The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Tom Meyers, Greg Young
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Top 10 The Bowery Boys: New York City History Episodes
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#367 The Ice Craze: How the Ice Business Transformed New York
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
07/16/21 • 54 min
3.0
New York City on ice — a tribute to the forgotten industry which kept the city cool in the age before refrigeration and air conditioning.
Believe it or not, ice used to be big business.
In 1806 a Boston entrepreneur named Frederic Tudor cut blocks of ice from a pond on his family farm and shipped it to Martinique, a Caribbean county very unfamiliar with frozen water. He was roundly mocked — why would people want ice in areas where they can’t store it? — but the thirst for the frozen luxury soon caught on, especially in southern United States.
New Yorkers really caught the ice craze in the 1830s thanks to an exceptionally clear lake near Nyack. Within two decades, shops and restaurants regularly ordered ice to serve and preserve foods. And with the invention of the icebox, people could even begin buying it up for home use.
The ice business was so successful that — like oil and coal — it became a monopoly. Charles W. Morse and his American Ice Company controlled most of the ice in the northeast United States by the start of the 20th century.
He was known as the Ice King. And he had one surprising secret friend — the Mayor of New York City Robert A. Van Wyck.
PLUS: The 19th century technologies that allowed American to harvest and store ice. The Iceman cometh!
07/16/21 • 54 min
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#316 Jenny Lind at Castle Garden
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
04/03/20 • 47 min
5.0
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 the more fascinating details. Lind was greeted like a queen and rock star when she arrived at the Canal Street dock despite most New Yorkers having never heard her sing.
Her stage was Castle Garden, the former fort turned performance venue that sat in New York harbor, connected to the Battery by a small bridge.
The concert proved legendary. And Lind proved herself an enterprising businesswoman, bending even the will of a profiteer like Barnum. Her financial arrangement for the tour would influence 170 years of musical performances and cement her reputation as one of the greatest vocalists of the 19th century.
04/03/20 • 47 min
2 Listeners
1 Comment
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#360 The Botanical Gardens of New York City
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
04/23/21 • 59 min
Nature and history intertwine in all five boroughs -- from The Bronx River to the shores of Staten Island -- in this special episode about New York City's many botanical gardens.
A botanical garden is more than just a pretty place; it's a collection of plant life for the purposes of preservation, education and study. But in an urban environment like New York City, botanical gardens also must engage with modern life, becoming both a park and natural history museum.
The New York Botanical Garden, established in 1891, became a sort of Gilded Age trophy room for exotic trees, plants and flowers, astride the natural features of The Bronx (and an old tobacco mill).
When the Brooklyn Botanic Garden opened next to the Brooklyn Museum in 1911, its delights included an extraordinary Japanese garden by Takeo Shiota, one of the first of its kind in the United States.
The World's Fair of 1939-40 also brought an international flavor to New York City, and one of its more peculiar exhibitions -- called Gardens on Parade -- stuck around in the form of the Queens Botanical Garden.
PLUS: Gardens help save New York City landmarks -- from an historic estate overlooking the Hudson River to a stately collection of architecture from the early 19th century in Staten Island.
04/23/21 • 59 min
1 Listener
#130 Haunted Histories of New York
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
10/21/11 • 50 min
What mischievous phantoms and malevolent spirits haunt the streets of New York City today? In our fifth annual podcast of local ghost stories, we bring you the histories of four very haunted places from three boroughs and a small island in the harbor.
The legend of Captain Kidd's buried treasure -- alleged to be buried in the New York region -- inspires our first ghost tale of two ambitious soldiers on a quest during a full moon. Meanwhile, out in Brooklyn, a congregation gathers at a new Catholic church, but maybe they shouldn't have built it over a graveyard. Do the spirits of dead clergy haunt the halls today?
The Palace Theatre in Manhattan has hosted the greatest names in entertainment -- and continues to play host to the undead. And finally, we hesitate to bring you the malevolent events at the Kreischer Mansion in Staten Island. What is it about this house that has inspired stories for over a hundred years, and did ghosts from a century ago have something to do with a horrifying and gory crime that took place here just a few years ago?
www.boweryboyspodcast.com
10/21/11 • 50 min
1 Listener
#349 The Queensboro Bridge and the Rise of a Borough
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
01/15/21 • 57 min
“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, The Great Gatsby)
This is the story of a borough with great potential and the curious brown-tannish cantilever bridge which helped it achieve greatness.
The Queensboro Bridge connects Manhattan with Queens by lifting over the East River and Roosevelt Island, an impressive landmark that changed the fate of the borough enshrined in its curious name.
In 1898, before the Consolidation of 1898, which created Greater New York and the five boroughs, much of Queens was sparsely populated -- a farm haven connected by dusty roads -- with most residents living in a few key towns, villages and one actual city -- Long Island City.
With Brooklyn and Manhattan already well developed (and overcrowded in some sectors) by the early 20th century, developers and civic leader looked to Queens as a new place for expansion. But in 1900 it had no quick and convenient connections to areas off of Long Island.
With the opening of the bridge in 1909, rich new opportunities for Queens awaited. Communities from Astoria to Bayside, Jackson Heights, Flushing and Jamaica all experienced an unprecedented burst of new development.
Thanks in small part to the bridge so famous that it inspired a classic folk song!
01/15/21 • 57 min
1 Listener
Wondery Presents: The Apology Line
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
01/19/21 • 6 min
01/19/21 • 6 min
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#301 Haunted Houses of Old New York
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
10/17/19 • 71 min
EPISODE 301: Welcome to the unlucky 13th Annual Bowery Boys ghost stories podcast, where history combines with folklore for a bone-chilling listening experience.
In this year's Halloween-themed special, Greg and Tom take you into some truly haunted private residences from throughout New York City history. These rowhouses, brownstones and mansion all have one thing in common -- stories of restless spirits who refuse to leave.
-- Near Madison Square Park in Manhattan, an eccentric writer posts a classified ad, hoping to rent out an attic room to a prospective subletter. Unfortunately the room already an occupant -- a greenish ghost with a troubling Civil War history.
-- The Conference House in Staten Island played an interesting role in the Revolutionary War, and some residents from that period may still wander its ancient hallways.
-- On the Upper East Side, a lavish penthouse ballroom may be permanently vexed with the ghost of a testy spirit named Mrs. Spencer. Can a legendary funny lady and a Vodou priestess manage to keep the ghoul under control?
And for the first time in Bowery Boys ghost-stories history, Greg and Tom record a segment of the show -- from within an actual haunted house. Merchant's House docent Carl Raymond joins them for a close look at the life of Gertrude Tredwell and the rooms where she lived and died -- and may, to this very day, haunt.
10/17/19 • 71 min
1 Listener
#288 The World of Tomorrow: The New York World's Fair of 1939
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
04/19/19 • 64 min
EPISODE 288: Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the fourth largest park in New York City and the pride of northern Queens, has twice been the gateway to the future.
Two world's fairs have been held here, twenty-five years apart, both carefully guided by power broker Robert Moses. In this episode, we highlight the story of the first fair, held in 1939 and 1940, a visionary festival of patriotism and technological progress that earnestly sold a narrow view of American middle-class aspirations.
It was the World of Tomorrow! (Never mind the protests or the fact that many of the venues were incomplete.) A kitschy campus of themed zones and wacky architectural wonders, the fair provided visitors with speculative ideas of the future, governed by clean suburban landscapes, space-age appliances and flirtatious smoking robots.
The fair was a post-Depression excuse for corporations to rewrite the American lifestyle, introducing new inventions (television) and attractive new products (automobiles, refrigerators), all presented in dazzling venues along gleaming flag-lined avenues and courtyards.
But the year was 1939 and the world of tomorrow could not keep out the world of today. The Hall of Nations almost immediately bore evidence of the mounting war in Europe. Visitors who didn't fit the white middle-American profile being sold at the fair found themselves excluded from the "future" it was trying to sell.
And then, in July of 1940, there was a dreadful tragedy at the British Pavilion that proved the World of Tomorrow was still very much a part of the world of today.
04/19/19 • 64 min
1 Listener
#222 Who Killed Helen Jewett? A Mystery By Gaslight
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
02/16/17 • 48 min
In the spring of 1836, a young woman named Helen Jewett was brutally murdered with a hatchet in a townhouse on Thomas Street, just a few blocks northwest from City Hall.
This was not a normal crime. Helen was a prostitute of great beauty and considerable intelligence, making her living in a rapidly transforming city.
Among her client list were presentable gentlemen and rowdy young men alike -- their kind fueling the rise of illicit pleasures throughout New York City in the 1830s.
This was the era of the sporting man. Young single men with a little change in their pocket hit the streets of New York after dark, looking for a good time. For some single young women struggling to survive, the sex industry -- from the 'high end' brothels to the grimy upper tiers of the theater -- allowed them to live comfortable, if secretive, lives.
But it placed many in great danger. The prime suspect for Helen's murder was a young Connecticut man who worked at a respectable New York firm. His trial would captivate New Yorkers and even interest newspaper readers around the country. But would justice be served?
ALSO: Find out how this incident helped shape the nature of American journalism itself. PLUS: Meet more than one person named Ogden!
www.boweryboyshistory.com
02/16/17 • 48 min
1 Listener
#343 Literary Horrors of New York City
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
10/23/20 • 83 min
In the 14th annual Bowery Boys Halloween podcast, we celebrate some classic strange and supernatural terrors written by the most famous horror writers in New York City history.
Since 2020 is already a year full of absurd twists and frights, we thought we'd celebrate the season in a slightly different way. Don't worry! Tom and Greg are delivering a new batch of frightening stories. But this time the selected stories have been made famous by great writers who have lived and worked in New York City.
Included in this year's terrors:
-- A celebration of the 200th anniversary of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," featuring the Headless Horseman and the backstory of this classic story's creation;
-- The unsettling days of H.P. Lovecraft in Brooklyn where his xenophobia, racism and anxiety manifest into a pair of dark, claustrophobic tales, plucked from the waterfront and the West Village;
-- A bizarre and allegedly true story (or is it an urban legend?) of an unconventional jewel thief, made famous by that 20th century purveyor of all things unbelievable -- Robert Ripley;
-- And a look at the life of Patricia Highsmith -- celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth a bit early -- whose nasty little tales of mad murderers have inspired Hollywood and unsettled a new generation of suspense lovers.
10/23/20 • 83 min
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Bowery Boys: New York City History have?
The Bowery Boys: New York City History currently has 466 episodes available.
What topics does The Bowery Boys: New York City History cover?
The podcast is about Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on The Bowery Boys: New York City History?
The episode title '#367 The Ice Craze: How the Ice Business Transformed New York' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Bowery Boys: New York City History?
The average episode length on The Bowery Boys: New York City History is 47 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Bowery Boys: New York City History released?
Episodes of The Bowery Boys: New York City History are typically released every 13 days, 19 hours.
When was the first episode of The Bowery Boys: New York City History?
The first episode of The Bowery Boys: New York City History was released on Sep 19, 2008.
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