Interview with author Eric K. Washington, author of “Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal”. The Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal were a workforce of hundreds of African-American men who were an essential part of the long-distance railroad experience. Passengers relied on Red caps for more than simply grabbing their bags -- they were navigators, they helped with taxis, offered advice, and provided a warm greeting. In his 2019 book, “Boss of...
Sep 11, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ancient space rocks, dinosaur fossils, anthropological artifacts and biological specimens are housed in New York's world famous natural history complex on the Upper West Side -- the American Museum of Natural History ! Throughout the 19th century, New Yorkers tried to establish a legitimate natural history venue in the city, including an aborted plan for a Central Park dinosaur pavilion. With the creation of the American Museum of Natural History , the city finally had a premier institution that...
Sep 04, 2020•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast PART 2 of our two-part podcast series, "A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK" In this episode, we look at how one aspect of FDR's New Deal -- the WPA's Federal Project Number One -- was used to put the country's creative community back to work and lift the spirits of downtrodden Americans. Federal Project Number One -- the "artistic wing" of the Works Progress Administration -- inspired one of the most important and lasting cultural revolutions in the United States, an infusion of funds that put musicians, p...
Aug 28, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast PART ONE of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK. For Part One, we look at the impact FDR and New Deal funding had in shaping New York City's bridges and parks -- thanks to an especially tenacious parks commissioner! New York City during the 1930s was defined by massive unemployment, long lines at the soup kitchens, Hoovervilles in Central Park. But this was also the decade of the Triborough Bridge and Orchard Beach, new swimming pools and playgrounds Faced with the nationwide finan...
Aug 21, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Serbian immigrant Nikola Tesla was among the Gilded Age's brightest minds, a visionary thinker and inventor who gave the world innovations in electricity, radio and wireless communication. So why has Tesla garnered the mantle of cult status among many? Part of that has to do with his life in New York City, his shifting fortunes as he made his way (counting every step) along the city streets. Tesla lived in Manhattan for more than 50 years, and although he hated it when he first arrived, he q...
Aug 14, 2020•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast The newspapers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst -- the New York World and the New York Journal -- were locked in a fierce competition for readers in the mid 1890s. New Yorkers loved it. The paper's sensational style was so shocking that it became known as "yellow journalism". So what happens when those flamboyant publications are given an international conflict to write about? On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine mysteriously exploded while stationed in Havana Harbor in Cuba. While ...
Aug 07, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the 1890s, powerful New York publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst engaged in an all-out battle for readers of their respective newspapers, developing a flamboyant, sensational style of coverage today referred to as "yellow journalism". This battle between the New York World and the New York Journal would determine the direction of the American media landscape and today we still feel its aftermath -- from melodramatic headlines to the birth of eyewitness reporting and so-call...
Jul 31, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast The story of the Lenape, the native people of New York Harbor region and their experiences with the first European arrivals — the explorers, the fur traders, the residents of New Amsterdam. Before New York, before New Amsterdam — there was Lenapehoking , the land of the Lenape, the original inhabitants of the places we call Manhattan, Westchester, northern New Jersey and western Long Island. This is the story of their first contact with European explorers and settlers and their gradual banishmen...
Jul 24, 2020•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's summer in the city, so we're re-issuing our Bowery Boys Movie Club podcast devoted to Midnight Cowboy , the 1969 buddy film starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. There are few time capsules of New York’s darker days quite as pleasurable as Midnight Cowboy . It’s hardly as provocative as when it was released in May 1969, but its ragged edges have only become more remarkable to view as a piece of history, paying tribute to an era often romanticized today. If you’ve never seen the film — don...
Jul 17, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Transcript available on Metacast A history of the comic book industry in New York City, how the energy and diversity of the city influenced the burgeoning medium in the 1930s and 40s and how New York’s history reflects out from the origins of its most popular characters. In the 1890s a newspaper rivalry between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzee helped bring about the birth of the comic strip and, a few decades later, the comic book. Today, comic book superheroes are bigger than ever — in blockbuster summer movies and ...
Jul 10, 2020•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast In New York City, during the tumultuous summer of 1776, the King of England lost his head. Two hundred and fifty years ago, Colonial New York received a monumental statue of King George III on horseback, an ostentatious and rather awkward display which once sat in Bowling Green park at the tip of Manhattan. On July 9, 1776, angry New Yorkers violently tore down that statue of King George and, as the story goes, rendered his body into bullets used in the battles of the Revolutionary War. Flash fo...
Jul 03, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 332 The Manhattan neighborhood of Yorkville has a rich immigrant history that often gets overlooked because of its location on the Upper East Side, a destination usually associated with wealth and high society. But Yorkville, for over 170 years, has been defined by waves of immigrant communities which have settled here, particular those cultures from Central and Eastern Europe -- Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks. The neighborhood developed thanks to its location to vari...
Jun 26, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast The history of black and African-American settlements and neighborhoods which once existed in New York City in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Today we sometimes define New York City's African-American identity by the places where thriving black culture developed -- Harlem , of course, and also Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant , neighborhoods that developed for groups of black residents in the 20th century. But by no means were these the first in New York City. Other centers of black and ...
Jun 19, 2020•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast During the Gilded Age, New York City had one form of rapid transit -- the elevated railroad. The city's population had massively grown by the 1870s thanks to large waves of immigration from Ireland and Germany. Yet its transportation options -- mostly horse-drawn streetcars -- were slow and cumbersome. As a result, people rarely lived far from where they worked. And in the case of most working class New Yorkers, that meant staying in overcrowded neighborhoods like the Lower East Side. In the 187...
Jun 12, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast "To the beat of muffled drums 8,000 negro men, women and children marched down Fifth Avenue yesterday in a parade of 'silent protest against acts of discrimination and oppression' inflicted upon them in this country." -- New York Times, July 29, 1917 EPISODE 330 The Silent Parade of July 28, 1917, was unlike anything ever seen in New York City -- thousands of black men, women and children marching down Fifth Avenue. Today it is considered New York's (and most likely America's) first African-Amer...
Jun 04, 2020•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 329 Did you know that the first modern ambulance -- as in a 'mobile hospital' -- was invented in New York City? On June 4, 1869, America’s first ambulance service went into operation from Bellevue Hospital with a driver, a surgeon, two horses and equipment including a stretcher, a stomach pump, bandages and sponges, handcuffs, a straight-jacket, and a quart of brandy. Within just a couple years, the ambulance became an invaluable feature of New York health, saving the lives of those who ...
May 29, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 328 New Yorkers eat a LOT of Chinese food and have enjoyed Chinese cuisine – either in a restaurant or as takeout – for well over 130 years. Chinese food entered the regular diet of the city before the bagel, the hot dog and even the pizza slice. In this episode, Greg explores the history of Chinese food in New York City -- from the first Mott Street kitchens in Manhattan's Chinatown to the sleek 20th century eateries of Midtown. We have one particular dish to thank for the mainstreaming...
May 22, 2020•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 327 This is Part Two of a special Bowery Boys podcast event featuring the voices of our listeners. What makes New York feel like home — whether you live here or not? Why do people feel comfortable in New York City -- even in troubling times? When do you officially become a New Yorker? In this episode, we focus on a few tales from New York transplants, those who were born here and moved to the city in search of employment, adventure, love -- or purpose. And stories from those native New Y...
May 18, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 326 A special episode featuring the listeners of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast. What makes New York feel like home -- whether you live here or not? What is that indefinable connection that people make with the city? Why do so many people feel a city as large as New York speaks to them personally? We asked our listeners to tell us about feeling “at home in New York," about that feeling of familiarity and nostalgia that one can feel here. Thanks to the presence of New York...
May 15, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 325 In 1858, during two terrible nights of violence in September, the needs of the few outweighed the needs of the many when a community, endangered for decades and ignored by the state, finally reached its breaking point. In Staten Island , near the spot of today’s St. George Ferry Terminal, where thousands board and disembark the Staten Island Ferry everyday, was once America’s largest quarantine station – 30 acres of hospitals, medical facilities, shanties and doctors' homes, surround...
May 08, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 324 At last! The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast looks at one of the strangest traditions in this city's long history -- that curious custom known as Moving Day. Every May 1st, for well over two centuries, from the colonial era to World War II, rental leases would expire simultaneously, and thousands of New Yorkers would pack their possessions into carts or wagons and move to new homes or apartments. (Later on, October 1st would become the second ‘moving day’.) Of course, for ...
May 01, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 323 Two tales from New York’s incredible history with tattooing. The art of tattooing is as old as written language but it would require the contributions of a few 19th century New York tattoo artists — and a young inventor with no tattoos whatsoever — to take this ancient art to the next level. The first documented tattoo parlor (or atelier ) in the United States was a small second-floor place near the East River waterfront and close to the site of the Brooklyn Bridge. But as more sailo...
Apr 28, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 322 The historic movie studio Kaufman Astoria Studios opened 100 years ago this year in Astoria, Queens. It remains a vital part of New York City's entertainment industry with both film and television shows still made there to this day. The Museum of the Moving Image resides next door in a former studio building. To honor this anniversary, we are re-issuing a new version of one of our favorite shows from the back catalog -- New York City and the birth of the film industry . New York City...
Apr 24, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 321 The Hollywood icon and Broadway star Lauren Bacall lived at the Dakota Apartments on the Upper West Side for 53 years. Her story is intertwined the Dakota, a revolutionary apartment complex built in 1884. In this episode, we tell both their stories. Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, the daughter of Jewish Eastern European immigrants, worked her way from theater usher to cover model at a young age, then became a movie star before she was 20 years old. Her film pairings with husband Hump...
Apr 21, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Few people are allowed to go onto Hart Island, the quiet, narrow island in the Long Island Sound, a lonely place in sight of the bustling community of City Island. For more than 150 years, Hart Island has been New York's potter's field, the burial site for more than one million people -- unclaimed bodies, stillborn babies, those who died of AIDS in the 1980s and 90s, and, in 2020, the location of burials of those who have died of COVID-19 coronavirus. Hart Island's appearance in the internationa...
Apr 17, 2020•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 319 In simpler times, thousands of tourists would flock to the northern tip of Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan to take a picture with a rather unconventional New Yorker -- the bronze sculpture Charging Bull by Italian-American artist Arturo Di Modica . Bull is a product of the 1980s New York art scene, delivered as a gift to the New York Stock Exchange (and to the American people, according to the artist) one late night in December 1989. Nobody may have asked for this particular gift, b...
Apr 14, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 318 Moonstruck , the 1987 comedy starring Cher and Nicolas Cage , not only celebrates that crazy little thing called love, but also pays tribute to the Italian working class residents of the old "South Brooklyn" neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. Listen in as Greg and Tom recap the story and explore the many real New York City settings of the film -- from the glamorous Lincoln Center to the still-gritty streets of 1980s Little Italy . While the film's mos...
Apr 10, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 317 In 1916 New York City became the epicenter of one of America's very first polio epidemics. The scourge of infantile paralysis infected thousands of Americans that year, most under the age of five. But in New York City it was especially bad. The Department of Health took drastic measures, barring children from going out in public and even labeling home with polio sufferers, urging others to stay away. That same year, up in the Bronx, a young couple named Daniel and Dora Salk -- the ch...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 316 What happens when P. T. Barnum, America's savviest supplier of both humbug and hoax, decides it's time to go legit? Only one of the greatest concert tours in American history. If you've seen the film musical The Greatest Showman , you've been introduced to Jenny Lind, the opera superstar dubbed "The Swedish Nightingale". And you also know that Barnum, taken with the Swedish songstress, brings her to New York to begin a heavily promoted American debut. But the film sidesteps many of t...
Apr 03, 2020•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast EPISODE 315 The Hall of Fame for Great Americans , founded in 1900, was a precursor to the Nobel Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a vaunted tribute to those who have contributed greatly to the development the United States of America. Located on the campus of Bronx Community College in the University Heights neighborhood of the Bronx, the Hall of Fame features the sculpted bronze busts of 96 individuals considered worthy of renown in their day, arranged along a columned arcade design...
Mar 31, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
