Rediscovering the rediscovery of a 350-year-old city view
This is not a land of hobbits. Despite looking like an illustration from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, the map above is actual drawing made of early New Amsterdam as it looked to one cartographer in 1661....
View ArticleBirth of the modern (i.e. totally insane) stock market
Wall Street’s curbside traders, in the throes of unregulated buying and selling. From here until next Friday and the release of the next podcast, I’ll be posting stories from a particular, namely the...
View ArticleFun money: The Buffalo nickel, 100 years old this month, makes Wall Street...
The U.S. Sub Treasury Building — today’s Federal Hall — as it appeared in a colorized postcard in the 1900s (courtesy NYPL)“Hey! Getcha buffalo nickels here. Only 15 cents!” On March 1, 1913, the usual...
View ArticleCharlie Chaplin on Wall Street: The tale behind the 1918 photo
The comedy legend Charlie Chaplin was born 125 years ago today in London, so I thought I’d use the opportunity to re-post one of my favorite photographs of Wall Street. In the 1918 photo above, Charlie...
View ArticleRemembering the Wall Street bombing of 1920
Lunchtime down on Wall Street today is chaotic mess of brokers and bankers on cell phones, tour groups, messengers on bikes, police, construction workers, people delivering lunch and the stray old lady...
View ArticleThe Wall Street Crash of 1929: The sobering end of New York’s Jazz Age
This is the final part of our three-part NEW YORK IN THE JAZZ AGE podcast series. Check out our two prior episode #233 The Roaring ’20s: The King of the Jazz Age and #234 Queen of the Speakeasies: A...
View ArticleBuilding The Wall: How Wall Street got its name
One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall Street, that canyon of tall buildings and center of the American financial world, is named for an actual wall that...
View ArticlePeter Stuyvesant and the Fall of New Amsterdam: Where did the Dutch roots of...
PODCAST There would be no New York City without Peter Stuyvesant, the stern, authoritarian director-general of New Amsterdam, the Dutch port town that predates the Big Apple. The willpower of this...
View ArticleThe City in Flames: The Great Fire of 1835
PODCAST This month marks the 185th anniversary of one of the most devastating disasters in New York City history — The Great Fire of 1835. This massive fire, among the worst in American history in...
View ArticleEvery Bowery Boys History podcast in chronological order by subject
Sixteen years ago (officially on June 19, 2007) we recorded the very first Bowery Boys podcast, appropriately about Canal Street, the street just outside the window of Tom’s apartment on the Lower East...
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