The Bowery Boys: New York City History
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
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
Today marks a big literary milestone of sorts. Serialized Harlequin romances, comic books, cheap paperbacks and pulp magazines filled with tales of gangsters and spies all trace themselves to the ‘dime novel’, a cheaply produced, cheaply bought publication of the mid and late 19th century, introducing breezy, far-flung tales to readers of lower classes. Although… Read More
No city has been more savaged and disparaged, more exalted and varnished, than New York City — and this from the very writers who lived here. The man who exclaimed “Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!” also wrote, “Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with… Read More
Above: Mark Twain at Delmonico’s Restaurant One hundred years ago today, Mark Twain died of a heart attack in Connecticut, famously the day after Hailey’s Comet whisked by the earth. Although obviously more known for his reminiscences of Missouri and his later life in Hartford, Conn., New York City figured significantly in his career. Twain… Read More
O. Henry in 1909. He may even be drunk here. New York City has a fine, macabre tradition of harboring famous artists, writers, musicians and actors on the cusp of an alcohol or drug-fueled demise. The city naturally attracts the creative, oddballs and innovators looking for like minds amid the flourishing artistic communities of the… Read More