“Designing Tomorrow” glimpses the elegance of modernity via the earnestness...
The Museum of the City of New York‘s new exhibition “Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s” examines the aspirational vision of the American future in the automobile age, and the use...
View ArticleThe Dual Contracts: The New York City subway system gets a serious upgrade...
A subway map from 1924, illustrating the system created as a result of the Dual Contracts agreement. After years of negotiations, false starts and lengthy arguments played out in the press, a group of...
View ArticleConsolidation! The tale of five boroughs and one big city
PODCAST Our 150th episode! Here’s the story of how two very big cities and a whole bunch of small towns and villages — completely different in nature, from farmland to skyscraper — became the greatest...
View ArticleThe Queens boundary line, some amazing New York City trivia, and a...
Reaction to the Bowery Boys podcast on the Consolidation of 1898 has been tremendous! But I do have one clarification, and provided by a very excellent source. The accurate placing of the boundary...
View ArticleThe Corona Ash Dump: Brooklyn’s burden on Queens, a vivid literary...
Ah, take in the horrid reality of the Corona marshes with their ashes, manure and garbage! (Courtesy CUNY) Outside of probably Hell, there is no literary landscape as forlorn and soul-crushing as the...
View ArticleMovin’ On Up: A skewed history of New York City as depicted by the opening...
The camera zooms over the New York City skyline as an earnest pop tune — usually devoid of any rhythm or edginess, but insanely catchy — descends as though sent from outer space. The next shot focuses...
View ArticleMYSTERY! “Doctor Busted” and the skeleton of College Point
Above is an illustrated bird’s eye view of College Point, Queens, from a 1917 guidebook “Illustrated Flushing and vicinity.” As that book goes on to describe, “COLLEGE POINT is essentially a...
View ArticleThe breezy story of Ozone Park, Queens: “the Harlem of Brooklyn”
Ozone Park, a quiet residential Queens neighborhood near Woodhaven, is one of those places created by real estate developers in the 1880s. It happens to have one of the best neighborhood names in all...
View ArticleThe Ghost With Red Hair: Two Hauntings in Long Island City
Long Island City is really a confederation of small villages and hamlets along the northwestern shore of Long Island. The name began essentially as a re-branding of Hunter’s Point then grew to...
View ArticleThe International Express: The Personality of the 7 Train
The New York subway system has been a frightening place recently — derailments, stalled trains underground, agonizing delays. Most of The post The International Express: The Personality of the 7 Train...
View ArticleThe Fall of Ravenswood, Old Aristocratic Queens
Ravenswood is a dramatic name for a New York City neighborhood and certainly wasted on its primary resident today — The post The Fall of Ravenswood, Old Aristocratic Queens appeared first on The Bowery...
View ArticleScott Joplin in New York: A Ragtime Mystery
PODCAST How did one of the greatest composers of the 20th century end up buried in Queens in a pauper’s The post Scott Joplin in New York: A Ragtime Mystery appeared first on The Bowery Boys: New York...
View ArticleThe World of Tomorrow: Visiting the World’s Fair of 1939-40, the kitschy...
PODCAST Visiting the first World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the unimaginable playground of the future, planted inescapably within The post The World of Tomorrow: Visiting the World’s Fair...
View ArticleIn 1895 a deadly tornado hit Woodhaven, Queens, and the ruins became a...
The destructive force of tornado season has made itself abundantly evident in the Midwest this week, and New Yorkers can The post In 1895 a deadly tornado hit Woodhaven, Queens, and the ruins became a...
View ArticleThe Corona Ash Dump: Brooklyn’s burden on Queens, a vivid literary...
Ah, take in the horrid reality of the Corona marshes with their ashes, manure and garbage! (Courtesy CUNY) Outside of probably Hell, there is no literary landscape as forlorn and soul-crushing as the...
View ArticleScott Joplin in New York: A Ragtime Mystery
PODCAST How did one of the greatest composers of the 20th century end up buried in Queens in a pauper’s grave? Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”, moved to New York in 1907, at the height of his fame....
View ArticleThe World of Tomorrow: Visiting the World’s Fair of 1939-40, the kitschy...
PODCAST Visiting the first World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the unimaginable playground of the future, planted inescapably within the reality of the day. Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the...
View ArticleThe Queensboro Bridge and the Rise of a Borough
“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald EPISODE 349 This...
View ArticleBirth of the Five Boroughs: 125 Years of Greater New York
On January 1, 2023, New York City will celebrate a special moment, the 125th anniversary of the formation of Greater New York and the creation of the five boroughs — The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan,...
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