The Bowery Boys: New York City History

There’s a chill in the air. The floorboards in New York’s historic houses seem to creak a little louder, while birds hidden among the trees of Central Park stare down from crooked branches. The lights atop the Empire State Building go dark, and the subway car you’re riding suddenly stops in the middle of a shadowy tunnel.

That's right, it's an all-new ... Bowery Boys Ghost Stories of Old New York podcast! Tom and Greg have been recording ghost story podcasts since 2007, and this year they have somehow managed to conjure up yet another batch of historical urban legends, taken from actual newspaper reports:

-- Stand Clear of the Closing Ghosts: An eerie encounter on the elevated train, from 1899, leaves one rider running for her doctor in fear

-- Severed from the Spirit World: In 1896, a Flatbush man finds a disturbing artifact buried in his cellar, awakening a wandering nighttime spirit who frightens his nosy neighbors

-- The Ghost That Slapped Back: A crowded Lower East Side schoolroom became a chamber of nightmares, sending the community to the streets in protest

-- Who Is The Ghost In the Window? It's street gangs vs. strangely beautiful spirits in this 1902 tale of a deteriorating house on 42nd Street

-- Rosabelle, Believe! This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Harry Houdini, the legendary escape artist with an unusual relationship with death. His mysterious grave site in Queens has become the site of spooky ceremonies. But will he soon be making a return to his former Harlem brownstone?

This show was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon.

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We have been recording Halloween podcasts about New York City -- for twenty years! The first Bowery Boys ghost story podcast was released on October 11th, 2007, the first time we used actual urban legends about wandering spirits and other unpleasant things as a way to share historical tales about the city.

Before the arrival of next week's brand new episode, get in the mood with this best-of compilation of our favorite stories from past shows, featuring places that you can still visit today, pulled from past episodes and compiled together for the very first time. Newly scared, er, I mean, scored and remastered by our producer Kieran Gannon.

Whether you're having a drink at the Ear Inn, a rest at the Chelsea Hotel or a meal at the historic One If by Land, Two If By Sea, you're never too far away from an old New York City legend. Not even the Statue of Liberty is exempt from a good ole fashioned ghost story.

PLUS: A walk through the most mysterious house in Manhattan, with a surprise appearance by the Gilded Gentleman

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In the town of Hydesville, south of the bustling city of Rochester, a traveling peddler was brutally murdered and buried in the cellar of a forlorn wooden farmhouse. His restless spirit, it was claimed, haunted the house.

In 1848, the teenage girls Kate and Maggie Fox claimed to receive spiritual transmissions from the murdered man. Their gifts included interpreting mysterious knocking sounds and an unusual ability to conjure such otherworldly communications on a whim. 

Later joined by their sister Leah, the Fox Sisters soon exhibited greater powers to communicate with the dead. They took this “act” on the road and enchanted some of New York City's most famous men. Through their atmospheric ‘spirit circles’, the Fox Sisters inspired an entirely new belief known as spiritualism.

They became household names — and attracted their share of skeptics who vexed the young women throughout their entire lives, attempting to debunk their haunted activities.

Were the Fox Sisters truly blessed with a gift of spiritual communication — or were they entertainers with an exquisite ability to deceive? You decide!

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon. 

Visit the Bowery Boys website for a whole list of ghost-story podcasts. And see Greg and Tom live at Joe's Pub this Halloween season.

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In the summer of 1902, all of Newport was buzzing: a European prince was coming to town, and Mamie Fish — one of the reigning hostesses of American high society — was throwing a dinner in his honor.

The young ladies practiced their curtsies. But what walked through the door that night was no prince, but did tell you everything about who Mamie Fish was.

She hadn’t started anywhere near the top. Raised in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in the 1850s, she watched her family’s fortune vanish and they relocated to the working class neighborhood of Astoria. She was barely educated, no beauty, and armed with nothing but a wit that could cut glass. It was enough to win Stuyvesant Fish, heir to one of New York’s oldest names and a future railroad president, who adored her for the rest of his life.

Mamie essentially invented the theme party at a time when New York society under Mrs. Astor and Ward McAllister was incredibly dull. Mamie’s response was to make it fun: live ducklings paddling down the dinner table, a harvest ball with golden pitchforks, a formal dinner for the dogs of Newport, and a party for the Czar of Russia who turned out to be her partner in crime, Harry Lehr, in a tinfoil crown.

Then the world changed around her — the press turned, her husband lost his railroad in a boardroom feud, and her 1913 Mother Goose Ball landed her on the wrong side of history.

This week, Tom sits down with Jennifer Wright, author of Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time: How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Gilded Age, Partied Her Way to Power.

PLUS:

• Stand across from Mamie’s Stanford White mansion on the Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue tour at boweryboyswalks.com.
• Listen to more glorious tales of the Gilded Age on The Gilded Gentleman Podcast hosted by Carl Raymond
• Support the show and get our patron-only podcast Side Streets at patreon.com/boweryboys.

This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Today there’s an entire generation that only knows the World Trade Center as an emblem of tragedy. But people sometimes forget that the World Trade Center, designed by Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, was a very complicated addition to the New York skyline when it officially opened in 1973.

While it might be fun to think of New York City in the 1970s through the lens of places like Studio 54 or CBGB, the Twin Towers were what really redefined New York.

The journey to build the world’s tallest building and its expansive complex of office towers and underground shops began in an effort by David Rockefeller to stimulate development in Manhattan’s fading Financial District. By the time Port Authority got on board to fund the project, the Twin Towers were bonded together with another vital project — a commuter train from New Jersey.

The World Trade Center inspired strong opinions from critics and the public alike, but eventually many grew to admire the strange towers which marked the skyline.

And for some, the Twin Towers became objects of obsession.

FEATURING: The insane, completely outlandish and ultimately successful feat of acrobatics by a very bold French tightrope walker.

PLUS: An interview with Kate Monaghan Connolly of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum about how that institution memorializes those lost in the tragedy while still celebrating the technological marvels that once stood there. And visit our website for more historical images of the Twin Towers.

This show was recorded in 2021 for the 20th anniversary, reedited and remastered by Kieran Gannon. We have a batch of brand new episodes of the Bowery Boys starting next week. 

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How do vibrant New York City neighborhoods react to major changes to city life while retaining their historic character? For the next three weeks, we will present three neighborhood-history shows from the Bowery Boys podcast in a new light, exploring how these historic areas survive sudden changes in economic growth, housing needs and tourism. And listen to our prior shows on SoHo and Downtown Brooklyn.

Little Italy is the pocket-neighborhood reminder of the great wave of Italian immigration that came through New York City starting in the late 1870s. It was once a densely packed, vibrant district of pushcarts, cheese shops, barbershops, and organ griders, the home to thousands of new immigrants living in aging tenements.

The area still contains some of New York’s oldest continuously operating shops, from Ferrara Bakery to Di Palo’s. But the neighborhood also has a darker history, marked by Black Hand extortion plots and the enduring presence of organized crime.

Today’s Little Italy remains charming, though it continues to shrink, existing more as a tourist destination than a true Italian enclave. What does the future hold for this important landmark in American immigration history?

A version of this show was released in 2015—this newly re-edited and remastered version by Kieran Gannon. Watch an video version of this show, with a stroll through the neighborhood, on YouTube.

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Downtown Brooklyn has a history that is often overlooked by New Yorkers. You’d be forgiven if you thought Brooklyn’s civic center — with a bustling shopping district and even an industrial tech campus — seemed to lack significant remnants of Brooklyn’s past; many areas have been radically altered and hundreds of old structures have been cleared over the decades.

But, in fact, Downtown Brooklyn is one of the few areas to still hold evidence of the borough’s glorious past — its days as an independent city and one of the largest urban centers in 19th century America.

Around Brooklyn City Hall (now Borough Hall) swirled all aspects of Brooklyn’s Gilded Age society. With the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and a network of elevated railroad lines, Downtown Brooklyn became a major destination with premier department stores on Fulton Street, entertainment venues like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and exclusive restaurants like Gage & Tollners.

The 20th century brought a new designation for Brooklyn — a borough of Greater New  York — and a series of major developments that attempted to modernize the district — from the creation of Cadman Plaza to New York’s very own ‘tech hub’.

In 2004 a major zoning change brought a new addition to the multi-purpose neighborhood — high-end residential towers. Today these streets are darkened with the shadows of the borough's tallest buildings -- including the very tallest Brooklyn Tower.

What will the future hold for the original heart of the City of Brooklyn?

How do vibrant New York City neighborhoods react to major changes to city life while retaining their historic character? For the next three weeks, we will present three neighborhood-history shows from the Bowery Boys podcast in a new light, exploring how these historic areas survive sudden changes in economic growth, housing needs and tourism. See last week's show on SoHo for the first part in this series.

This episode was remastered by Kieran Gannon

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do vibrant New York City neighborhoods react to major changes to city life while retaining their historic character? For the next three weeks, we will present three neighborhood-history shows from the Bowery Boys podcast in a new light, exploring how these historic areas survive sudden changes in economic growth, housing needs and tourism.

Picture the neighborhood of SoHo (that’s right, South of Houston) in your head today, and you might get a headache. Crowded sidewalks on the weekend, filled with tourists, shoppers and vendors, could almost distract you from SoHo's unique appeal as a place of extraordinary architecture and history.

In the mid 19th century this area, centered along Broadway, became the heart of retail and entertainment, department stores and hotels setting up shop in grand palaces. (It also became New York’s most notorious brothel district). The streets between Houston and Canal became known as the Cast Iron District, thanks to an exciting construction innovation that transformed the Gilded Age.

Today SoHo contains the world’s greatest surviving collection of cast-iron architecture. But these gorgeous iron tributes to New York industry were nearly destroyed — first by rampant fires, then by Robert Moses.

This show was remastered and reedted by Kieran Gannon. It origiinally ran in July 2017.

Visit the website for images and more information. 

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Before the era of the tabloid, New Yorkers got their gossip fix from a publication known as Town Topics, where the shocking secrets of the Gilded Age were revealed. But its publisher, William D'Alton Mann, was into more than just a bit of sleaze; he used these scandalous revelations to blackmail members of New York’s high society.

In this very special presentation of the Gilded Gentleman podcast, Carl Raymond and his special guest, Vanity Fair writer Joe Pompeo, introduce you to this forgotten scheme which threatened to tear apart the morals and polite mannerisms of Gilded Age society. 

And for more adventures through Gilded Age New York, check out the Gilded Gentleman podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

This show was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

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Our book, The Bowery Boys Adventures in Old New York, was just re-released as a 10th-anniversary edition with lots of brand-new entries. So to celebrate, we thought we would highlight three of our all-time favorite stories from the book. Featuring:

— The Astor House, one of the first luxury hotels in the United States, owned by the original Astor himself — John Jacob Astor. When it opened in 1836, it wrote the rules for how people even stay in hotels in New York City. Why was it considered so revolutionary during its day, and why did its eventual demolition in the 20th century take almost 13 years?

— The Haymarket, the most scandalous dance hall of the Gilded Age! This lively and bawdy place, where both men and women met (sometimes upstairs, behind the curtains), sat in the heart of New York’s turn-of-the-century entertainment district, the burgeoning theater district. But the show inside was MUCH more risque. Oh-la-la! Tom gives you a little tour of the joint, so pull up your stockings.

— The Nabisco Factory in the Meatpacking District was New York’s very own Willie Wonka’s chocolate wonderland, the American center of cookie and cracker making for decades. The sweet smells from the National Baking Company’s ovens were a relief in the late 19th-century district of meat processing. It was here that two of the most important manufactured desserts in American history were born. Visitors to the High Lineand Chelsea Market may not realize they are strolling through a veritable cookie paradise!

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

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