Podcasts · History · Society & Culture

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers, Greg Young

300 episodes

The tides of American history flow through the streets of New York City — from the huddled masses on Ellis Island to the sleazy theaters of 1970s Times Square. Greg and Tom explore more than 400 years of action-packed stories, featuring both classic and forgotten figures who have shaped the world.

Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. Boss Tweed and His Gilded Age House of Corruption (Rewind)

    · 55 min

    The roots of modern American corruption traces themselves back to a handsome -- but not necessarily revolutionary -- historic structure sitting behind New York City Hall. The Tweed Courthouse is more than a mere…

  2. Ghost Stories of Old New York (Live At Joe's Pub 2025)

    · 1 h 08 min

    Live from Joe's Pub at the Public Theater -- it's the Bowery Boys! In a live recording of their 2025 show, a Halloween cabaret spectacle featuring Andrew Austin and Lisa Karlin, Greg and Tom explore five mysterious…

  3. #494 Scary Stories of Old New York

    · 1 h 27 min

    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…

  4. New York's Most Haunted Historic Places (Best of)

    · 1 h 04 min

    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…

  5. #493 The Mysterious Fox Sisters

    · 1 h 24 min

    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…

  6. #492 How Mamie Fish Partied Her Way to Gilded Age Power

    · 1 h 02 min

    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…

  7. The World Trade Center in the 1970s (Rewind)

    · 1 h 04 min

    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…

  8. Little Italy: From Immigrant Enclave To Italian Theme Park (Rewind)

    · 55 min

    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…

  9. What's Up With Downtown Brooklyn? (Rewind)

    · 59 min

    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…

  10. The Story of SoHo: A Lofty History (Rewind)

    · 56 min

    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…

  11. The Gossip Game: The Man Who Blackmailed the Gilded Age

    · 1 h 00 min

    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…

  12. #491 Adventures in Old New York

    · 1 h 14 min

    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…

  13. #490 The Murder of Bill the Butcher

    · 49 min

    It’s a scene more commonly imagined today in a Wild West saloon -- a shootout at Stanwyx Hall, across from the most elegant hotel in New York. The year was 1855, and the combatants were bitter rivals who had fought…

  14. #489 Heated Rivalries from American History (Live at City Winery)

    · 1 h 15 min

    Alexander Hamilton vs Aaron Burr! Delmonico's vs Sherry's! John Adams vs everybody! Some of history's most fascinating stories involve important figures who did not like each other very much. In this edition of Bowery…

  15. Tearing Down King George: Revolutionary Summer 1776 (Rewind)

    · 37 min

    Bowling Green is best known today as the calming, flower-filled oasis in lower Manhattan, next to the decidedly less calming, lumbering sculpture Charging Bull, which is popular with tourists. But this peaceful park…

  16. #488 Party Like It's 1976!

    · 1 h 18 min

    New York City will be at the center of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the United States, thanks to the largest-ever flotilla of tall ships to sail into New York Harbor — a reminder of the city's storied…

  17. #487 The Knicks and the Knickerbockers: The Story of a Name

    · 1 h 05 min

    The New York Knicks are the ultimate New York City sporting franchise. Why would we make such a big claim? It's all in the name. The Knicks were founded in 1946 as one of the inaugural teams from the sports…

  18. Marilyn Monroe at 100: Her Life in New York City (Rewind)

    · 1 h 19 min

    Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson 100 years ago on June 1, 1926. In late 1954, on the cusp of major Hollywood stardom, Marilyn moved to New York City on a quest to become a better actress and to find a…

  19. #486 The Many Intrigues of Eliza Jumel

    · 1 h 04 min

    She arrived in New York calling herself Eliza Brown — but she’d been born Betsy Bowen, daughter of a woman jailed for running a disorderly house in Providence. By the time she died in 1865, she was Eliza Jumel --…

  20. The Real Historical Figures from Broadway's 'Ragtime'

    · 49 min

    The Lincoln Center revival of Ragtime — with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally, adapted from the novel by E. L. Doctorow — has just garnered 11 Tony Award nominations,…

  21. #485 The Painter Who Brought The World To New York

    · 51 min

    Perched over the Hudson River near the city of Hudson sits Olana State Historic Site, once the wondrous home of painter Frederic Church. This Gilded Age mansion is unlike any in the valley, mystical and imposing,…

  22. The Garment District: Where New York Fashion Is Made (Rewind)

    · 52 min

    The Garment District in Midtown Manhattan has been the center of American fashion for almost one hundred years. The lofts and office buildings here still buzz with the business of making clothing — from design to…

  23. #484 The Phrenology Craze

    · 55 min

    In our modern world, people are turning to all sorts of unusual beliefs and fringe disciplines just outside the bounds of medical science and psychology, all in search of a better understanding of the human mind and…

  24. #483 The Treasures of Carnegie Hall

    · 1 h 17 min

    Carnegie Hall is one of America’s greatest and most enduring cultural landmarks, enchanting audiences and making history since its opening night on May 5, 1891, when Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky appeared there in his first…

  25. The Pushcarts of the Lower East Side (Rewind)

    · 58 min

    Once upon a time, the streets of the Lower East Side were lined with pushcarts and salespeople haggling with customers over the price of fruits, fish and pickles. Whatever became of them? New York’s earliest…

  26. The Scandalous Hamiltons: Sex, Lies and Blackmail (The Gilded Gentleman)

    · 53 min

    In 1889, Robert Ray Hamilton, great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, became ensnared in a sensational web of deceit — forged identities, attempted murder, and brazen fraud that captured headlines across the country.…

  27. #482 Pride and Preservation (The Streets of the West Village Part 3)

    · 1 h 25 min

    Why is the West Village both historically important and incredibly expensive? In the final part of our West Village mini-series, we look at the elements that define the modern neighborhood — from battles with Robert…

  28. #481 How The West Village Became A Neighborhood (The Streets of the West Village Part 2)

    · 1 h 26 min

    In Part Two of our mini-series, The Streets of the West Village, we turn to the people who gave the neighborhood its character and vitality — from Irish longshoremen on the docks to actors on the off-Broadway stage,…

  29. #480 The Streets of the West Village: Creating the Village (Part 1)

    · 1 h 20 min

    Why are the streets of Manhattan's West Village so unusually charming and romantic? Why does it make such an excellent place for a night out in New York City? Why is the real estate so expensive? And when did it become…

  30. Frozen in Time: The Great Blizzard of 1888

    · 48 min

    Here’s a classic from the Bowery Boys Podcast archive, recorded in early 2013, just a few months after Hurricane Sandy. Each winter, when forecasters warn of an approaching monster storm, they inevitably invoke one of…

  31. How To Dig a Train Tunnel Under the Hudson River (from HISTORY This Week)

    · 35 min

    For more historical deep dives just like these, check out HISTORY This Week wherever you get your podcasts! February 14, 1905. A stick of dynamite detonates under the Hudson River — and the ground above swallows a…

  32. #479 NYC '84: The Case of the 'Subway Vigilante'

    · 54 min

    On the afternoon of December 22, 1984, shots rang out beneath the streets of New York, from the subway's 2 Seventh Avenue express train. A Greenwich Village man named Bernhard Goetz shot four black teenagers who he…

  33. #478 The Disappearance of Judge Crater

    · 1 h 05 min

    On August 6, 1930, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater stepped into a taxi on West 45th Street and vanished without a trace. For 27 days, nobody reported him missing—not his wife waiting in Maine, not his…

  34. The History of Brooklyn Heights and the Promenade

    · 1 h 42 min

    “A Highway is Crumbling. New York Can’t Agree on How to Fix It.” That was a headline in the New York Times back in November about the highly problematic section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway located beneath the…

  35. #477 Chester A. Arthur: The Gentleman Boss

    · 47 min

    On Lexington Avenue sits a special food store named Kalustyan's with a second floor stocked with international spices, syrups, and bitters. In 1881, this was the home of Chester A. Arthur, and it was here in the early…

  36. #476 Hot Victorian Holiday: Bowery Boys History Live! at City Winery

    · 1 h 16 min

    Bowery Boys History Live is a live-show series at City Winery hosted by Greg Young featuring a variety of historians and tour guides. The last installment this summer featured author Liz Block and tour guide Keith…

  37. #475 Subway Tokens, MetroCards and Other Historic Fare

    · 1 h 17 min

    New Yorkers have gotten around their cities by subways, buses, elevated trains, streetcars and ferries. And the ways in which they have paid for them have changed as well. And keeps changing! This month, the city is…

  38. The Great Fire That Transformed New York

    · 35 min

    This month marks the 190th 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 terms of its economic…

  39. #474 Made in France: The Statue of Liberty’s Forgotten Origin Story

    · 1 h 22 min

    She stands in New York Harbor as America’s most recognizable symbol—but the story of the Statue of Liberty begins thousands of miles away, in the charming Alsatian city of Colmar, France. In this special on-location…

  40. The Last Ships From Hamburg: An Immigration Story

    · 57 min

    Our second in a series of podcasts about New York City and American immigration history. Between the late 1890s and early 1920s, over 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe fled their homes and made the long journey to…

  41. #473 The Other Side of Ellis Island

    · 1 h 26 min

    Ellis Island is one of America’s great landmarks, a place in New York Harbor that represents the millions of people who arrived in this country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The north side of Ellis…

  42. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: A History in Lights

    · 47 min

    The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has a surprisingly…

  43. #472 The Many Mysteries of Amelia Earhart

    · 1 h 10 min

    The aviation hero Amelia Earhart, who became one of the world's most famous women during the Great Depression, is one of those historic figures that people think they know quite well. But during her lifetime, much of…

  44. Rodgers and Hammerstein: Some Enchanted Broadway History

    · 57 min

    Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II are two of the greatest entertainers in New York City history. They have delighted millions of people with their unique and influential take on the Broadway musical — serious,…

  45. #471 Ghost Stories of Long Island

    · 1 h 34 min

    For this year's annual Bowery Boys Ghost Stories podcast, Greg and Tom take a road trip to Long Island to explore the region's most famous haunted tales from legend and folklore, 'real' reported stories of otherworldly…

  46. #470 The Grand Tale of the Erie Canal

    · 1 h 22 min

    On October 26, 1825, the fate of New York City – and the entire United States – changed with the opening of the Erie Canal, a manmade waterway that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was the most significant…

  47. #469 Dominican New York: A History In The Heights

    · 1 h 22 min

    Dominicans comprise the largest immigration group in modern New York City, and Dominican culture has become embedded in the city's rich fabric of immigrant history. And in one place in particular -- Washington Heights.…

  48. 19th Century NoHo: Glamour, Greed, Money, and Murder

    · 1 h 05 min

    Today's New York neighborhood called NoHo, wedged between Greenwich Village and the East Village, holds the stories of many people and places that then went on to become deeply associated with the great Gilded Age.…

  49. The Boy Mayor of New York

    · 49 min

    As New York City enters the final stages of a rather strange mayoral election in 2025, let’s look back on a decidedly more unusual contest over 110 years ago, pitting Tammany Hall and their estranged ally (Mayor…

  50. #468 Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue": A Jazz-Age Drama

    · 1 h 06 min

    On January 3, 1924, 25-year-old George Gershwin was shooting pool in a Manhattan billiard hall when his brother Ira Gershwin read aloud a shocking newspaper article: "George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto."…

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