The Bowery Boys: New York City History
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
Post editor Dorothy Schiff, before the arrival of Murdoch in 1976… Yes, there is a New York institution that one can use the headline above as its description, and that institution is the New York Post. Given all the recent calamities within the Murdoch empire these days, I thought I would re-post the link to… Read More
A torrid night at Harry Hill’s concert saloon on Houston Street. Naturally, such fun must be stopped! (Pic courtesy NYPL) Yes, yes, the Civil War began 150 years ago this year. I hope you have not grown tired of hearing that fact, as I’ve got an entire summer of posts and podcasts relating to it!… Read More
Albert Langdon Coburn sees mystery on ‘Broadway at Night’ While you rush to join the thousands of museumgoers checking out the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fantastic Alexander McQueen exhibition ‘Savage Beauty’ — now in its last few weeks — may I recommend you check out a small room near the back of that long hallway… Read More
Bird in the sky: The delicate Ms. Millman makes it look easyLast night on my walk home, I observed something you just don’t always see everyday — a renegade acrobat dangling from the top of the Williamsburg Bridge! The perilous pair, Seanna Sharpe and Savage Skinner, performed this foolhardy trapeze as traffic whizzed by below them, and… Read More
Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr 207 years ago today in their infamous morning duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton would die of his injuries the next afternoon, July 12, 1804. Just imagine Joe Biden and Timothy Geithner rowing to New Jersey and shooting at each other*! This bluff overlooking the Hudson River was the bloodsoaked… Read More
I hope you’ve had a chance to play around in the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox was recently launched on their website. It’s an incredible catalog of old music, from a variety of genres, and could easily play as a soundtrack to many of the posts on this page. One old tune I happened to… Read More
Somebody should make a movie about Fernando Wood, and the role should be played by Johnny Depp. Wood is endlessly fascinating, not only as a shady character of political theater, but as a example of bald tenacity. He was written off as finished at many occasions — and saddled with mounting corruption charges — only to… Read More
An elaborate fireworks celebration over the grounds of the World’s Fair of 1939-40. (I’m not sure which year this picture was taken.) The wars of American independence, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I are represented in a lighting display in the foreground. And you also may have noticed something familiar over… Read More
His Honor, one of the most ambitious, most duplicitous leaders of New York in its history — as photographed by no less than Matthew Brady. PODCAST The first part of our Bowery Boys Go To War! trilogy of podcasts set during the years of the American Civil War. Fernando Wood, New York’s mayor at… Read More