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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.
A brand new batch of haunted houses and spooky stories, all from the gaslight era of New York City, the illuminating glow of the 19th century revealing the spirits of another world.
Greg and Tom again dive into another batch of terrifying ghost stories, using actual newspaper reports and popular urban legends to reveal a different side to the city's history.
If you just like a good scare, you'll enjoy these historical frights. And if you truly believe in ghosts, then these stories should especially disturb you as they take place in actual locations throughout the city -- from the Lower East Side to the Bronx. And even in cases where these 19th-century haunted houses have been demolished, who’s to say the spirits themselves aren’t still hanging around?
Featured in this year's crop of scary stories:
-- A ghostly encounter at the Astor Library (today's Public Theater) involving a most controversial set of mysterious books;
-- A whole graduating class of ghosts stalks the campus of the Bronx's Fordham University, and it may have something to do with either Edgar Allan Poe or the film The Exorcist;
-- Just north of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, a haunted townhouse vexes several tenants, the sight of a hunched-over man in a cap driving people insane;
-- In the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, a small apartment in today's Two Bridges neighborhood becomes possessed by a poltergeist with a penchant for throwing furniture .... and punches. One vainglorious showoff named Jackie Hagerty learns the hard way;
-- And before the days of Riverside Drive, a rustic old mansion once sat on the banks of the Upper West Side, with a mysterious locked room that must never be opened.
Theodore Roosevelt was both a New Yorker and an outdoorsman, a politician and a naturalist, a conservationist and a hunter. His connection with the natural world began at birth in his Manhattan brownstone home and ended with his death in Sagamore Hill.
He killed thousands of animals over his lifetime as a hunter-naturalist, most notably one of the last roaming bison (or American buffalo) in the Dakota Badlands. Many of his trophies hang on the walls of his home in Long Island; other specimens "live on" in institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History.
But as this episode's special guest Ken Burns reveals in his newest mini-series The American Buffalo, Roosevelt's relationship with the animal world was complicated and, in certain ways, hard to understand today.
As one of America’s great conservationists, President Roosevelt's advocacy for wildlife and public land helped to preserve so much of the natural richness of the United States.
And his involvement in the creation of the New York Zoological Society (aka the Bronx Zoo) would set the stage for one ambitious project that would help bring the American buffalo back to the Midwestern plains.
This episode marks the 165th anniversary of Roosevelt's birth in October and the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site (which plays a small but important role in today's story. )
Visit the website for more information and images from this week's show.
This show was engineered by Casey Holford at Stitcher Studios and the interview edited by Kieran Gannon.
The rebirth of the East Village in the late 1970s and the flowering of a new and original New York subculture -- what Edmund White called "the Downtown Scene" -- arose from the shadow of urban devastation and was anchored by a community that reclaimed its own deteriorating neighborhood.
In the last episode (Creating the East Village 1955-1975) this northern corner of New York's Lower East Side became the desired home for new cultural venues -- nightclubs, cafes, theaters, and bars -- after the city tore down the Third Avenue Elevated in 1955.
By the mid-1970s, however, the high had worn off. The East Village was in crisis, one of the Manhattan neighborhoods hit hardest by the city’s fiscal difficulties and cutbacks. It had become a landscape of dark, unsafe streets and buildings demolished in flame.
But the next generation of creative interlopers (following the initial stampede of Greenwich Village beatniks and hippies) built upon the legacies of East Village counter-culture to create poems, music, paintings, and stage performances heavily influenced by the apocalyptic situations around them.
This was something truly distinct, a creative scene that was thoroughly and uniquely an East Village creation -- punk and hardcore, murals and graffiti, fashion and drag. In this episode Greg hits the streets of the East Village in a special live-on-the-streets event, with musician and tour guide Krikor Daglian (of True Tales of NYC), exploring the secrets of the recent past -- from the origins of skateboarding to the seeds of the American alternative rock scene.
FEATURING: CBGB, Supreme, the Pyramid, Club 57, Niagara, 7B, Brownies, and many others
AND special guests Bill Di Paola from the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space and Ramon 'Ray' Alvarez from Ray's Candy Store
ALSO: Check out our Walking The East Village playlist, curated by Krikor and Greg -- on Spotify
Before 1955 nobody used the phrase "East Village" to describe the historic northern portion of the Lower East Side, the New York tenement district with a rich German and Eastern European heritage.
But when the Third Avenue El was torn down that year, those who were attracted to the culture of Greenwich Village -- with its coffeehouses, poets and jazz music -- began flocking to the east side, attracted to low rents.
Soon the newly named East Village culturally became an extension of the Village with new bookstores, cafes, experimental theaters, and nightclubs. By the mid-1960s the hepcats were replaced by hippies, flamboyant and politically active, influenced by the events of the 1960s and a slightly different buffet of drugs.
At the same time, the neighborhood's Ukrainian population grew as well after the United States provided visas to thousands of refugees from Europe displaced by World War II. By the 1960s Puerto Ricans also lived in the eastern end of the district, sometimes called Alphabet City (and eventually Loisaida).
In this first of a two-part series on the history of the East Village, Greg is joined Jason Birchard from Veselka Restaurant, who shares his family's story, and by theater historian David Loewy to discuss the influence of Joe Papp and The Public Theater, a stage whose first production would capture the very counter-culture dominating the streets around it.
Visit the website for images and more information
Further listening:
Nuyorican: The Great Puerto Rican Migration
St. Mark's Place: Party Time In The East Village
The Secrets of St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
This episode on the history of Tompkins Square Park ties right into an all-new two-part episode coming in September, the first part coming at you next week.
Tompkins Square Park is the heart and soul of the East Village. And it's also one of New York City's oldest parks! However this was not a park designed for the service of the upper classes in the mid-19th century. It provided open air and recreational space for the many hundreds of thousands of immigrants who moved into the Lower East Side, particularly Germans who filled the park with music, food and social gatherings.
But the park has also been a place for people to voice their descent. It's become a most rebellious place over the decades. This is a story of vice presidents and labor unions and drag queens and punks.
Visit the website for more information
This show was originally released in 2014.
Stroll the romantic, rambling paths of historic Central Park in this week's episode, turning back the clock to the 1860s and 70s, a time of children ice skating on The Lake, carriage rides through the Mall, and bewildering excursions through The Ramble.
You’re all invited to walk along with Greg through the oldest portion of Central Park. Not only to marvel at the beautiful trees, ancient rocks, flowers, and the dizzying assortment of birds but to look at the architecture, the sculptures, and the fountains.
The idea of a public park -- open to all people, from all walks of life -- was rather new in the mid-19th century. The original plan for Central Park by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux emphasized an escape to the natural world. But almost immediately, those plans were altered to include more monumental and architectural delights.
In this rambling walking tour, Greg visits some of the most beloved attractions of the park including Bethesda Terrace and Fountain, Naumburg Bandshell, Bow Bridge and Belvedere Castle.
And he's joined by two very special guests:
-- Sara Cedar Miller, historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy and author of Before Central Park
-- Dr. Emma Guest-Consales, president of the Guides Association of New York City and tour ambassador at One World Observatory.
Visit our website for more information
The tale of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is one of New York's true epic adventures, mirroring the course of American history via the ships manufactured here and the people employed to make them.
The Navy Yard's origins within Wallabout Bay tie it to the birth of the United States itself, the spot where thousands of men and women were kept in prison ships during the Revolutionary War.
Within this bay where thousands of American patriots died would rise one of this country’s largest naval yards. It was built for the service and protection of the very country those men and women died for. A complex that would then create weapons of war for other battles -- and jobs for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.
In this episode, Greg is joined by the amazing Andrew Gustafson from Turnstile Tours who unfurls the surprising history of the Navy Yard -- through war and peace, through new technologies and aging infrastructure, through the lives of the men and women who built the yard's reputation.
And the story extends to the tiny neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, famed for its early 19th-century architecture and the mysterious mansion known as the Commandant's House.
FEATURING the origin story of Brooklyn's most sacred public monument -- at home not in Vinegar Hill (at least not anymore) but in Fort Greene.
Visit our website for more information and also head to Turnstile Tours for information on their tours of the Navy Yard.
Instead of looking back to the history of New York City in this episode, we are looking forwardto the future -- to the new generation of creators who are celebrating New York and telling its story through mediums that are not podcasts or books.
Today we are celebrating the historians, journalists and photographers who bring New York City to life on social media platforms like Instagram. There are a million different ways to tell a good story and the guests on today's show are doing it with photography and short films, exposing new audiences to the best of New York City – its landmarks, its people, even its diners.
Featuring interviews with three of our favorite people:
Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico, the "unofficial talent scout of New York City," the filmmaker and photographer who manages to capture the magic of the city’s most interesting and colorful characters
Riley Arthur, aka Diners of NYC, who explores the world of New York City diners, great and small, in hopes to bring awareness to many struggling local businesses
Tommy Silk, aka Landmarks of NY, who shares illuminating photos and videos featuring the city’s most interesting and sometimes overlooked architectural gems
Featuring stories of the Neptune Diner, the Green Lady, the Little Red Lighthouse, Junior's Cheesecake, Tiger Hood and City Island.
And follow the Bowery Boys on Instagram and on TikTok and on Threads (@boweryboysnyc)
It’s one of the great narratives of American urban history — the northward trek of New York society up the island of Manhattan during the 19th century.
Bringing you this special story today is writer, tour guide and historian Keith Taillon from KeithYorkCity, joining Carl Raymond from the Gilded Gentleman podcast to analyze this unique social migration. They present a fascinating virtual tour through over 100 years of New York City history, showing how the Gilded Age developed and evolved from an architectural and urban planning point of view.
For more information visit the Bowery Boys website, subscribe to the Gilded Gentleman podcast and check out Keith's adventures at his website.
This month we are marking the 160th anniversary of one of the most dramatic moments in New York City history – the Civil War Draft Riots which stormed through the city from July 13 to July 16, 1863.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Manhattan in violent protest, fueled initially by anger over conscription to the Union Army which sent New Yorkers to the front lines of the Civil War. (Or, most specifically, those who couldn’t afford to pay the $300 commutation fee were sent to war.)
In many ways, our own city often seems to have forgotten these significant events.
There are very few memorials or plaques in existence at all to the Draft Riots, a very odd situation given the numerous markers to other tragic and unsettling moments in New York City history.
In particular, given the number of African-Americans who were murdered in the streets during these riots, and the numbers of Black families who fled New York in terror, we think this is a very significant oversight.
In this episode, a remastered, re-edited edition of our 2011 show, we take you through those hellish days of deplorable violence and appalling attacks on abolitionists, Republicans, wealthy citizens, and anybody standing in the way of blind anger. Mobs filled the streets, destroying businesses (from corner stores to Brooks Brothers) and threatening to throw the city into permanent chaos.
Visit the website for more information
FURTHER LISTENING
Fernando Wood: The Scoundrel Mayor of New York
The Hoaxes and Conspiracies of New York
And did you see this performance from the musical Paradise Square, set during the Draft Riots?
Amanda is a wife. A mother. A blogger. A Christian.
A charming, beautiful, bubbly, young woman who lives life to the fullest.
But Amanda is dying, with a secret she doesn’t want anyone to know.
She starts a blog detailing her cancer journey, and becomes an inspiration, touching and
captivating her local community as well as followers all over the world.
Until one day investigative producer Nancy gets an anonymous tip telling her to look at Amanda’s
blog, setting Nancy on an unimaginable road to uncover Amanda’s secret.
Award winning journalist Charlie Webster explores this unbelievable and bizarre, but
all-too-real tale, of a woman from San Jose, California whose secret ripped a family apart and
left a community in shock.
Scamanda is the true story of a woman whose own words held the key to her secret.
New episodes every Monday.
Follow Scamanda on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Amanda’s blog posts are read by actor Kendall Horn.
