The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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, including Best Revival of a Musical, along with multiple acting nods for its acclaimed cast.

This new production feels more timely and resonant than the one that first played on Broadway in 1998. In addition to the fictional Coalhouse Walker Jr. and the archetypal figures known simply as Father, Mother, and Younger Brother, Ragtime brings to life several real celebrities and power brokers from turn-of-the-century New York.

Anna Grace Barlow, who portrays Broadway sensation Evelyn Nesbit, and Rodd Cyrus, who embodies legendary illusionist Harry Houdini, join Carl Raymond from The Gilded Gentleman podcast for a behind-the-scenes conversation about their characters and their experiences bringing this revival to the stage.

This show is brought to you by The Gilded Gentleman podcast, produced by the Bowery Boys and edited and produced by Kieran Gannon.

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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, evoking Persian and Moorish architectural styles and reflecting the art and ambitions of its former owner.

Church was more than a Hudson River School painter; he was an adventurer and dreamer, bringing the vistas of the world to America within his massive landscape creations. In 1859, when his Heart of the Andes made its New York debut, thousands lined up to soak in its impossible beauty.

Victoria Johnson, author of the new biography Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World, has walked in his footsteps — from the Ecuadorian volcano Cotopaxi to the heights of ancient Petra.

She joins Greg and Tom on the podcast this week to discuss Church’s unusual life — both as a New Yorker and as a daring traveler. After this show, you may never look at a landscape painting the same way again.

This show was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon

Visit the website to take a look at some of Church's paintings, as well as a list of other Bowery Boys podcasts related to this show. 

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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 distribution.

But the district has become endangered today as clothing manufacturers move out and the entire industry faces new challenges from online sales and overseas production.

During the mid-19th century, garment production thrived in New York thanks to thousands of arriving immigrants skilled in making clothes. Most clothing in the United States was made below 14th Street, in the city’s tenement neighborhoods, especially the Lower East Side.

As the industry grew more prominent, the residents and merchants of Fifth Avenue feared it would overtake their fashionable street. So, by the 1930s, a new district was born. Hardly a stitch was sewn in the United States without passing through the blocks between 34th Street and 42nd Street, west of Sixth Avenue.

Listen in as we describe the Garment District’s chaotic flurry of activity — from the fabulous showrooms of the world’s greatest designers to the nitty-gritty bustle of its crowded streets.

Visit our website for images related to this subject and other podcasts related to the Garment District and New York's garment-making history.

In celebration of Made In NYC Week, we present our tribute to New York City's active and thriving garment industry. A version of this show was originally presented in January 2016. Now with a new introduction and ending, this show was reedited by Kieran Gannon.

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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 the origins of personality.

In the mid-19th century, New Yorkers with similar questions became obsessed with the unusual practice of phrenology, which promised to unlock the secrets of the brain through a careful examination and mapping of the human skull.

By the 1840s, visitors to New York City Hall and Barnum’s American Museum could walk just a short distance to the curiosity cabinet run by the Fowler family, a group of phrenologists and publishers who helped popularize this now-debunked practice. At this very odd tourist attraction, visitors could examine rows of skulls and casts of skulls taken from both celebrated figures in human history and some of the world’s most infamous criminals.

Phrenology attracted the interest of some of the 19th century’s most notable figures, including P. T. Barnum and Walt Whitman. The Fowlers’ empire of unusual disciplines soon expanded to include mesmerism and even spiritualism. But there was also a darker side to phrenology: it was used by many to justify elitist and racist philosophies.

Greg is joined in the studio by Paul Stob, author of the new book Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation’s Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind, to explore this strange craze, what people believed they saw when they looked at the skull, and why New York City played such a crucial role in its rise.

Visit the website for more images and others relating to this topic. You can also watch this show on YouTube

This show was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

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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 performance in the United States.

This groundbreaking performance space (originally known simply as “Music Hall”) is in fact a trio of distinct venues, all nestled within a single, opulent Italian Renaissance–style building.

Although its benefactor Andrew Carnegie and his fellow Gilded Age elites had moved their grand residences farther up Fifth Avenue, New York’s established cultural institutions, like the venerable Academy of Music, still lingered well to the south. Carnegie Hall helped shift that center of gravity uptown.

Yet the true history of Carnegie Hall lives inside its walls—within the experiences of the audiences and the artists, and, for this week’s show, within the archives themselves. Tom and Greg have been invited into the Carnegie Hall archives for an exclusive, unprecedented encounter with the story of American music.

Kathleen Sabogal and Robert Hudson of the Rose Museum & Archives guide the Bowery Boys through the Hall’s past, using some of their collection’s most cherished artifacts: a clarinet, mysterious locks, ledger books, stickpins, suffrage buttons, beaded jackets, photographs, and autograph books that together bring the spirit of Carnegie Hall vividly to life.

And in the end -- they even take to the stage!

Visit the website for more information and to listen to more episodes of the Bowery Boys podcast. You can also watch this show on YouTube.

This episode was proudly sponsored by Carnegie Hall. Visit CarnegieHall.org for information on upcoming shows, including the United in Sound: America at 250 festival, a multifaceted reflection of the United States 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

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