At some point in the next month or so, we will be celebrating the two millionth download of our Bowery Boys: New York History podcast. This is roughly speaking, as our first podcast host from 2007 (when we began) was a little non-specific with its stats. We’ve grown to have thousands of regular listeners, and… Read More
I found this advertisement in an issue of the New York Tribune from one hundred years ago: Although the famous Underwood Typewriter Company had principal manufacturing plants in Hartford, it was a New York company through and through. Its founder John Thomas Underwood became so wealthy that he built a stately home in the neighborhood of Clinton… Read More
Nothing underscores the harshness of early New Amsterdam more than the notion that the Dutch settlement, which first formed at the tip of Manhattan in 1625, didn’t actually have a trained physician for almost twelve years. Most likely, in these earliest years, medical emergencies were handled by ship surgeons and non-professionals skilled in a set… Read More
If Barbarella were an airport terminal, certainly she would be this one. A traveller’s dilemma: what destination could possibly be as exotic as the airport from which you were leaving? Scandals: We had a blast talking about JFK Airport this week, and it’s always funny seeing something we just talked about popping up in a… Read More
PODCAST Come fly with us through a history of New York City’s largest airport, once known as Idlewild (for a former golf course) and called John F. Kennedy International Airport since 1964. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia wanted a new and improved facility to relieve the pressure from that other Queens airport (you know, the one with… Read More
The ultimate terminal for air and sea, if you don’t mind eliminating a few neighborhoods. Goodbye Hell’s Kitchen! (Click image to enlarge) Are you a Manhattan business professional who’s tired of sitting in maddening traffic to get all the way out to John F. Kennedy Airport? Does LaGuardia Airport seem dreary and dismal to you? And Newark Liberty… Read More
Collectors Item! If you lived in rural Illinois in 1887, you might have found one of these flyers on your roof or along the side of the road. Joseph Pulitzer, that icon of late 19th century sensationalistic journalism, did everything imaginable to promote his popular newspaper the New York World. Not everything worked. Pulitzer bought… Read More
The world-famous New York City Marathon was almost sixty years in the future on May 6, 1911, when a very different marathon was run from the Bronx to City Hall. The victor of this modified 12-mile race was a newcomer to the streets of New York. Louis Tewanima was born on a Hopi Indian reservation… Read More
I’m an unabashed junkie of the sci-fi TV series ‘Fringe’, and the writers (or at one of them) seems to be a fan of New York history. One of the conceits of the series involves an alternate universe with things are just slightly different from ours. Most notably, the World Trade Center was never attacked.… Read More
Above: Man O’ War, racing at Belmont, where one of the world’s greatest thoroughbreds cemented his reputation. The horse was actually owned by the son of Belmont Park namesake August Belmont. (NYPL) The Kentucky Derby is this Saturday: two minutes of race and a day of fanciful hats, mint juleps and fanning oneself with a… Read More
PODCAST Sick of Donald Trump yet? (Probably.) Figured him out yet? Is he a financial wizard, reality sideshow, or political distraction? Or all of the above? The solution may be contained in the roots of his fortune — a saga that stretches back to the 1880s and begins with a 16-year-old boy named Drumpf who… Read More
What you think about when you think about the South Bronx: the Morrisania estate built by Gouverneur Morris. (NYPL) NAME THAT NEIGHBORHOOD Some New York neighborhoods are simply named for their location on a map (East Village, Midtown). Others are given prefabricated designations (SoHo, DUMBO). But a few retain names that link them intimately with… Read More
From H.S. Tanner’s ‘The American Traveller; or Guide Through the United States’, 1836 (book published book 1840) Stuyvesant Street is mentioned as one of the few streets in New York that was allowed to break the grid, and its diagonal path between Second and Third avenues is a reminder of the original farm grid of… Read More
The simplicity of the New York grid system, seen overhead in a 1939 classic photo by Margaret Bourke-White. PODCAST The Commissioners Plan of 1811 How did Manhattan get its orderly rows of numbered streets and avenues? In the early 19th century, New York was growing rapidly, but the new development was confined on an island,… Read More
Today is a day of big historical remembrances, from the 150th anniversary of the first battle of the Civil War to the 50th anniversary of man’s first entry into space. But to me, April 12th will always be the day that William ‘Boss’ Tweed died in his cell at the Ludlow Street Jail in 1878,… Read More