The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Just the name "Tiffany" evokes the glamour and elegance of the Gilded Age. But there is much more to the story than just the eponymous retailer who continues to sell fine jewelry and decorative objects today.  In this episode of the Gilded Gentleman podcast, Carl Raymond is joined by Lindsy R. Parrott, the Executive Director of The Neustadt Collection , one of the country's most important collecti...

  Greenwich Village is one of America's great music capitals, an extraordinary distinction for an old neighborhood of tenements, townhouses, dive bars and a college campus. So many musical titans of jazz, folk, pop and rock and roll got their start in the Village's many small nightclubs and coffeehouses, working alongside artists, writers, actors and comedians to create an American cultural mecca...

Does your personal library overwhelm your home? Are there too many books in your life -- but you'll never get rid of them? Then you have a lot in common with Gilded Age mogul J.P. Morgan ! Morgan was a defining figure of the late 19th century, engineering corporate mergers and crafting monopolies from the desk of his Wall Street office. In the process Morgan became one of the wealthiest men in Ame...

The Rockettes are America’s best known dance troupe — and a staple of the holiday season — but you may not know the origin of this iconic New York City symbol. For one, they’re not even from the Big Apple! Formerly the Missouri Rockets, the dancers and their famed choreographer Russell Markert were noticed by theater impresario Samuel Rothafel , who installed them first as his theater The Roxy, th...

What is Thanksgiving without the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ? The annual march through Manhattan -- terminating at Macy's Department Store -- has delighted New Yorkers for a century and been a part of the American tradition of Thanksgiving since it was first broadcast nationally on television in the 1950s. Macy's began the parade in 1924 as a way to promote the new Seventh Avenue extension of...

The energy and personality of New York City runs through its local businesses -- mom-and-pop shops, independently run stores and restaurants, often family run operations. We live in a world of chain stores, franchises, corporate run operations and online retailers that have run many of these kinds of stores out of business. But what is New York without its diners, its small book shops, its curious...

The young socialite Dorothy Arnold seemingly led a charmed and privileged life. The niece of a Supreme Court justice, Dorothy was the belle of 1900s New York, an attractive and vibrant young woman living on the Upper East Side with her family. She hoped to become a published magazine writer and perhaps someday live by herself in Greenwich Village. But on December 12, 1910, while running errands in...

On January 1, 1898, Greater New York was formed from the union of two cities – New York and Brooklyn, along with other towns and villages of the region, creating the five boroughs we know and love today.  But each of those five boroughs brings their own unique histories and personalities. And so for this year’s annual Bowery Boys Halloween Special, we thought we’d give each borough the spotlight –...

New York City has its fair share of famous 'urban legends' -- persistent rumors, too good to be true, often macabre and dark. No, we're not talking about just about ghost stories. (Those arrive next episode.) We mean far fetched, reality defying fantasies sometimes rooted in science fiction and horror – with just enough bearing to the real world that many people believe them to be true. Tom and Gr...

Ida Wood had a secret. Born Ida Mayfield in New Orleans, Ida moved to New York in the 1850s and through her marriage to Benjamin Wood, publisher of the New York Daily News , she entered society.  By the 1870s, Ida’s name was regularly found in the social columns of the city’s newspapers. So why, in 1907, did Ida Wood cash in – withdrawing her fortune from the bank and then, along with her sister a...

In 2022, Greg received a large box in the mail, containing hundreds of news clippings and documents related to the Collyer Brothers. This expanded, newly edited version of his 2019 show on the Collyer Brothers includes some of this research. New York City, with over 8 million people, is filled with stories of people who just want to be left alone – recluses, hermits, cloistering themselves from th...

What was Times Square  before the electric billboards, before the Broadway theaters and theme restaurants, before the thousands and thousands of tourists? What was Times Square before it was Times Square? Today it’s virtually impossible to find traces of the area’s 18th and 19th century past. But in this episode, Tom and Greg will peel away the glamour and chaos — evict the Elmos and the pedicabs...

In 1886, during a miles-long parade celebrating the dedication of the Statue of Liberty , office workers in lower Manhattan began heaving ticker tape out the windows, creating a magical, blizzard-like landscape. That tradition stuck. Today that particular corridor of Broadway -- connecting Battery Park  to City Hall  -- is known as the " Canyon of Heroes " thanks to the popularity of the ticker-ta...

One-two-three-four! The Ramones , a four-man rock band from Forest Hills, Queens, played the Bowery music club CBGB for the very first time on August 16, 1974. Not only would Joey, Johnny, Tommy and Dee Dee reinvigorate downtown New York nightlife here -- creating a unique and energetic form of punk -- but they would join with a small group of musicians at CBGB to revolutionize American music in t...

Carl Raymond of The Gilded Gentleman podcast and his guest Keith Taillon invite you into one of the most historically exclusive spaces in New York City -- the romantic and peaceful escape known as Gramercy Park.  This small two-acre square, constructed in the 1830s, has been called “America’s Bloomsbury”. Taking the reference from London’s famous neighborhood once home to many great writers and ar...

Follow along with Greg and Tom in this stand-alone travelogue episode as they visit several historic cities and towns in the Netherlands -- Utrecht, De Bilt, Breukelen and Haarlem -- wandering through cafe-filled streets and old cobblestone alleyways, the air ringing with church bells and street music. But of course, their mission remains the same as the past three episodes. For there are traces o...

The name Stuyvesant can be found everywhere in New York City -- in the names of neighborhoods, apartments, parks and high schools. Peter Stuyvesant , the last director-general of New Amsterdam, is a hero to some, a villain to others -- and probably a caricature to all.  What do we really know about Peter Stuyvesant? In their last days in Amsterdam (before heading to other parts of the Netherlands)...

Our adventure in the Netherlands  continues with a quest to find the Walloons , the French-speaking religious refugees who became the first settlers of New Netherland in 1624. Their descendants would last well beyond the existence of New Amsterdam and were among the first people to become New Yorkers. But you can't tell the Walloon story without that other group of American religious settlers -- t...

The epic journey begins! The Bowery Boys Podcast heads to old Amsterdam , the capital of the Netherlands, to find traces of New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement which became New York. We  begin our journey at Amsterdam's Centraal Station and spend the day wandering the streets and canals, peeling back the centuries in search of New York's roots. Our tour guide for this adventure is Jaap Jacobs , Ho...

The Bowery Boys Podcast is going to Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands for a very special mini-series, marking the 400th anniversary of the Dutch first settling in North America in the region that today we call New York City. But before they go, they're kicking off their international voyage with a special conversation -- with the man who inspired the journey. Chances are good that if yo...

Announcing an epic new Bowery Boys mini series -- The Bowery Boys Adventures in the Netherlands . Exploring the connections between New York City and that fascinating European country. Simply put, you don't get New York City as it is today without the Dutch who first settled here 400 years ago. The names of Staten Island, Broadway , Bushwick, Greenwich Village  and the Bronx  actually come from th...

Consider the following show an acknowledgment – of people. For the foundations of 400 years of New York City history were built upon the homeland of the Lenni-Lenape, the tribal stewards of a vast natural area stretching from eastern Pennsylvania to western Long Island.  The Lenape were among the first in northeast North America to be displaced by white colonists -- the Dutch and the English. By t...

The New York City subway system turns 120 years old later this year so we thought we'd honor the world's longest subway system with a supersized overview history -- from the first renegade ride in 1904 to the belated (but sorely welcomed) opening of one portion of the Second Avenue Subway  in 2017. New Yorkers like Alfred Ely Beach  had envisioned a subway system for the city as early as the 1870s...

The story of a filthy and dangerous train ditch that became one of the swankiest addresses in the world -- Park Avenue.  For over 100 years, a Park Avenue address meant wealth, glamour and the high life. The Fred Astaire version of the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' on the Ritz" revised the lyrics to pay tribute to Park Avenue: "High hats and Arrow collars/White spats and lots of dollars/Spending...

Few areas of the United States have as endured as long as Flushing, Queens , a neighborhood with almost over 375 years of history and an evolving cultural landscape that includes Quakers, trees, Hollywood films, world fairs, and new Asian immigration. In this special on-location episode of the Bowery Boys, Greg and special guest Kieran Gannon explore the epic history of Flushing through five speci...