The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST Manhattan’s Chinatown is unique among New York neighborhoods as its origins and its provocative history can still be traced in many of the buildings and streets still in existence. Two hundred years ago, the sight of a Chinese person would have astonished New Yorkers, and the first to arrive in the city were… Read More
Meet Afong Moy, the Chinese teenager who became the most famous Asian person in America in the 1830s. I would not exactly call her notoriety enviable. There’s a strong likelihood that Moy (in the illustration at right) was actually the first Asian woman to ever step foot in New York. Early trade with China, beginning in… Read More
After years of being planted in the wrong place and a lengthy moving process that literally plucked it out of a city block like a slice of cake, Alexander Hamilton’s home — known as Hamilton Grange — is finally ready for visitors at its new home in St. Nicolas Park. The last home of New… Read More
Above: Mayor LaGuardia presenting his weekly WNYC radio show from Gracie Mansion. He would carry on the tradition at his Riverdale home. Fiorello LaGuardia, among the greatest mayors ever in New York history, died on this date, September 20, 1947, at his home in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. He arrived at the lovely four-story… Read More
Mr. Seward, with the best seat in the park in 1934. He does seem awfully thin though, almost like a certain president. (At least, some people thought so.) This month marks the 135th anniversary of an extraordinary gift endowed to Madison Square Park — the statue of William Seward. the former New York governor and… Read More
Thanks to everybody who came out on Saturday for our reading at Swift Hibernian Lounge, as part of the 4th Annual Lit Crawl. Swift makes for a incredibly atmospheric place to spin tales of New York history. Or possibly preach the gospel. Or hold an occult ritual. (Above: That’s me behind the massive podium.) And it… Read More
A depiction of Central Park from 1864. The conspirator’s cottage hideout would have been near the southeast corner. (Courtesy NYPL) The year 1864 wasn’t as pivotal to New York City as 1863 (with the Draft Riots), but it is one of the stranger years I’ve ever come across in studying the city’s history, culminating in… Read More
Barnum’s American Museum at left (the building with the flag) and the Astor House at right, from the vantage of City Hall Park, circa 1850. Both buildings were victims of the Confederate plot of 1864 to burn the city. PODCAST We’re officially subtitling this ‘Strange Tales of 1864’, presenting you with a series of odd, fascinating… Read More
Continuing with the theme of ‘1864’, here’s a revised and expanded version of an article I wrote back in 2009 on the man who was mayor of New York during that crazy year: KNOW YOUR MAYORS Our modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City.… Read More
Above: City Hall in 1900 (Courtesy NYPL) Never have I been more elated to write about a City Council meeting. At the start of the 19th century, city affairs were still being conducted on Wall Street at Federal Hall. For many years they shared the corridors with George Washington and the first American Congress. By… Read More
The place to be one hundred years ago today was Greeley Square, that bustling public space just south of 34th Street from Herald Square. Thousands of people crowded the sidewalks outside the department stores that afternoon, and many hundreds more shoved themselves into the elevated subway station. These crowds were centered around Gimbels department store… Read More
The New York Times this morning had an intriguing story about a unfortunate fellow who plays for the Chicago White Sox named Adam Dunn — nicknamed ‘the Big Donkey’. This has been a banner year for Mr. Dunn as he is about to make the list as one of the worst players in the history of… Read More
A 1940s antique store carries more than dusty lamps in the summer superhero film, ‘Captain America: The First Avenger,” which transplants its hero’s origins from the Lower East Side to downtown Brooklyn. I know I can be a bit fanatic in my New York-centeredness, but this statement I can make with fact — the comic book… Read More
The New York draft riots of 1863 were both a distraction to the actual battles of the Civil War and the purest embodiment of underlying Northern viewpoints, violently displayed. Producing this show was not a lighthearted task, and we clearly needed to check our usual conversational demeanor at the door. Hopefully we presented the riots in… Read More
There is nothing extraordinary at 300 Mulberry Street anymore, just a standard five-story apartment complex and a parking garage, hugged to its south by a Subway sandwich shop. But for much of the Gilded Age, this address was the grand headquarters for New York’s police department. The Mulberry Street building was New York’s center of law enforcement from… Read More