The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Today marks a big new step in the evolution of The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast and website as I present our first item ever for sale — a special one-hour audio history tour of Washington Square Park. In this one-hour tour, I present over 200 years of history relating to one of… Read More
This Saturday is the final Summer Streets festival, when traffic is closed down from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, along Lafayette Street and Park Avenue all the way up to 72nd Street. Get up early and enjoy a corridor of unencumbered walking and biking, with tons of activities along the way, from 7 a.m.… Read More
“There are no lower outcasts in New York than the women who nightly creep out of the darkness and swarm the pavement of Bleecker Street…” L. Hereward, Eclectic Magazine, 1893 Sure, the Bowery was a rough and rowdy avenue, but one looking for more alternative adventures in the late 19th century might have found themselves… Read More
The BBC America series ‘Copper‘, set in the famed Five Points neighborhood, begins this Sunday at 10pm EST. I’ll be Tweeting along during the show and hope to have a reaction post to it on the blog the next day. The video above gives me hope for a program that takes its historical depiction and… Read More
You’ve seen the V-J Day celebration photos of Times Square from August 14, 1945, the streets filled with relief, joy and revelry. And kissing, lots and lots of kissing, possibly the greatest kiss ever photographed. But photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was hopping all over midtown that day, documenting kisses. In fact, Eisenstaedt himself got into the act… Read More
A lady in a relatively normal skirt boards a Broadway streetcar in July 1913. Now imagine trying this in a hobble skirt! (Courtesy Library of Congress) A serious cry (mostly from men) rang out through the city one hundred years ago about the ever-expanding transit system and the scandalous style of women’s skirts. Were frocks… Read More
Singular sensation: Marvin Hamlisch and director Michael Bennett on the set of A Chorus Line, 1975, photo by Martha Swope (courtesy Noh Way) “Like the Yankees, Mr. Hamlisch is a New York institution.” – Pranay Gupte, the New York Sun, 2006 The composer Marvin Hamlisch, who died last night in Los Angeles at age 68,… Read More
It’s time to spruce it up around here! I’m experimenting with new banners over the next day and figuring out which looks the best. Some other design features might change as well. So if things look occasionally weird, it’s most likely only temporary. Thanks for your patience! In the meantime, here’s a picture of a… Read More
The crowds of Penn Station (with a sizable population of sailors!) making their way out of town via Penn Station for the July 4th holiday, 1944. I encourage you to click into the image and see if you can find your parents or grandparents! Courtesy LIFE Google Images. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the… Read More
From 1960. Photographed by my favorite Life photographer Leonard McCombe. [source] The journalist and fiction writer was almost as well known for his feuds as for his writing. Here are my five favorite nasty insults that Gore Vidal lobbed at other artist and writers: 1) “Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an… Read More
Year-Round Brews: This calendar from 1895 celebrates the Harlem breweries of James Everard. An older Everard brewery building on W. 28th Street was converted into a Turkish bathhouse in 1888. It became the location of a variety of notorious activities during the 20th century. Everard’s breweries became the plaintiff in a Prohibition-era Supreme Court case regarding… Read More
Behold the lager: A German variety of beer revolutionized American drinking, inspiring a new kind of drinking establishment (Courtesy the New-York Historical Society Inspired by ‘Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History‘, the terrific summer show at the New-York Historical Society, the latest Bowery Boys podcast explores the story of one of America’s greatest, most treasured… Read More
The sky’s the limit: Staten Island from the vantage of a hot air balloon, August 1906. (Courtesy LOC)“God might have made a more beautiful place than Staten Island, but He never did.” — George William Curtis If you’ve ever been slightly bemused by the newspaper profiles of trendy neighborhoods, presented as though the reporters were… Read More
I’m becoming slowly obsessed with the Life Magazine work of photographer Leonard McCombe, whose colorful images of midtown Manhattan render the busy streets with a warm, vibrant palette. Last week I posted another Mccombe picture of this particular street corner that perfectly captured the era. But this image manages to seem incredibly modern. The place?… Read More
The very first decorative fountain in New York City was the City Hall fountain, unveiled on October 14, 1842 during the ceremony for the opening of the Croton Acqueduct, the sophisticated series of pipes and reservoirs that provided New Yorkers with their drinking water. The fountain, which propelled water 50 feet in the air, was… Read More