The Bowery Boys: New York City History

You may have heard about the messy, chaotic and truly horrible presidential election of 1876 -- pitting Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B Hayes -- but did you know that New York City plays a huge role in this moment in American history? Tilden, the governor of New York, was a political superstar, a reformer famous for taking down Boss Tweed and the corrupt machinations of Tammany...

In the heart of Greenwich Village sits the Jefferson Market Library , a branch of the New York Public Library, and a beautiful garden which offers a relaxing respite from the busy neighborhood. But a prison once rose from this very spot -- more than one in fact. While there was indeed a market at Jefferson Market -- dating back to the 1830s -- this space is more notoriously known for America's fir...

Just a few months ago, New York City removed most of the remaining phone booths from the streets, oft neglected, a nostalgic victim of our increasing use of cellphones. For almost a century public phones have connected regular New Yorkers with the world. Who doesn’t have fond memories of using a payphone with gum on the earpiece and extremely vulgar messages written on the box? Putting in quarters...

In today's episode, Tom discusses the vast span of New York history with filmmakers and authors Ric Burns and James Sanders, creators of " New York: A Documentary Film ". In our episode, we discuss the 8-part documentary (which aired on PBS in installments in 1999, 2001 and 2003) and its newly updated companion book, " New York: An Illustrated History " (Knopf, 2021). We cover the guiding themes o...

In honor of the 125th anniversary of the first ELECTRIC CABS hitting the streets of New York , the Bowery Boys are revisiting this episode from 2015, recounting almost 175 years of getting around New York in a private ride.  The hansom , the romantic rendition of the horse and carriage, took New Yorkers around during the Gilded Age. But unregulated conduct by — nighthawks — and the messy condition...

Tom and Greg are still off celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Bowery Boys podcast, so this week we're highlighting one of the best shows produced by the Bowery Boys this year -- for The Gilded Gentleman podcast, the spin-off show hosted by Carl Raymond.  Domestic servants during the Gilded Age did more than simply maintain the mansions of the wealthy. New York City simply could not function w...

Let's go back to 2007. Tom and Greg recorded the first episode of the podcast which would become The Bowery Boys: New York City History on June 19, 2007 . The location: the Lower East Side. The method of recording: a karaoke microphone and a small white iBook.  In this special celebration of that anniversary, they set the scene with the ultimate 'situate the listener' -- situating the year 2007 ....

What wonderful surprises await the Bowery Boys in Little Caribbean ? The Brooklyn enclave in Flatbush is one of the central destinations for Caribbean-American life and culture in New York City. Since the 1960s, thousands of immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations have made this historic area of Flatbush (mostly east of Flatbush Avenue) their ho...

Over 350 years ago today's Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush was an old Dutch village, the dirt path that would one day become Flatbush Avenue, lined with wheat fields and farms. Contrast that with today's Flatbush, a bustling urban destination diverse in both housing styles and commercial retail shops. It's also an anchor of Brooklyn’s Caribbean community -- Little Caribbean. There have been many...

The Renwick Ruin , resembling an ancient castle lost to time, appears along the East River as a crumbling, medieval-like apparition, something not quite believable. Sitting between two new additions on Roosevelt Island -- the campus of Cornell Tech and FDR Four Freedoms Park -- these captivating ruins, enrobed in beautiful ivy, tell the story of a dark period in New York City history. The island b...

Two landmarks to American art history sit on either side of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River -- the homes of visionary artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church . Cole and Church were leaders of the Hudson River School , a collective of 19th century American painters captivated by natural beauty and wide-open spaces. Many of these paintings, often of a massive size, depicted fan...

Hyde Park, New York, was the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States. He was born here, he lived here throughout his life, and he's buried here -- alongside his wife Eleanor Roosevelt. But it was more than just a home. The Hyde Park presence of the Roosevelts expands outwardly from the Roosevelt ancestral mansion of Springwood, over hundreds of forested acres fro...

What 19th century American engineering landmark invites you through nature, past historic sites and into people's backyards? Where can you experience the grandeur of the Hudson Valley in (mostly) secluded peace and tranquility -- while learning something about Old New York? Welcome to the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail , 26.5 miles of dusty pathway through some of the most interesting and beautiful tow...

We wanted to present to you one of our favorite new podcasts of the year -- and one we think you'll love. It's called History Daily . And yes, it really is history, daily! Every weekday host Lindsay Graham ( American Scandal , American History Tellers ) takes you back in time to explore a momentous event that happened ‘on this day’ in history. Whether it’s to remember the tragedy of December 7th,...

Frederick Law Olmsted , America's preeminent landscape architect of the 19th century, designed dozens of parks, parkways and college campuses across the country. With Calvert Vaux , he created two of New York City's greatest parks -- Central Park and Prospect Park. Yet before Central Park, he had never worked on any significant landscape project and he wasn't formally trained in any kind of archit...

This episode focuses on the special relationship between New York City and Puerto Rico, via the tales of pioneros, the first migrants to make the city their home and the many hundreds of thousands who came to the city during the great migration of the 1950s and 60s.  Today there are more Puerto Ricans and people of Puerto Rican descent in New York City than in any other city in the nation — save f...

Temple Emanu-El, home to New York's first Reform Jewish congregation and the largest synagogue in the city, sits on the spot of Mrs. Caroline Astor 's former Gilded Age mansion. Out with the old, in with the new. The synagogue shimmers with Jazz Age style from vibrant stained-glass windows to its Art Deco tiles and mosaics. When its doors opened in 1929, the congregation was making a very powerful...

Richard Morris Hunt was one of the most important architects in American history. His talent and vision brought respect to his profession in the mid-19th century and helped to craft the seductive style of the Gilded Age. So why are there so few examples of his extraordinary work still standing in New York City today? You're certainly familiar with the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty and the gran...

New York City has an impressive collection of historic homes, but none as unique and or as joyful as the Louis Armstrong House and Museum , located in Corona, Queens. What other historic home in the United States has a gift shop in its garage, aqua blue kitchen cabinets, bathroom speakers behind silver wallpaper, mirrored bathrooms and chandeliers over the bed? Elvis Presley's Graceland perhaps co...

Dorothy Parker was not only the wittiest writer of the Jazz Age, she was also obsessively morbid . Her talents rose at a very receptive moment for such a sharp, dour outlook, after the first world war and right as the country went dry. Dorothy Parker’s greatest lines are as bracing and intoxicating as a hard spirit. Her most successful verse often veers into somber moods, loaded with thoughts of s...

PODCAST What does the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea mean to you ? Religion and architecture? Art galleries and gay bars? Shopping and brunch after a stroll on the High Line ? Tens of thousands of people, of course, call it home. But before it was a neighborhood, it was the Colonial-era estate of a British military officer who named his bucolic property after a London veterans hospital. His des...

The strange, scandalous and sex-filled story of the Ansonia, an Upper West Side architectural gem and a legendary musical landmark. In the television show Only Murders in the Building , Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez play podcasters attempting to solve a mystery in a building full of eccentric personalities. Their fictional apartment building is called The Arconia, a name partially in...

Believe it or not, we've got one more brand new Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast for 2021. Look for it on January 31. But for today we wanted to give you another sampling of our new spin-off podcast called The Gilded Gentleman , a look at America's Gilded Age period, hosted by social and culinary historian Carl Raymond . In this new episode, Carl looks at one of the most legendary figure...

Steven Spielberg's new version of West Side Story is here -- and it's fantastic -- so we're re-visiting our 2016 show on the story of Lincoln Center , with a new podcast introduction discussing the film and the passing of musical icon Stephen Sondheim . The fine arts campus assembles some of the city's finest music and theatrical institutions to create the classiest 16.3 acres in New York City. It...

The following is a special presentation — the first episode of brand spin-off podcast called The Gilded Gentleman , hosted by social and culinary historian Carl Raymond. In this debut episode, recorded at Greenwich Village's Salmagundi Club , Tom and Greg sit with Carl to formally introduce him to listeners and also to discuss the ideas surrounding the Gilded Age, a period of great wealth and grea...