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The Bowery Boys: New York City History

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers, Greg Young

The tides of American history lead through the streets of New York City — from the huddled masses on Ellis Island to the sleazy theaters of 1970s Times Square. The elevated railroad to the Underground Railroad. Hamilton to Hammerstein! Greg and Tom explore more than 400 years of action-packed stories, featuring both classic and forgotten figures who have shaped the world.
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Top 10 The Bowery Boys: New York City History Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Bowery Boys: New York City History episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Bowery Boys: New York City History for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Bowery Boys: New York City History episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #395 Jefferson Market and the Women's House of Detention

#395 Jefferson Market and the Women's House of Detention

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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09/02/22 • 75 min

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 first night court (at the Jefferson Market Courthouse, site of today's library) and the Women's House of Detention, a facility which cast a gloom over the Village for over 40 years.

Almost immediately after the original courthouse (designed by Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux) opened in 1877, it was quickly overburdened with people arrested in the Tenderloin district. By 1910 a women's court opened here, and by the Jazz Age, the adjacent confinement was known as "the women's jail.”

When the Women's House of Detention opened in 1931 -- sometimes referred to as the world's only Art Deco prison -- it was meant to improve the conditions for women who were held there. But the dank and inadequate containment soon became symbol of abuse and injustice.

In this special episode -- recorded live at Caveat on the Lower East Side -- Tom and Greg are joined by Hugh Ryan, author of The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison to explore the detention center's place in both New York City history and LGBT history.

How did the "House of D" figure into the Stonewall Uprising of 1969? And what were the disturbing circumstances surrounding its eventual closure?

FEATURING: Stories of Mae West, Stanford White, Alva Belmont, Mayor Jimmy Walker, Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin and -- Tupac Shakur?

Visit our website for images of the things we spoke about in this week's show.

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #265 Absolutely Flawless: A History of Drag in New York City
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06/15/18 • 57 min

Television audiences are currently obsessed with shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and FX's Pose, presenting different angles on the profession and art of drag. New York City has been crucial to its current moment in pop culture and people have been performing and enjoy drag performers in this city for over 120 years.

In the beginning there were two styles of drag -- vaudeville and ballroom. As female impersonators filled Broadway theaters -- one theater is even named for a famed gender illusionist -- thrill seekers were heading to the balls of Greenwich Village and Harlem.

By the 1930s, the gay scene began retreating into the shadows, governed by mob control and harshly policed. By design, drag became political. It also became a huge counter-cultural influence in the late 1960s -- from the glamour of Andy Warhol's superstars to the jubilant schtick of Charles Busch.

But it was the 1980s that brought the most significant influences to our current pop cultural moment. Joining Greg on this show are two experts on two late 80s/early 90s scenes -- Felix Rodriguez, a videographer of the ballroom culture (made famous by the film Paris Is Burning) and Linda Simpson, one of the great queens of East Village drag.

FEATURING: Drag kings! Wigstock! And the famous drag queen who got struck by lightning.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #156 The Boy Mayor of New York

#156 The Boy Mayor of New York

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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09/20/13 • 44 min

As New York City enters the final stages of this year's mayoral election, let's look back on a decidedly more unusual contest 100 years ago, pitting Tammany Hall and their estranged ally (Mayor William Jay Gaynor) up against a baby-faced newcomer, the (second) youngest man to eventually become the mayor of New York City.
John Purroy Mitchel, the Bronx-born grandson of an Irish revolutionary, was a rising star in New York, aggressively sweeping away incompetence and snipping away at government excess. Under his watch, two of New York's borough presidents were fired, just for being ineffectual! Mitchel made an ideal candidate for mayor in an era where Tammany Hall cronyism still dominated the nature of the five boroughs.
Nobody could predict the strange events which befell the city during the election of 1913, unfortunate and even bizarre incidents which catapulted this young man to City Hall and gave him the nickname the Boy Mayor of New York.
But things did not turn out as planned. He won his election with the greatest victory margin in New York City history. He left office four years later with an equally large margin of defeat. Tune in to our tale of this oft-ignored figure in New York City history, an example of good intentions gone wrong and -- due to his tragic end -- the only mayor honored with a memorial in Central Park.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #121 Fraunces Tavern

#121 Fraunces Tavern

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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03/18/11 • 49 min

Fraunces Tavern is one of America's most important historical sites of the Revolutionary War and a reminder of the great importance of tavern culture on the New York way of life during the Colonial era. This revered building at the corner of Pearl and Broad streets was the location of George Washington's emotional farewell speech to his Continental Army officers and some of the very first government offices of the young United States of America.
As with places this famous -- where fact and legend intermingle -- many mysteries still remain, and we attempt to find some answers. Was the tavern owner Samuel Fraunces one of America's first great black patriots? Did Sam use his position here to spy upon the British during the years of occupation between 1776 and 1783? Was his daughter on hand to prevent an assassination attempt on the life of Washington? And is it possible that the basement of Fraunces Tavern once housed a dungeon?
ALSO: Learn about the two deadly attacks on Fraunces Tavern -- one by a British war vessel in the 1770s, and another, more violent act of terror that occurred in its doorway over 200 years later!
www.boweryboyspodcast.com

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #434 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Empire of the Seas

#434 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Empire of the Seas

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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06/14/24 • 78 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 Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America.

Jaap takes us around to several spots within the old medieval city -- Centrum, including the Red Light District -- weaving through the canals and along the harbor, in search of connections to New York's (and by extension, America's) past.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Dutch settlement in North America, led by the Dutch West India Company, a trading and exploration arm of the thriving Dutch empire. So our first big questions begin there:

-- What was the Dutch Empire in 1624 when New Netherland was first settled? Was the colony a major part of it? Would Dutch people have even understood where New Amsterdam was?

-- What's the difference between the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company?

-- To what degree was New Amsterdam truly tolerant in terms of religion? Was it purely driving by profits and trading relationships with the area's native people like the Lenape?

-- The prime export was the pelts of beavers and other North American animals. What happened to these thousands of pelts once they arrived in Amsterdam?

-- How central were the Dutch to the emerging Atlantic slave trade? When did the first enslaved men and women arrive in New Amsterdam?

-- And how are the Pilgrims tied in to all of this? Had they always been destined for the area of today's Massachusetts?

Among the places we visit this episode -- the Maritime Museum, the Rijksmuseum, Amersham's oldest building Oude Kirk, the Schreierstoren (the Crying Tower) and many more

PLUS: We get kicked out of a cloister! And we try raw herring sandwiches.

Visit our website for images and more information

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #315 Abandoned Pantheon: The Hall of Fame for Great Americans
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03/31/20 • 43 min

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 designed by Stanford White.

It was so important in the early 20th century that the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame derive from its example. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans even pops up in The Wizard of Oz!

But today it is virtually forgotten. And no person has been elected to the Hall of Fame since the 1970s.

This is the story of a university with lofty intentions, a snapshot of early 20th century optimism, and a look at a few questionable considerations of 'greatness'.

*There were once 98 busts but two were removed in 2017.

boweryboyshistory.com

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #317 Vaccinated: New York and the Polio Outbreak

#317 Vaccinated: New York and the Polio Outbreak

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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04/07/20 • 60 min

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 children of Eastern European immigrants -- were themselves raising their young son named Jonas. As an adult, Jonas Salk would spend his life combating the poliovirus in the laboratory, creating a vaccine that would change the world.

In 1921 a young lawyer and politician named Franklin Delano Roosevelt would contract what was believed at the time to be polio. He would use his connections and power -- first as governor of New York, then as president of the United States -- to guide the nation's response to the virus.

FEATURING: The story of Albert Sabin and the origin of the March of Dimes.

ALSO: The second half of the show is devoted to the question -- who came up the first vaccine anyway? Presenting the story of Edward Jenner -- and a cow named Blossom.

boweryboyshistory.com

Subscribe to the Bowery Boys podcast today on your favorite podcast player.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #322 Nickelodeons and Movie Palaces: New York and the Film Industry 1893-1920
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04/24/20 • 55 min

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 inspires cinema, but it has also consistently manufactured it. Long before anybody had heard of Hollywood, New York and the surrounding region was a capital for movies, the home to the earliest American film studios and the inventors who revolutionized the medium.

It began with Thomas Edison's invention of the Kinetoscope out in his New Jersey laboratory. Soon his former employees would spread out through New York, evolving the inventor's work into entertainments that could be projected in front of audiences.

By the mid 1900s, New Yorkers fell in love with nickelodeons and gasped as their first look at moving pictures. Along the way, films were made in locations all throughout the city -- from the rooftop of Madison Square Garden to a special super-studio in the Bronx.

This is a special 'director's cut' of a podcast we first released on February 18, 2011.

For more information, visit our website.

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #318 Moonstruck: That's Amore!

#318 Moonstruck: That's Amore!

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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04/10/20 • 78 min

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 most recognizable location (the townhouse on Cranberry Street) is still with us, other places like the Cammareri Bros. Bakery are no longer with in business.

This podcast can be enjoyed both by those who have seen the film and those who’ve never even heard of it.

We think our take on Moonstruck might inspire you to look for the film’s many fascinating (but easy to overlook) historical details, so if you don’t mind being spoiled on the plot, give it a listen first, then watch the movie! Otherwise, come back to the show after you’ve watched it.

Also: Announcing the Bowery Boys "Safe At Home" Listener Challenge

Take part in a future Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast! We're looking for stories about feeling at home in New York City.

As we discuss at the beginning of the show, we're looking for stories about "home in New York" from native New Yorkers, those who have moved to New York, and those who only visit New York.

Just call our Bowery Boys hotline and record a message. Our number is (844) 4-BOWERY.

Messages can be up to one minute long. Be sure to leave your first name and the city you’re calling from. And we’ll include as many stories as we can in our upcoming show. Thank you!

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History - #423 Leonard Bernstein's New York, New York

#423 Leonard Bernstein's New York, New York

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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12/21/23 • 70 min

On the morning of November 14th, 1943, Leonard Bernstein, the talented 25-year-old assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, got a phone call saying he would at last be leading the respected orchestral group — in six hours, that afternoon, with no time to rehearse.

The sudden thrust into the spotlight transformed Bernstein into a national celebrity. For almost five decades, the wunderkind would be at the forefront of American music, as a conductor, composer, virtuoso performer, writer, television personality and teacher.

He would also help create the most important Broadway musicals of the mid-20th century — On The Town, Wonderful Town and West Side Story. These shows would not only spotlight the talents of its young creator. They would also spotlight the romance and rhythm of New York City.

Bernstein is one of New York’s most influential cultural figures. He spent most of his life in the city, and that’s the focus of today’s story – Leonard Bernstein’s New York.

The new film Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan, focuses on Bernstein’s personal story and intimate life. That specific angle is not our objective today – for the most part. We’re looking at the relationship between the creator and his urban inspiration. Where did Bernstein make his name in New York City and how did his work change the city?

FEATURING The Village Vanguard, City Center, Carnegie Hall, the old Metropolitan Opera and the Dakota Apartments

And co-starring Jerome Robbins, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Comden and Green, Lauren Bacall, Tom Wolfe of course Felicia Montealegre

Visit the website for more information and images

Music snippet information

“On The Town: Act I: Opening: New York, New York” (Studio Cast Recording 1961)

CBS Broadcast, Manfred Overture, Op 115 (New York Philharmonic)

“Joan Crawford Fan Club” The Revuers

Symphony No. 1 Jeremiah (New York Philharmonic)

CBS Broadcast, Don Quixote, Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, op. 35 (New York Philharmonic)

Fancy Free Ballet_ VII. Finale

I Get Carried Away, On The Town

Christopher Street (From Wonderful Town Original Cast Recording 1953)

On the Waterfront Main Title (Revised)

Candide, Act II - No. 31, Make Our Garden Grow (Finale)

West Side Story_ Act II_ Somewhere

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 (New York Philharmonic)

Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts - What Does Music Mean? (1958)

Kaddish, Symphony No. 3 (To the Beloved Memory of John F. Kennedy) I. Invocation - Kaddish 1

The Ladies Who Lunch / Company Original Broadway Cast

Mass - Hymn and Psalm_ A Simple Song

Dybbuk Suite No. 2 - Leah (New York Philharmonic)

Leonard Bernstein and Shirley Verrett at GMHC Circus Benefit, Madison Square Garden

Mahler - Symphony No.5 (New York Philharmonic)

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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 497 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 '#420 Garbo Walks: Old Hollywood in 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 49 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, 20 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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