evening Cyclones game. Others live nearby, too familiar with the swelling weekend crowds. And some people… Read More
Bowling Green, at the very tip of Manhattan island, is a small oval park so calm in comparison to its surroundings that it’s hard to believe this is one of the oldest sections of the city of New York. Here are ten facts about Bowling Green, accompanied by ten images and photographs from various periods in… Read More
PODCAST REWIND The Plaza Hotel has become one of the most recognizable landmarks in New York City, a romantic throwback to the last days of the Gilded Age. It epitomized the changes that were arriving on Fifth Avenue, steering away from the private mansions of the moneyed class and towards a certain kind of communal living… Read More
#SAVENYC: In the wake of ever-rising rents, 2014 saw a depressing number of classic businesses shutter. It’s no surprise that Jeremiah Moss over at the Vanishing New York website would have a few good ideas on how to preserve the remaining privately owned places that give New  York its classic charm.  And now he’s putting them in action with #SAVENYC, a… Read More
On the afternoon of October 13, 1914, a bomb exploded in the northwest corner of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, sending deadly iron shrapnel flying through the room. A stained glass window was shattered and an 18-inch hole (shown in the picture below) was blown into the floor. While the pews were partially filled with worshipers, there… Read More
Last night the Guides Association of New York City (GANYC) presented their first-ever GANYC Apple Awards at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (part of Symphony Space), honoring accomplishments in preservation, history, museum exhibition and tourism. It was a rather lively evening, thanks to the night’s hilarious hosts Kevin James Doyle and Olivia Petzy whom you may know from the… Read More
The announcement that Hon. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Illinois, would deliver an address in Cooper Institute, last evening, drew thither a large and enthusiastic assemblage. — New York Times, February 28, 1860 One hundred and fifty-five years ago today, a novice politician named Abraham Lincoln took to the stage at Cooper Institute (Cooper Union) and gave… Read More
PODCAST Little Italy is the pocket-neighborhood reminder of the great wave of Italian immigration which came through New York City starting in the late 1870s. This was the home of a densely packed, lively neighborhood of pushcarts, cheese shops, barber shops and organ grinders, populated by thousands of new immigrants in dilapidated old tenements. The area… Read More
PODCAST Little Italy is the pocket-neighborhood reminder of the great wave of Italian immigration which came through New York City starting in the late 1870s.  This was the home of a densely packed, lively neighborhood of pushcarts, cheese shops, barber shops and organ grinders, populated by thousands of new immigrants in dilapidated old tenements. The area… Read More
Mulberry Street is one of the most important streets in New York City history, a central artery of immigrant life for almost two hundred years. Today its northern end is Bleecker Street, crossing Houston Street and heads all the way down to Bayard Street where it curves to the east (the so-called “Mulberry Bend”) where it… Read More
New York Fashion Week, the city’s twice-yearly celebration of couture and runway, traces its roots to a 1943 press week event at the Plaza Hotel, organized by publicist Eleanor Lambert. But there had been a variety of one-off ‘fashion weeks’ or American fashion events in the years between the wars. In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Academy, a local… Read More
New York Fashion Week, the city’s twice-yearly celebration of couture and runway, traces its roots to a 1943 press week event at the Plaza Hotel, organized by publicist Eleanor Lambert. But there had been a variety of one-off ‘fashion weeks’ or American fashion events in the years between the wars. In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Academy,… Read More
Here is New York — not the evened tree-lined avenues with fashionable ladies and shiny new carriages.  Not an ordered town of impressive architecture and manicured parks, emulating and even surpassing the trappings of European society.  Those things would arrive by the 1880s; before then, they were mostly aspirational designs. Here is New York as it actually was.… Read More
The Guides Association of New York (GANYC) represents the  legion of licensed New York tour guides who bring an interest in preservation and history to tens of thousands of visitors and residents each year.  Outside of maybe a cab driver, they’re the first New Yorkers with whom many first-time visitors will interact, and their principal job in… Read More