The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The city received a right, proper Transylvania-style thunderstorm this weekend, with more than a few bolts streaking overhead early Sunday morning. You might find this shocking: According to the National Weather Service, the Empire State Building is struck by lightning an average of 23 times a year, or slightly more than one might be comfortable… Read More
Above: City Hall in 1900 (Courtesy NYPL) Never have I been more elated to write about a City Council meeting. At the start of the 19th century, city affairs were still being conducted on Wall Street at Federal Hall. For many years they shared the corridors with George Washington and the first American Congress. By… Read More
Above: The 1863 Draft Riots and the aftermath of violence in London In a couple weeks, Tom and I will finish off our three-part Civil War series with a strange tale taking place during the war’s final years. But it seems I can’t quite get our last subject — the 1863 Draft Riots — out of my… Read More
Goats were the environmentally friendly way to see Coney Island in 1904. The short lived ‘Coney Island Zoo’ was actually a part of Dreamland amusement park, alongside the bizarre dwarf village Lilliputia and the infamous room of premie babies in incubators. The goats pictured above were joined at the modest zoo with a collection of thalycines — also called Tasmanian… Read More
From an August 1911 edition of the New York World: I believe the address of Mr. Sober, 47 Fair Street, was near Fort Greene Park.
This Saturday the city begins its annual Summer Streets program, closing a corridor of avenues from the Brooklyn Bridge to 72st Street and transforming them into pedestrian havens. From 7am until 1pm on August 6, 13, and 20th, you can walk, bike, skateboard or generally meander in any way you please for miles. You can… Read More
The place to be one hundred years ago today was Greeley Square, that bustling public space just south of 34th Street from Herald Square. Thousands of people crowded the sidewalks outside the department stores that afternoon, and many hundreds more shoved themselves into the elevated subway station. These crowds were centered around Gimbels department store… Read More
The New York Times this morning had an intriguing story about a unfortunate fellow who plays for the Chicago White Sox named Adam Dunn — nicknamed ‘the Big Donkey’. This has been a banner year for Mr. Dunn as he is about to make the list as one of the worst players in the history of… Read More
Interior of the Hotel Chelsea, photo from 1972, by Carter Tomassi Imagine taking a treasured New York landmark and slowly strangling the very reason it was famous in the first place until nothing was left of it but an empty shell. Welcome to the Chelsea Hotel, August 2011. [New York Times] You can also follow… Read More
Well, obviously, I’m pretty stoked to hear about this. Fernando Wood, subject of episode #126, will be making his big-screen debut in Steven Spielberg‘s upcoming epic ‘Lincoln’. Playing the nefarious mayor will be Lee Pace, star of the Tony-winning The Normal Heart and lead actor from the late, lamented Pushing Daisies. Partially inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s… Read More
I’m at the end of the painful process of finding a new apartment and haven’t had a chance to write a new blog posting this week. So I’ll end the week with a song by the Brooklyn-based My Cousin, The Emperor. Tom and I were invited by the band to attend their performance last night at the Gramercy… Read More
A 1940s antique store carries more than dusty lamps in the summer superhero film, ‘Captain America: The First Avenger,” which transplants its hero’s origins from the Lower East Side to downtown Brooklyn. I know I can be a bit fanatic in my New York-centeredness, but this statement I can make with fact — the comic book… Read More
The New York draft riots of 1863 were both a distraction to the actual battles of the Civil War and the purest embodiment of underlying Northern viewpoints, violently displayed. Producing this show was not a lighthearted task, and we clearly needed to check our usual conversational demeanor at the door. Hopefully we presented the riots in… Read More
There is nothing extraordinary at 300 Mulberry Street anymore, just a standard five-story apartment complex and a parking garage, hugged to its south by a Subway sandwich shop. But for much of the Gilded Age, this address was the grand headquarters for New York’s police department. The Mulberry Street building was New York’s center of law enforcement from… Read More
You probably know something about the Civil War draft riots that kept New York paralyzed during the week of July 13, 1863. But New York only meant Manhattan back then. What about the rest of the future boroughs? The conscription act initiated draft lotteries throughout the area as, by 1863, the Union struggled to fill… Read More