The Bowery Boys: New York City History
It’s a mystery! It’s 1841 and the most desirable woman in downtown Manhattan — the ‘beautiful cigar girl’ Mary Rogers — is found horribly murdered along the Hoboken shore. Hear some of the stories of this case’s prime suspects and marvel at the excessive attentions of the penny press. Also: Edgar Allen Poe takes a… Read More
While doing my ghost research this week, I came across an amusing article from an 1894 edition of the New York Times, back when ghost sightings might have merited a serious investigation. (Or, in this case, not so serious.) The location of the haunting was Brooklyn’s 27th Ward in today’s Bushwick area. After charting out… Read More
The Algonquin Hotel: the hippest haunt for the dead writer set By popular demand, we return to the creepier tales of New York City history, ghost tales and stories of murder and mayhem, all of them at some point involving great American icons — Alexander Hamilton, P.T. Barnum, Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain. Listen to… Read More
I should preface this to say, out of fairness, I looked through the annals of New York City history for scandalously corrupt politicians named Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden, but could find none. John McKane was one of the most important figures in the history of Coney Island, in much the same way… Read More
From the New York City Marble Cemetery Two rarely seen artifacts of the East Village swung open their iron gates this weekend for Open House NY, New York’s two oldest cemeteries — the New York Marble Cemetery and the New York City Marble Cemetery. (Yes, you read that right.) In a few respects they are… Read More
Green-wood Cemetery is one of New York’s oldest burial grounds, but its development reaches back all the way to the beginning of Brooklyn’s surprising history — in fact, to the founder of Brooklyn Heights. Find out why it took an inventive city planner with a funny name, a dead New York icon, and a few… Read More
Our modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in our mayoral survey can be found here. Former New York mayors are all around you. No, Ed Koch is not hiding in your closet — maybe not today — but you can… Read More
Lunchtime down on Wall Street today is chaotic mess of brokers and bankers on cell phones, tour groups, messengers on bikes, police, construction workers, people delivering lunch and the stray old lady walking her dog. Eighty-eight years ago, in 1920, it would have practically been the same, sans the cell phones. So it’s particularly disturbing… Read More
We steal this week’s topic straight for today’s headlines! We look at the early days of New York finance and the creation of the New York Stock Exchange, beginning with Alexander Hamilton, some pushy auctioneers, a coffee house and a sycamore tree. And find how this seminal financial institution ended up in its latest home… Read More
Who knew a produce exchange could look so elegant? One of New York’s most important architects was George B. Post, but you would barely know it today. Only a handful of his most important buildings — the New York Stock Exchange being the most famous — still stand, the victim of a rapidly changing city… Read More
A simplistic but colorful view of “Man Mados” or “New Amsterdam” in 1664 (click in to inspect the detail) One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall Street, that canyon of tall buildings and center of the American financial world, is named for an actual… Read More
Back in March, we speculated on the fate of Thurman Munson’s locker, which had been preserved at Yankees Stadium since the untimely death of the popular Yankees catcher in 1979. Well, Shea Stadium has a far more irreverent but equally treasured fixture that many have been wondering about — the Mets Apple. Will the frail… Read More
The Mets are movin’ out to Citi Field, but we can’t overlook the great stories contained in their old home, Shea Stadium, a Robert Moses project took years to get off the ground and has been populated with world class ball players, crazed Beatles fans, and one very mysterious black cat. William Shea, who essentially… Read More
Above: Quite a fancy looking team of baseball players! Note the pavilion in the background. Picture courtesy Brooklyn Ball Parks I love finding out where very basic, everyday, take-for-granted concepts were invented. For instance, there is some place on the planet I’m sure that heralds as the first place somebody put a straw in a… Read More
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 their pasts. Other entries in this series can be found here. I have a friend of Jamaican descent that lives in Jamaica,… Read More