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Bowery Boys

The Bowery Boys podcast started 7 years ago today!

Seven years ago this evening, Tom and I recorded the first Bowery Boys podcast.  The topic was Canal Street and Collect Pond, a subject we re-recorded for our 50th episode.  Maybe, one day, we’ll let you all hear that original show!  It was very bad, but it does linger on a laptop somewhere, and there… Read More

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Neighborhoods

Inside Gimbels traverse, the secret perch near Herald Square

Looking up to the Gimbels traverse overhead on 32nd Street (Flickr/Docking Bay 93) One of our podcast listeners Alexander Rea sent over the following photographs of a tucked-away place in one of the busiest areas of New York City — the Gimbels traverse on W. 32nd Street, in the Herald Square shopping district. No doubt you’ve… Read More

Categories
On The Waterfront

Troubled Waters: The story of the Grand Republic steamboat, the cursed sister ship of the General Slocum

Above: The Grand Republic steamship. As you can see from its paddlewheel, it was a twin to the General Slocum [source] This could not have made New Yorkers feel very safe about even the briefest of river excursions. Days after the General Slocum excursion steamer caught fire and sank in the East River, killing over 1,000 people,… Read More

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On The Waterfront Podcasts

American tragedy: The tale of the General Slocum disaster

PODCAST On June 15, 1904, hundreds of residents of Kleindeutschland, the Lower East Side’s thriving German community, boarded the General Slocum excursion steamer to enjoy a day trip outside the city. Most of them would never return home. The General Slocum disaster is, simply put, one of the greatest tragedies in American history. Before September… Read More

Categories
Amusements and Thrills

The decline and fall of Coney Island’s original Thunderbolt

Coney Island gets a brand new star attraction this week — the 2,000-feet Thunderbolt roller-coaster in Luna Park.  It’s “narrower than most apartments” (according to Gizmodo), a bright orange ribbon ride that squiggles, rises and plummets within a disturbingly wonky silhouette. It also takes its name from one of Coney Island’s most famous roller-coasters, designed by… Read More

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Brooklyn History

History in the making 6/10: Sign of the Times Edition

Picture courtesy Steve Welsh/Flickr One of the most striking sights in Brooklyn is the old Kentile Floors sign in Gowanus, a pleasant sight to those who pass it daily and one of the last vestiges of non-franchise billboard art in the city.  The current owners of the location are preparing to tear it down, but… Read More

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Neighborhoods

The link between Ladies Mile and the New York Public Library

Arnold, Constable and Co’s new Fifth Avenue store.  Today it house the lending library for the New York Public Library. When did Ladies Mile — New York’s elegant Gilded Age shopping district — finally become un-fashionable? Unlike the slow demise of so many neighborhoods in the city’s past, the end of Ladies Mile was closely… Read More

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Neighborhoods Podcasts

The sumptuous story of Ladies’ Mile: Cast-iron grandeur and Gilded Age architecture

The opening of Siegel-Cooper department store, 1896, created one of the great mob scenes of the Gilded Age.  Today, TJ Maxx and Bed Bath and Beyond occupy this once-great commercial palace.  PODCAST  Ladies’ Mile — the most famous New York shopping district in the 19th century and the “heart of the Gilded Age,” a district… Read More

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Gilded Age New York Neighborhoods

Chelsea and the Chocolate Factory (or rather, Hershey and his Sixth Avenue chewing gum plant)

Hershey’s employees cut and pack chewing gum at Sixth Avenue and 21st Street. For five glorious years in the early 1920s, Hershey’s Chocolate operated a candy plant at Sixth Avenue, in the neighborhood of Chelsea. While chocolate bars and chocolate coating for other candies were produced here, the Chelsea plant primarily focused on a new… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf Uncategorized

Maya Angelou 1928-2014

A photo from her nightclub and theater years, G. Paul Bishop Jr. photographer ““I never agreed with Thomas Wolfe,” she remarked quietly. “I never thought you can’t go home again. I’ve been coming home to Harlem for 50 years.”— from a terrific story in the New York Times from 2007 about her ornately colorful Harlem… Read More

Categories
Bowery Boys

Follow the Bowery Boys on Instagram!

The Bowery Boys are now on the photo-sharing service Instagram, traipsing through the city streets in search of quirky places and historic oddities. Follow up as we wander through all five boroughs this spring and summer, looking for surprising and stunning details hidden among the city’s avenues, parks and coastlines.  If you have an account, just… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf

The location of the X-Men’s home and its dark historical secret

The next time you read an X-Men comic book or see one of their blockbuster films, remember that the whole thing is taking place in Westchester County, just 50 miles north of New York City. The address of Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters (aka mutant teenagers) is 1407 Graymalkin Lane, a fictional street near… Read More

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Those Were The Days Wartime New York

The adventures of Tony Pizzo, the sailor handcuffed to a bike

It’s Fleet Week!  The streets of New York are filled with hundreds of Marines and sailors who arrived yesterday in New York Harbor.  I’m pretty sure, however, that none of them hit the streets handcuffed to a bicycle. That distinction goes to the enigmatic Tony Pizzo who, in 1919, rode his bicycle from Los Angeles… Read More

Categories
Amusements and Thrills

Coney Island’s many death and destruction amusements

The entrance to the Johnstown Flood presentation (Cleaned-up photo courtesy Shorpy) On May 31, 1889, a dam near the town of Johnstown, PA, collapsed after a brutal day of torrential rain, flooding the valley with 20 million tons of water and destroying everything in its path. There was virtually no escape, and 2,209 people died… Read More

Categories
Neighborhoods

Five items from the Village Voice, 50 years ago this week

Washington Square North, looking west, 1950, photo by Walter Sanders, Life Magazine The entire back catalog of the Village Voice, New York’s original alternative weekly, is available online through Google News.  The early issues are especially full of character, a scrappy counter-culture organ which provides an interesting window into downtown Manhattan.  Here are some highlights… Read More