The Bowery Boys: New York City History
No amount of studying will prepare you for some of these odd questions. (A girl at Seward Library, photographed by Lewis Hine.)Trivia quizzes are very popular today in bars and pubs throughout the city, but in the past, they’ve had more elitist purposes. In November 1914, a group of possibly insecure ex-New Yorkers in Chicago… Read More
Above: John Purroy Mitchel, the ‘boy mayor’, after his resounding victory. (LOC)PODCAST As New York City enters the final stages of this year’s mayoral election, let’s look back on a decidedly more unusual contest 100 years ago, pitting Tammany Hall and their estranged ally (Mayor William Jay Gaynor) up against a baby-faced newcomer, the (second)… Read More
The Polo Grounds in 1923, the first year of a major expansion to accommodate fans of the New York Giants baseball team and a great many historic boxing matches (LOC) Fifty years ago today, the final game was played at the Polo Grounds, the legendary sports field that had once been home to the New… Read More
An 1864 wood engraving of ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ for Harper’s Magazine (NYPL) The new Fox television show Sleepy Hollow debuted last night. The storyline involves Continental Army soldier Ichabod Crane who confronts a masked Hessian soldier on the battlefields of Westchester County in 1781. He chops off the Hessian’s head but is knocked unconscious.… Read More
New York City, 1953, the setting for Kevin Baker’s The Big Crowd. Photo by Eliot Elisofen, courtesy Life/Google imagesBOWERY BOYS BOOK OF THE MONTH Each month I’ll pick a book — either brand new or old, fiction or non-fiction — that offers an intriguing take on New York City history, something that uses history in… Read More
Mayor William Jay Gaynor’s final appearance at City Hall was at a notification rally, declaring his independent candidacy. He brandishes a shovel as a symbol of a new era of subway construction (the eventual fruits of the so-called ‘dual contracts’ which had finally be agreed to earlier that year.) Today’s mayoral primary falls on a… Read More
New York City Hall and its brand new water fountain, in 1846, courtesy Currier and Ives (LOC)KNOW YOUR MAYORS A modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in the Bowery Boys mayoral survey can be found here.Mayor Andrew H. MickleIn office: 1846-1847… Read More
As a follow-up to last month’s list of essential non-fiction books about New York City, here’s my list of 25 favorite historical fiction novels written in the past one hundred years, using the history of the city as a backdrop for drama, mystery, fantasy and romance. There are really two types of historical fiction —… Read More
This was the September 17, 1913 cover of humor journal Puck Magazine, featuring summer symbolized as a lovely mermaid on the back of a sea serpent, departing the Long Island shore. She wasn’t the only female embodiment in Puck that issue. In the illustration below, according to the official caption, “a female figure with wings… Read More
There once was a talking dog named Don. One hundred years ago today, he saved a man from drowning in Brighton Beach. Don shouted or barked the word ‘Help!’ then ran to the waters to save him. But perhaps I should explain. In December 1910, the New York Times ran a startling announcement that a dog… Read More
PODCAST In the third part of the Bowery Boys Summer TV Mini-Series, I give you a grand tour of the New York City television production world from the 1970s to today, from the debut of Sesame Street in the Upper West Side to the new productions which flourished in the 1990s. Along the way, hear… Read More
KNOW YOUR MAYORS A modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in the Bowery Boys mayoral survey can be found here.Mayor George OpdykeIn office: 1862-1863 The wealthy merchant and politician George Opdyke died on June 12, 1880, attended to by his family from… Read More
Photo above courtesy Drew Dies/Flickr He has a cool set of pictures from that day here. Today is the tenth-year anniversary of the Northeast Blackout of 2003 which shut down power for most of New York City (and much of the Northeast) for almost 24 hours, with some areas experiencing outages well into the second day. I… Read More
Columbus Circle in 1921, looking west. Healy’s was a few blocks north of this scene. Many of New York’s most popular restaurants and cafes a century ago were located around Columbus Circle, lively hot spots that drew in the theater and burlesque patrons well into the late hours. Crowds would exit the Park Theater and head… Read More
The studio of William Merritt Chase in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West 10th Street. Another appears below. [Smithsonian] Take a look at these extraordinary photographs of artist studios in New York City from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the interiors of apartment buildings and houses rendered into a… Read More