The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The tale of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is one of New York’s true epic adventures, mirroring the course of American history via the ships manufactured here and the people employed to make them. The Navy Yard’s origins within Wallabout Bay tie it to the birth of the United States itself, the spot where thousands of… Read More
Privateers have been much maligned in history, so much so that perhaps you didn’t realize their important role in gaining America its independence from Great Britain. If your first image of a privateer is a sinister, blood-thirsty madman with a knife in his teeth and a skull on his sails, you’re probably thinking of a… Read More
Join the Bowery Boys Movie Club! Support us on Patreon at any level and get these Patreon-exclusive, full-length and ad-free podcast. Each month we talk about one classic (or cult-classic) film that says something interesting about New York City. In the new Bowery Boys Movie Club, Tom and Greg disembark at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and spend a breathless 24… Read More
The Brooklyn Navy Yard, no longer a bustling shipyard, lives on as a vibrant commercial compound of movie studios, bourbon distilleries and organic rooftop farms. Its waterfront, facing into Wallabout Bay, is relatively peaceful today. There are no remnants of its genuinely disturbing past. During the Revolutionary War, New York was a British stronghold, and… Read More
— Big Bowery Boys book news! The release date for Adventures In Old New York got pushed back to June a couple weeks but for the best reason ever — the book is enormous, almost 500 pages, and full of spectacular images. It’s really shaping up to become an attractive, entertaining and usable book. We… Read More
Dark skies over the Brooklyn Bridge, from a 1905 postcard (courtesy MCNY) PODCAST Brooklyn is the setting for this quartet of classic ghost stories, all set before the independent city was an official borough of New York City. This is a Brooklyn of old stately mansions and farms, with railroad tracks laid through forests and… Read More
The grueling life of a Brooklyn newsboy, taken by Lewis Hine, 1910 (Library of Congress) The new Disney-produced Broadway musical ‘Newsies‘ puts melody to the events surrounding the Newsboys Strike of 1899. For one week that summer, young newspaper sellers fought back against their employers’ unfair pricing schemes, turning their former street corners into places… Read More
Anchors Aweigh: A museum finally opens in one of Brooklyn’s most restricted outposts The Brooklyn Navy Yard finally got the museum it deserves this past weekend with the opening of BLDG 92: Brooklyn Navy Yard Center, a badly needed introduction to this long-restricted yet important component of New York history. The environmentally-friendly new center is affixed… Read More
Bergen Street is lovely trek through the borough’s most historic sites and neighborhoods — from its western end through Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill, dipping near Park Slope and up through Prospect Heights, and past old Grant Square and the Weeksville Heritage Center, the remnants of an early 19th century free black community. Indirectly, the… Read More
Rock of ages: The meteorite is lifted off its wagon for removal into the American Museum of Natural History. I wonder if those ragamuffins to the right in the photograph have their jackknives ready? (Pic courtesy JFGryphon/Flickr)As mentioned in last week’s podcast, one of the great treasures of the American Museum of Natural History is… Read More
Park Slope, snow and Volkswagen, January 1978, photo by Dinandi Nooney (courtesy Google Life images) Why was Park Slope named the best neighborhood in New York City? Being one of the city’s largest landmarked districts probably helps. [New York Daily News] Say it’s 1900, you’re injured and you happen to be at the Brooklyn Navy… Read More