Within the New York City of Edward Hopper's imagination, the skyscrapers have vanished, the sidewalks are mysteriously wide and all the diners and Chop Suey restaurants are sparsely populated with well-dressed lonely people.

In this art-filled episode of the Bowery Boys, Tom and Greg look at Hopper's life, influence and specific fascination with the city, inspired by the recent show Edward Hopper's New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Hopper, a native of the Hudson River town of Nyack, painted New York City for over half a decade. In reality, the city experienced Prohibition and the Jazz Age, two world wars and the arrival of automobiles. But not in Hopper's world.

In his most famous work Nighthawks (1942), figures from a dreamlike film appear trapped in an aquarium-shaped diner. But Hopper has captured something else in this iconic painting: fear and paranoia. No wonder he's considered a huge influence on Hollywood film noir and detective stories.

Hopper painted New York from his studio overlooking Washington Square Park, and both he and his wife Josephine Nivison Hopper would become true fixtures of the Greenwich Village scene.

PLUS: Tom visits the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, New York, to talk the artist's early life with executive director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz. And Greg finds some of the hidden puzzles in Hopper's paintings thanks to American art historian Rena Tobey.

Visit the website for more pictures and other interesting information from this episode.

Other Bowery Boys episodes related to this one:

-- The Armory Show of 1913
-- Jane Jacobs: Saving Greenwich Village
-- New York University:  A School For The Metropolis
-- Tragic Muse: The Life of Audrey Munson

In the 19th century, the Fulton Fish Market in downtown Manhattan was to seafood what the Chicago stock yards were to the meat industry, the primary place where Americans got fish for their dinner tables.

Over the decades it went from a retail market to a wholesale business, distributing fish across the country – although as you’ll hear, that was a bit tricky in the days before modern refrigeration.

Today its former home is known by a more familiar name -- the South Street Seaport, a historical district that has undergone some incredible changes in just the past half century. The fish market, once an awkward staple of this growing tourist destination, moved to the Bronx in 2005. But you can still find ghosts of the old market along these historic stone streets.

And you can still find delicious seafood at the Seaport. And the Tin Building has taken dining in the neighborhood to the next level, literally in the architectural remains of a former fish market building.

On this show, we'll be joined by professor Jonathan H. Rees, author of the new book The Fulton Fish Market: A History. By the end of our conversation today, we're confident that you'll never look at the fish section of your local grocer in the same way.

MORE SHOWS SIMILAR TO THIS ONE:

-- South Street Seaport
-- Has Jack the Ripper Come to Town?
-- The High Line
-- Essex Street Market
 

Visit our website for more stories and images from New York City History.

New York City has a new landmark, a little bar in the West Village named Julius', officially recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on December 6th, 2022. 

Now it may not look like much from the outside, but it's here that one moment of protest (the Sip-In of 1966) set the stage for a political revolution, “a signature event in the battle for LGBTQ+ people to gather, socialize, and celebrate openly in bars, restaurants, and other public places.”

So we thought it would be a great time to revisit our 2019 show on the history of Julius'  and a look at the life of gays and lesbians in the mid 20th century. But this show also features an interview -- recorded at Julius' of course -- with When Brooklyn Was Queer author Hugh Ryan who was just on our recent show on the history of Jefferson Market and the Women’s House of Detention .

PLUS there’s even a tie-in to the Worlds Fair of 1964, linking to our last episode.

Visit our website for photographs and more details -- boweryboyshistory.com

This episode features an audio interview clip from the podcast Making Gay History, as well as a musical clip of 'I Hear A Symphony' by The Supremes (Motown).

Our thanks to Andrew Berman of Village Preservation for allowing us to use audio from the 2022 historic plaque unveiling

Flushing-Meadows Corona Park in the borough of Queens is the home of the New York Mets, the U.S. Open, the Queens Zoo, the New York Hall of Science and many other recreational delights. But it will always be forever known as the launching pad for the future as represented in two extraordinary 20th century world's fairs.

There is so much nostalgia today for the 1939-1940 World's Fair and its stranger, more visually chaotic 1964-65 World's Fair. And that nostalgia has fueled a thriving market for collectables from these fairs -- the souvenirs and other common household items branded with the two fairs' striking visual symbols.

The Trylon and Perisphere represented the dreams of 1930s America after the Great Depression, the strange symbols of "the World of Tomorrow." A quarter century later the Unisphere depicted its theme -- "Peace Through Understanding" -- as a space-age fantasy.

Millions of souvenirs were manufactured and sold at these two fairs. And those very treasured items which survive -- in the hands of collectors, at flea markets and antique shops -- are nearly all that remain of these special, ephemeral events.

In this show, Greg is joined by design and cultural historian Kyle Supley, recorded at Brooklyn's City Reliquary where Supley's own collection of World's Fair has found a permanent home.

How do such souvenirs allow us to visit the past? And what do they say about our world today?

FURTHER LISTENING:
-- The Crystal Palace: America's First World Fair
-- 1939-1940 World's Fair
-- 1964-65 World's Fair
-- Ruins of the World's Fair (about the New York State Pavilion)

_________

Kyle Supley is a historian, curator and preservationist with a focus on Mid-Century American culture, consumer products, architecture, and design.

He is the creator and host of the TV show Kyle Supley’s Out There! on Ovation’s Journy Network, a NYC tour guide for Bowery Boys Walks, and a DJ of music from the golden age of disco, at the landmarked NYC gay bar Julius’ in Greenwich Village.

Follow him on Instagram here

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Greg and Tom -- with some help from producer Kieran Gannon -- reflect nostalgically upon old New York City restaurants from the 1990s (Mars 2112, anyone?), wonder what it was like to eat at a chop suey restaurant, praise the strange wonders of Chez Josephine and Congee Village and reveal their favorite places to get pizza in New York City. 

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Here’s the first episode of Side Streets, a conversational show about life and culture in New York City, an exclusive podcast for t hose that support the Bowery boys on Patreon. We’re giving you this preview of the first episode with hopes that you’ll join on Patreon, at any level, to check out the rest. You can listen to more by signing up at Partreon.com/boweryboys. 

Featured on the show:

Congee Village

Square Diner

L&B Spumoni Gardens

Arthur Avenue

Arturo's Pizza

Junior's Cheesecake

Kesté Pizza

Crosswords, jigsaws, mazes, rebuses, Rubik's cubes, Myst, Words With Friends -- and now Wordle? Not only have people loved puzzles for centuries, they've actually gone wild for them. Every few years, a new tantalizing puzzle comes along to captivate the nation.

But each of these little games has an extraordinary history and for this special show, we have the "the puzzler" himself to help us unravel these unique mysteries.

Joining the show today is AJ Jacobs, author of The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life, who leads Greg and Tom down a maze of fascinating origins for the world's most popular puzzles -- many with a connection to New York City.

FEATURING:

-- Sam Loyd, the ultimate puzzle huckster
-- The utterly madcap Rebus Craze of 1937
-- The Secret and the possible treasure buried underneath New York's very streets
-- Stephen Sondheim's glorious contributions to the puzzling world

Visit the website for more information and images

Podcasts mentioned on this show:'

The Straw Hat Riots of 1922

Nellie Bly: Undercover in the Madhouse

Pulitzer vs Hearst: The Rise of Yellow Journalism

PLUS: A special New York City-themed anagram game!

A Special Presentation: We know some of you like to celebrate the holiday spirit with actual alcoholic spirits so we thought you'd enjoy this episode of The Gilded Gentleman, the Bowery Boys spin-off podcast hosted by Carl Raymond, which lays out everything you've wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about absinthe -- aka the green fairy.

Absinthe was one of the most popular and most mysterious drinks in the Belle Epoque and late Victorian and Edwardian worlds,   fueling Paris and London's cafe society and artistic circles 

Brilliant men like Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde were proponents of the 'green fairy' along with members of the upper classes as well as everyday workers. Myths sprang up that the elixir created dramatic hallucinations and even provoked ghastly crimes. It became banned throughout most of Europe and even in the United States by the early 20th century. 

Join Carl and his guest Don Spiro, creator of New York's Green Fairy Society to discuss and demystify the myths and legends of this most evocative of spirits. 

And after you're done with this episode, head over and listen to the latest episode of The Gilded Gentleman, also featuring Don Spiro. Only this time they're talking about the history of champagne. 

In 1890 the Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis turned his eye-opening reporting and lecture series into a ground-breaking book called How The Other Half Lives, a best seller which awoke Americans to the plight of the poor and laid the groundwork for the Progressive Era.

Riis exposed more than a humanitarian crisis. He laid bare the city's complacent Gilded Age divide in revolutionary ways, most notably with the use of a new tool -- documentary photography.

For our 400th episode, following our tradition of exploring the legacies of urban planners in past centennial shows (#100 Robert Moses, #200 Jane Jacobs, #300 Andrew Haswell Green), we finally look at the life of the crusading police reporter and social reformer who forced upper and middle class New Yorker to examine the living conditions within the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Riis was himself an immigrant who spent his first years in the United States drifting from place to place, living on the street, his only companion a faithful dog. Journalism quite literally saved Riis, providing him with both a stable living and a purpose, especially after he became a police reporter for the New York Tribune in 1877.

But it was his fascination with visual media -- magic lantern shows and later flash photography -- which set him apart from other crusading writers of the period like Nellie Bly (who we only wish had a camera with her!)

Jacob Riis' culminating work How The Other Half Lives made him one of America's most famous writers -- his friend Theodore Roosevelt called Riss "the model American citizen" -- but the book has an imperfect legacy today, with Riis’ broad characterizations of the people he was writing about undercutting the book's noble purposes.

PLUS: The legacy of Riis lives in a very popular Queens beach. And Robert Moses chimes in!

Visit the website for more information

FURTHER READING
The Battle with the Slum / Jacob Riis
The Children of the Poor / Jacob Riis
How The Other Half Lives / Jacob Riis
The Making Of An American / Jacob Riis
The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America / Tom Buk-Swienty
Jacob A. Riis and the American City / James B. Lane
Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer / Janet B. Pascal
Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York / Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom

After listening to this show, check out these past Bowery Boys episodes with similar themes:

-- The First Ambulance
-- Has Jack the Ripper Come to Town?
-- Case Files of the New York Police Department 1800-1915
-- Women of the Progressive Era

Stories from this website:
"The original IMAX: Jacob Riis and His Magic Lantern"
"The harsh lives of New York City street kids, captured — in a flash — by Jacob Riis"
"Jacob Riis’ Not-so-Rockin’ ‘Sane’ New Years Celebration"
"The legendary police headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street"
"Finding Pietro"

To wrap up our 15th anniversary celebration -- and to set up our big 400th episode -- we take a fond look at one corner of New York City which taught us to love local history.

Perhaps you know this area for Seward Park, the first municipal playground in the United States, or for Straus Square, named for Nathan Straus, philanthropist and co-owner (with his brother Isidor) of Macy's Department Store. Today, trendy artists and influencers instead spend their weekends in Dimes Square, just one block (and seemingly one world) away.

In the 19th century, as Rutgers Square, this area became a small portion of a large German immigrant community called Kleindeutschland. In an inconceivable historical moment, a statue was almost raised here -- to William 'Boss' Tweed, leader of Tammany Hall.

By the late 19th century, this place was the center for American Jewish culture, and East Broadway became Yiddish publishers row, hosting newspapers and magazines from a host of perspectives. In the 20th century, thanks to a mid-century housing boom (fueled partially by the labor unions firmly rooted to this place), some also called it Cooperative Village, with hundreds of old, deteriorating tenements replaced with new high rises.

It's a neighborhood that means so much to so many -- and we hope you learn to love it all yourself, no matter what you call it. 

PLUS: We're join by staff members of the Forward, celebrating its 125th year of publication. Forward archivist Chana Pollack joins us along with Ginna Green and Lynn Harris, hosts of the the newspaper column-turned-podcast version A Bintel Brief.

In late December 1954 Marilyn Monroe came to New York City wearing a disguise.

Monroe -- the biggest movie star in the world when she arrived -- came to the East Coast to reinvent herself and her career. The year 1955 would be a turning point in her life and it all played out on the streets of the city. She intended to spend most of her life here.

It was a year of discovery -- exploring the city, working on her craft and being the toast of the town.

She came to New York to become a better actress via the Actors Studio and the influence of Lee Strasberg. But she also  managed to see the most glamorous corners of New York and eventually -- she fell in love.

Contemporary portrayals of her life have focused on the most salacious, most intimate details of her biography. Many tend to rob her of her personal agency. But in this show we hope to show a very different side to Monroe's life. And a deep connection with New York City that never left her.

FEATURING: Hip New York in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Marlene Dietrich and many others.

PLUS: As an extra treat we’ll be joined by Alicia Malone of TCM (and Tom's co-host on “The Official Gilded Age Podcast”) and author of the 2021 book Girls on Film: Lessons from a Life of Watching Women in Movies

VISIT THE WEBSITE for images and more information