The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Next week is the 100th birthday of the opening of the Woolworth Building. The classic skyscraper designed by Cass Gilbert changed everything about perceptions of tall buildings in Manhattan — for good and ill. Suddenly, towers could be as graceful and important as monuments, and as playful and enigmatic as castles. New Yorkers were anxious… Read More
The exaltation of fat, plucky babies via beauty contests stems from a rather grim origin — American infant mortality rates of the 19th century. During the 1880s, as swelling immigrants and overcrowding in New York created harbors for disease and malnourishment, over one in five infants would die in America, with higher occurrence among poor… Read More
A press photo from Hair, the hottest show in town in early 1968, photographer Kenn DuncanWARNING The article contains a couple light spoilers about last night’s ‘Mad Men’ on AMC. If you’re a fan of the show, come back once you’re watched the episode. But these posts are about a specific element of New York… Read More
So how do you follow two journalists around the world, in opposite directions and from the vantage of almost 125 years in the future? I asked Matthew Goodman, the author of “Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World,” this month’s Bowery Boys Book of the Month, about the two competitors… Read More
Greetings from Columbo, Ceylon, one of the many glamorous destinations you’ll visit in Matthew Goodman’s new book.BOWERY 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 a way… Read More
Inside Ebbets Field, 1913, Library of Congress The first-ever regular season baseball game at Ebbets Field was played 100 years ago today. The legendary field, once located in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, was home to the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 until the team left for Los Angeles in 1958. Here are ten interesting facts… Read More
Reaction to the Bowery Boys podcast on the Consolidation of 1898 has been tremendous! But I do have one clarification, and provided by a very excellent source. The accurate placing of the boundary line between Queens and the newly created Nassau County was a source of frustration for a great many months after consolidation. I recounted… Read More
Drinks with the Drapers: we may see the end of 1967 in the opening episode. (courtesy AMC)‘Mad Men’ Season 6 begins this Sunday 9EST. If you’re a fan of late ’60s New York and American pop culture from that period, follow along with me on Twitter at @boweryboys. As I do with ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and… Read More
All pictures courtesy New York Public Library, except number three, courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
This Monday, April 1st, in support of Lit Crawl NYC, I’ll be appearing at the literature event ‘Geek Love‘ at The powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn. I’ve done a reading with Lit Crawl NYC in the past, and it’s a terrific (and intense) way to enjoy local literary stars under the guise of visiting a… Read More
Thanks to the profile on the Bowery Boys podcast which ran on NPR:Morning Edition a couple weeks ago, we’ve seen a lot of new listeners to the show. Welcome aboard! We’re grateful to have you join this amazing community of history lovers interested in the story of New York City. If you’ve just discovered the… Read More
Pic courtesy Brecthbug/Flickr Bummer. I so wanted the spectacular owl-infested Herald Square clock, once perched atop the offices of the New York Herald across the street, to be a secret meeting portal for the Illuminati. I facetiously brought up the theory in our December podcast on the history of Herald Square. Upon the door of… Read More
I love flipping through the collections of the NYC Department of Records because, on top of strange crime photographs and rote images of city blocks, you occasionally find images like the ones above. According to the caption, these female and male dancers are performing in Kissena Park, Queens, in 1927. (In the fall, but they… Read More
Above: While this is the old Brooklyn Schermerhorn house, it’s of a similar type to one that Ms. Melmoth may have owned, quickly becoming a tavern after her death. Less than two hundred years ago, in the area approximate to the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens today, there was a very, very rowdy tavern. It was… Read More
A subway map from 1924, illustrating the system created as a result of the Dual Contracts agreement. After years of negotiations, false starts and lengthy arguments played out in the press, a group of greatly relieved businessmen entered the large hearing room of the New York Tribune Building (at Nassau and Spruce, where Pace University… Read More