The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Alexander Hamilton vs Aaron Burr ! Delmonico's vs Sherry's ! John Adams vs everybody! Some of history's most fascinating stories involve important figures who did not like each other very much. In this edition of Bowery Boys History Live! , recorded at Manhattan's City Winery on May 26, 2026 , Greg Young from the Bowery Boys brings some of these stories to a live audience, featuring author Laurie...

Bowling Green is best known today as the calming, flower-filled oasis in lower Manhattan, next to the decidedly less calming, lumbering sculpture Charging Bull, which is popular with tourists. But this peaceful park was once home to New York City’s most infamous statue -- and the stage for America's first No Kings protest. In 1770, the old park became the home of a monumental statue of King George...

New York City will be at the center of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the United States, thanks to the largest-ever flotilla of tall ships to sail into New York Harbor — a reminder of the city's storied maritime history. It will be like ghosts of the past returning from a long voyage. The parade of tall ships, known as Operation Sail , first assembled in New York waters for the 1 964 Wo...

The New York Knicks are the ultimate New York City sporting franchise. Why would we make such a big claim? It's all in the name . The Knicks were founded in 1946 as one of the inaugural teams from the sports professional league which became the National Basketball Association (NBA). Their owner Ned Irish, from Madison Square Garden , chose the name Knickerbockers, quite literally pulled it from a...

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson 100 years ago on June 1, 1926. In late 1954, on the cusp of major Hollywood stardom, Marilyn moved to New York City on a quest to become a better actress and to find a little peace on streets where she could sometimes go unnoticed. The year 1955 was one of discovery for the star of The Seven-Year Itch and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — exploring the city,...

She arrived in New York calling herself Eliza Brown — but she’d been born Betsy Bowen, daughter of a woman jailed for running a disorderly house in Providence. By the time she died in 1865, she was Eliza Jumel -- Manhattan’s richest woman, mistress of a hilltop mansion in Washington Heights, the widow of a former vice president, and the subject of so many wild rumors that even her New York Times o...

The Lincoln Center revival of Ragtime — with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally, adapted from the novel by E. L. Doctorow — has just garnered 11 Tony Award nominations, including Best Revival of a Musical, along with multiple acting nods for its acclaimed cast. This new production feels more timely and resonant than the one that first played on Broadwa...

Perched over the Hudson River near the city of Hudson sits Olana State Historic Site , once the wondrous home of painter Frederic Church . This Gilded Age mansion is unlike any in the valley, mystical and imposing, evoking Persian and Moorish architectural styles and reflecting the art and ambitions of its former owner. Church was more than a Hudson River School painter; he was an adventurer and d...

The Garment District in Midtown Manhattan has been the center of American fashion for almost one hundred years. The lofts and office buildings here still buzz with the business of making clothing — from design to distribution. But the district has become endangered today as clothing manufacturers move out and the entire industry faces new challenges from online sales and overseas production. Durin...

In our modern world, people are turning to all sorts of unusual beliefs and fringe disciplines just outside the bounds of medical science and psychology, all in search of a better understanding of the human mind and the origins of personality. In the mid-19th century, New Yorkers with similar questions became obsessed with the unusual practice of phrenology , which promised to unlock the secrets o...

Carnegie Hall is one of America’s greatest and most enduring cultural landmarks, enchanting audiences and making history since its opening night on May 5, 1891, when Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky appeared there in his first performance in the United States. This groundbreaking performance space (originally known simply as “Music Hall”) is in fact a trio of distinct venues, all nestled within a single,...

Once upon a time, the streets of the Lower East Side were lined with pushcarts and salespeople haggling with customers over the price of fruits, fish and pickles. Whatever became of them? New York’s earliest marketplaces were large and surprisingly well regulated hubs for commerce that kept the city fed. When the city was small, they served the hungry population well. But by the mid 19th century,...

In 1889, Robert Ray Hamilton, great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, became ensnared in a sensational web of deceit — forged identities, attempted murder, and brazen fraud that captured headlines across the country. Although this gripping saga played out over a two-year period, it has largely faded from public memory.  In his book The Scandalous Hamiltons , author Bill Shaffer resurrects the scanda...

Why is the West Village both historically important and incredibly expensive? In the final part of our West Village mini-series , we look at the elements that define the modern neighborhood — from battles with Robert Moses to the protests that galvanized the gay-rights movement. The 19th-century charms of the old Village seem timeless, but they survive thanks to the 1969 Greenwich Village Historic...

In Part Two of our mini-series, The Streets of the West Village , we turn to the people who gave the neighborhood its character and vitality — from Irish longshoremen on the docks to actors on the off-Broadway stage, from street gangs to speakeasy proprietors. From Eugene O’Neill to Bea Arthur , their stories help define this corner of Manhattan. Well into the early 19th century, the West Village...

Why are the streets of Manhattan's West Village so unusually charming and romantic? Why does it make such an excellent place for a night out in New York City? Why is the real estate so expensive? And when did it become a distinct place separate from Greenwich Village? We hope to get to the bottom of these questions in the first part of our epic new limited series on the history of the West Village...

Here’s a classic from the Bowery Boys Podcast archive, recorded in early 2013, just a few months after Hurricane Sandy .  Each winter, when forecasters warn of an approaching monster storm, they inevitably invoke one of the most infamous tempests ever to strike New York City: the now-legendary Great Blizzard of 1888 , a devastating collision of wind and snow. The battering snow-hurricane of 1888,...

For more historical deep dives just like these, check out HISTORY This Week wherever you get your podcasts! February 14, 1905. A stick of dynamite detonates under the Hudson River — and the ground above swallows a locomotive whole. It's the latest setback in an audacious plan to tunnel beneath the river and bring trains into Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad is the largest corporation in the wo...

On the afternoon of December 22, 1984, shots rang out beneath the streets of New York, from the subway's 2 Seventh Avenue express train . A Greenwich Village man named Bernhard Goetz shot four black teenagers who he believed were about to assault him. The incident made international news, amplified by the city’s shameless tabloid newspapers because it so perfectly embodied all the cultural stereot...

On August 6, 1930, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater stepped into a taxi on West 45th Street and vanished without a trace. For 27 days, nobody reported him missing—not his wife waiting in Maine, not his Tammany Hall cronies, not the courts. When the story finally broke, it became the most famous missing persons case in New York history. Judge Crater was a rising star in the city’s legal wo...

“A Highway is Crumbling. New York Can’t Agree on How to Fix It.” That was a headline in the New York Times back in November about the highly problematic section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway located beneath the Brooklyn Promenade , the romantic walkway that offers sumptuous views of lower Manhattan. Everybody loves the Promenade. Nobody loves the BQE, especially in its present state. So how di...

On Lexington Avenue sits a special food store named Kalustyan's with a second floor stocked with international spices, syrups, and bitters. In 1881, this was the home of Chester A. Arthur , and it was here in the early morning hours of September 20, that he became the 21st President of the United States. He is one of only two men inaugurated as president in New York City -- the other was George Wa...

Bowery Boys History Live is a live-show series at City Winery hosted by Greg Young featuring a variety of historians and tour guides. The last installment this summer featured author Liz Block and tour guide Keith Taillon. As live performances, they're a bit more loose and irreverent than the regular podcast and sometimes feature references to images being projected on stage. As a special holiday...

New Yorkers have gotten around their cities by subways, buses, elevated trains, streetcars and ferries. And the ways in which they have paid for them have changed as well. And keeps changing! This month, the city is saying farewell to the MetroCard , the magnetic-stripe card that has gotten the town moving since the early 1990s. When the orange cards debuted, they replaced the strange physical tok...

This month marks the 190th anniversary of one of the most devastating disasters in New York City history — The Great Fire of 1835. This massive fire, among the worst in American history in terms of its economic impact, devastated the city during one freezing December evening, destroying hundreds of shops and warehouses and changing the face of Manhattan forever. It also underscored the city’s need...