The New Yorker turns one century old -- and it hasn't aged a day! The witty, cosmopolitan magazine was first published on February 21, 1925. And even though present-day issues are often quite contemporary in content, the magazine's tone and style still recall its glamorous Jazz Age origins. The New Yorker traces itself to members of that legendary group of wits known as the Algonquin Round Table -- renowned artists, critics and playwrights who met every day for lunch at the Algonquin Hote l. And...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Greg and Tom have taken off their historian hats and have become -- movie critics? Close but not quite! This week we're giving you a 'sneak preview' of their Patreon podcast called Side Streets, a conversational show about New York City and, well, whatever interests them that week. In honor of the Academy Awards, the Bowery Boys hosts pay homage to the great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert while looking at five award-worthy films with strong New York City connections: -- Anora with its captivating s...
Feb 21, 2025•1 hr
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke 's classic essay "The New Negro" and the literary anthology featuring the work of Langston Hughes , Zora Neale Hurston , Countee Cullen and other significant black writers of the day. The rising artistic scene would soon be known as the Harlem Renaissance , one of the most important cultural movements in American history. And it would be centered within America's largest black neighborhood -- Harlem, the "great black city," as described by Wal...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 24 min
One of America's first great Italian neighborhoods was once in East Harlem, once filled with more southern Italians than Sicily itself, a neighborhood almost entirely gone today except for a couple restaurants, a church and a long-standing religious festival. This is, of course, not New York's' famous "Little Italy," the festive tourist area in lower Manhattan built from another 19th-century Italian neighborhood on Mulberry Street. The bustling street life of old Italian Harlem exists mostly in ...
Jan 31, 2025•1 hr 22 min
A star of the New York City skyline is reborn -- the Waldorf Astoria is reopening in 2025! And so we thought we'd again raise a toast to one of the world's most famous hotels, an Art Deco classic attached to the Gilded Age's most prestigious name in luxury and refinement. Now, you might think you know this story -- the famous lobby clock, Peacock Alley, cocktail bars! -- but do we have some surprises for you. The Waldorf Astoria — once the Waldorf-Astoria and even the Waldorf=Astoria — has been ...
Jan 17, 2025•52 min
There were very few history podcasts around back in the year 2008, but the Bowery Boys Podcast was certainly here ... and so was The Memory Palace, hosted by Nate DiMeo , presenting small, often forgotten vignettes from history in a descriptive, narrative format. In this special interview episode, Greg talks with Nate on the occasion of his new companion book " The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past " (Penguin Random House) which features many of his fable-like historical portraits, i...
Jan 10, 2025•59 min
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 collections of Tiffany glass and archival materials, to discuss the two Tiffanys - Charles Lewis Tiffany who ...
Jan 03, 2025•1 hr
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 unlike any other. And it was here, on January 24, 1961, that a nineteen-year-old young man from Minnes...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 20 min
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 America -- but he did not tread the traditional path through New York high society. He preferred yachts...
Dec 06, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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, then at one of the largest theaters in the world — Radio City Music Hall. The life of a Rockettes danc...
Nov 29, 2024•52 min
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 their Herald Square location -- and to overshadow its department store rival Gimbel's . That first p...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 17 min
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 antique stores and its historic delis? These kinds of shops contribute to the health of a neighborh...
Nov 08, 2024•59 min
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 the neighborhood of Madison Square Park, Dorothy Arnold — simply vanished . In this investigative n...
Oct 25, 2024•46 min
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 – or rather the spooklight – to highlight the city’s haunted landscape, from rural escapes to densely ...
Oct 11, 2024•1 hr 24 min
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 Greg go deep into their favorite New York urban legends. breaking down their origins and revealing the...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 14 min
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 and daughter, retreat into a suite at the Herald Square Hotel… for decades? This is the story of a Gil...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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 the public eye, closing themselves off from scrutiny. However, none attempted to seal themselves off s...
Sep 06, 2024•53 min
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 — to explore a far different world — of colonial estates, rolling farms, horse stables, and beer-them...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 4 min
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-tape parade. While many cities with skyscrapers host ticker-tape parades today, New York was the place t...
Aug 16, 2024•59 min
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 the 1970s. In this episode we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Ramones' first performances ...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 5 min
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 artists, New York’s Gramercy Park has similarly included noted cultural icons as architect Stanford Whi...
Jul 19, 2024•59 min
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 of Dutch culture and history all over New York City -- through the names of boroughs, neighborhoods, ...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 27 min
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), Tom and Greg spend their time getting to know Stuyvesant, thanks to their special guest Jaap Jacobs...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 21 min
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 -- the Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts four years earlier. All roads lead to Leiden, the university...
Jun 21, 2024•1 hr 18 min
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 , Honorary Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the author of The Colony of New Neth...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 18 min
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 your bookshelf contains a respectable number of New York City history books, we imagine that one of th...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 8 min
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 the Dutch. And the names of places like Brooklyn and Harlem come from actual Dutch cities and towns. Ove...
May 31, 2024•3 min
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 the late 18th century, their way of life had practically vanished upon the island which would be known...
May 24, 2024•1 hr 22 min
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. Yet years of political delay and a lack of funding ensured that dreams of an underground transit wou...
May 10, 2024•2 hr 33 min
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 every dime for a wonderful time." By the 1950s, the avenue was considered the backbone of New York Ci...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 20 min
