The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Above: the Algonquin Hotel, home to those bawdy rakes of the Round Table during the 1920s. You may find yourself meeting one of them even today. A special illustrated version of our ghost-story podcast, Spooky Stories of New York (Episode #65). is now available on our NYC History Archive feed. Just hit play and images… Read More
Open House New York, throwing wide the doors of dozens of previously unavailable landmarks, begins its tenth year this Saturday morning. And if you’re like me, you’ve once again forgot to make any reservations to any of the hottest tickets. Several of them are already sold out. But do not fret! There actually seem to… Read More
Next week begins ‘ghost stories’ week on the blog, but I need to make one more trip to Chinatown, the topic of the last podcast. As I just wrote about Columbus Day last week, I would be remiss if I skipped this very coincidental date in history. It was exactly one hundred years ago yesterday… Read More
We were nominated this year for Best Travel Podcast in the 2011 People’s Choice Podcast Awards. Thanks to everybody who submitted our show for consideration! The voting for the awards begins today. You can visit once a day between now and next Friday, October 21. Just visit their website and click on the Bowery Boys at… Read More
Christopher Columbus is among the most honored figures in New York statuary, appearing abundantly throughout the five boroughs — standing prominently, nestled in parks and squares, peering from building features. I’ve located a seemingly complete list of New York Columbus monuments, strangely enough, on a German website, inclusive even of Chris’s appearance of 8th Avenue subway… Read More
Were you in Bryant Park yesterday? Did you happen to imagine that you sniffed a very slight whiff of smoke? It was just a ghostly reminder of one of the most famous fires in all of New York history — the destruction of the legendary Crystal Palace exhibition hall, which sat here for five glorious… Read More
The Dakota Apartment circa the 1890s: If you arranged everything just right, could you go back to it? The writer Jack Finney, who was born a hundred years ago this week, on October 2, 1911, turned the Dakota Apartments into a time machine in his 1970 novel ‘Time And Again’. He inspired a legion of New… Read More
I enjoyed the first part of the Ken Burns and Lynn Novak documentary series ‘Prohibition’ which debuted last night. But let’s be honest, the second part — introducing the Roaring 20s and the godfathers of organized crime — should be far more provocative. After all, morally righteous reformers did what they believed was right for… Read More
NEWSIES: The Disney film ‘Newsies’ is notable almost exclusively for giving us a singin’, dancin’ Christian Bale. But the glowing reviews for the new musical version, which debuted this Sunday at the Papermill Playhouse in Milburn NJ, suggest this version has more to shout about. Suggested Listening: The original story is based on events which occurred on… Read More
Reading about Chinatown in classic books like ‘Gangs of New York’, one gets a sense that certain mysteries and legends about the neighborhood were already firmly in place. And nothing of these gauzy preconceptions arose to the public consciousness more than the problem of Chinatown’s opium dens. In fact, no other feature of American Chinatowns… Read More
Casual posing at the opening of Doyers Street, circa 1900. (LOC) I’m so relieved that we finally got to cover a proper New York neighborhood on the podcast. Since reviewing the historic shifts and events of a neighborhood are better covered topically, we hope there wasn’t too much confusion regarding the chronology. Manhattan’s Chinatown was… Read More
PODCAST Manhattan’s Chinatown is unique among New York neighborhoods as its origins and its provocative history can still be traced in many of the buildings and streets still in existence. Two hundred years ago, the sight of a Chinese person would have astonished New Yorkers, and the first to arrive in the city were… Read More
Meet Afong Moy, the Chinese teenager who became the most famous Asian person in America in the 1830s. I would not exactly call her notoriety enviable. There’s a strong likelihood that Moy (in the illustration at right) was actually the first Asian woman to ever step foot in New York. Early trade with China, beginning in… Read More
After years of being planted in the wrong place and a lengthy moving process that literally plucked it out of a city block like a slice of cake, Alexander Hamilton’s home — known as Hamilton Grange — is finally ready for visitors at its new home in St. Nicolas Park. The last home of New… Read More
Above: Mayor LaGuardia presenting his weekly WNYC radio show from Gracie Mansion. He would carry on the tradition at his Riverdale home. Fiorello LaGuardia, among the greatest mayors ever in New York history, died on this date, September 20, 1947, at his home in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. He arrived at the lovely four-story… Read More