The history of the United States Postal Service as it plays out in the streets of New York City -- from the first post road to the first postage stamps. From the most beautiful post office in the country to the forgotten Gilded Age landmark that was once considered the ugliest post office.

The postal service has always served as the country's circulatory system, linking the densest urban areas to the most rural outposts, a necessary link in moments when the country feels very far apart in other ways. The early American colonies knew this. Benjamin Franklin knew this The Founding Fathers who placed the postal service within the Constitution knew this.

And inventions such as the stagecoach, the steamship, the railroad, the pneumatic tube and even the electric car have helped keep the mail steadily flowing over the centuries.

New York has even played a pivotal role in the development of the American mail service, from the creation of the Boston Post Road (the first mail road which snaked through Manhattan and the Bronx) to the first mail boxes. Even the first postage stamps were sold in New York -- within former church-turned-post office in lower Manhattan.

Why are there so many post offices from the 1930s? Why is New York's largest post office next to Penn Station? And why does New York City have so many individual ZIP codes? And who, pray tell, is Barnabas Bates?

Visit our website for more information and images

More information here on the Bowery Boys: Gilded Age Weekend

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

A special bonus episode! Two years ago we featured Patrick Bringley on the show, the author of All The Beauty In The World (Simon & Schuster), regarding his experiences as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the life lessons he learned strolling silently past priceless works of art.

The book has become a massive best-seller worldwide and has even become a cultural phenomenon in South Korea, selling more than a quarter million copies in that country alone. So we thought we'd bring Patrick back to the show, on the occasion of his new off-Broadway show based on the book.

How do you transform an off-Broadway stage into the Metropolitan Museum of Art? What life lessons can you absorb from walking around museum

This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon

Tickets to All The Beauty In the World here.

It's one of the most foundational questions we could ever ask on this show -- how did New York City get its name?

You may know that the English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland (and its port town of New Amsterdam) in 1664, but the details of this history-making day have remained hazy -- until now.

Russell Shorto brought the world of New Amsterdam and the early years before New York to life in his classic history The Island At The Center of The World. His new book Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America functions as a sequel of sorts, revisiting the moment when New Amsterdam ceased to be -- and New York was born.

Shorto joins Greg and Tom for a very spirited discussion of international warfare, displaced princes, frantic letter writing and ominous warships in the harbor.

At the end of this story, you will not only know how New York -- the city, the state, the whole place, from Buffalo to Long Island -- got its name, you will know the exact forgotten historical figure who gave it that name.

Visit the Bowery Boys website for more information. 

Get Russell Shorto's new book Taking Manhattan

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

The New Yorker turns one century old -- and it hasn't aged a day! The witty, cosmopolitan magazine was first published on February 21, 1925. And even though present-day issues are often quite contemporary in content, the magazine's tone and style still recall its glamorous Jazz Age origins.

The New Yorker traces itself to members of that legendary group of wits known as the Algonquin Round Table -- renowned artists, critics and playwrights who met every day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel.

And in particular, to two married journalists – Harold Ross and Jane Grant – who infused the magazine with a very distinct cosmopolitan zest. High fashion, martinis and Midtown Manhattan mixed with the droll wit of a worldly literati.

A new exhibition at the New York Public Library --  “A Century of the New Yorker” -- chronicles the magazine’s history, from its origins and creation by Harold Ross and Jane Grant to its current era, under the editorship of David Remnick.

Greg and Tom interview the show's two curators Julie Golia and Julie Carlsen about the treasures on display from the New Yorker's glorious past -- from the magazine's first cover (featuring everybody's favorite snob Eustace Tilly) to artifacts and manuscripts from the world's greatest writers.

Visit the website for more information and other Bowery Boys podcasts

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

Greg and Tom have taken off their historian hats and have become -- movie critics? Close but not quite!

This week we're giving you a 'sneak preview' of their Patreon podcast called Side Streets, a conversational show about New York City and, well, whatever interests them that week. In honor of the Academy Awards, the Bowery Boys hosts pay homage to the great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert while looking at five award-worthy films with strong New York City connections:

-- Anora with its captivating south Brooklyn locations

-- A Complete Unknown, taking us back 1960s Greenwich Village 

-- Wicked, a spritely interpretation of the Broadway musical

-- The Brutalist, an epic about more than just architecture

-- Saturday Night, a frenetic tribute to the comedy-show icon which turns 50 years old this year

To listen to all episodes of Side Streets, support the Bowery Boys on Patreon 

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke's classic essay "The New Negro" and the literary anthology featuring the work of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen and other significant black writers of the day.

The rising artistic scene would soon be known as the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important cultural movements in American history. And it would be centered within America's largest black neighborhood -- Harlem, the "great black city," as described by Wallace Thurman, with a rising population and growing political and cultural influence.

During the 1920s, Harlem became even more. Along "Swing Street" and Lenox Avenue, nightclubs and speakeasies gave birth to American music and fostered great musical talents like Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Ballrooms like the Savoy and the Alhambra helped turn Harlem into a destination for adventure and romance.

What were these two worlds like -- the literary salons and the nightclubs? How removed were these spheres from the everyday lives of regular Harlem residents? How did the neighborhood develop both an energetic and raucous music scene and a diverse number of churches -- many (like the Abyssinian Baptist Church) still around today?

Visit the website for more details and more podcasts

Get tickets to our March 31 City Vineyard event Bowery Boys HISTORY LIVE! here

And join us for our Gilded Age Weekend in New York, May 29-June 1, 2025. More info here.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

One of America's first great Italian neighborhoods was once in East Harlem, once filled with more southern Italians than Sicily itself, a neighborhood almost entirely gone today except for a couple restaurants, a church and a long-standing religious festival.

This is, of course, not New York's' famous "Little Italy," the festive tourist area in lower Manhattan built from another 19th-century Italian neighborhood on Mulberry Street. The bustling street life of old Italian Harlem exists mostly in memory now.

If you wander around any modern American neighborhood with a strong Italian presence, you'll find yourself around people who can trace their lineage back through the streets of Italian Harlem. Perhaps that includes yourself.

But it's not all warm nostalgia and fond recollections. Life could be quite hard in Italian Harlem, thanks to the nearby industrial environment, the deteriorating living conditions and the street crime, the early years of New York organized crime.

So who were these first Italian settlers who left their homes for what would become a hard urban life in upper Manhattan? What drew them to the city? What traditions did they bring? And in the end, what did they leave behind, when so many moved out to the four corners of the United States?

Visit the Bowery Boys website for more adventures into New York City history

This show was produced by Kieran Gannon.

FURTHER LISTENING: Past Bowery Boys episodes with links to this show
-- The Story of Little Italy
-- Nuyorican: The Great Puerto Rican Migration
-- Columbus Circle

Join us on Patreon for extra podcasts and lots of other goodies

Share your love of the city’s history with a Bowery Boys Walks gift certificate! Our digital gift cards let your loved ones choose their perfect tour and date.

Grab a Bowery Boys tee-shirt, mug or water bottle at our merchandise store.

A star of the New York City skyline is reborn -- the Waldorf Astoria is reopening in 2025! And so we thought we'd again raise a toast to one of the world's most famous hotels, an Art Deco classic attached to the Gilded Age's most prestigious name in luxury and refinement.

Now, you might think you know this story -- the famous lobby clock, Peacock Alley, cocktail bars! -- but do we have some surprises for you.

The Waldorf Astoria — once the Waldorf-Astoria and even the Waldorf=Astoria — has been a premier name in hotel accommodations since the opening of the very first edition on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue (the location of today’s Empire State Building).

But the history of the current incarnation on Park Avenue contains the twists and turns of world events, from World War II to recent diplomatic dramas. In essence, the Waldorf Astoria has become the world’s convention center.

Step past the extraordinary Art Deco trappings, and you’ll find rooms which have hosted a plethora of important gatherings, not to mention the frequent homes to Hollywood movie stars.

To celebrate the renovated hotel's reopening this spring, the Bowery Boys present a newly re-edited and re-mastered version of their original show from 2016.

This show was re-edited and remastered by Kieran Gannon.

Join us on Patreon for extra podcasts and lots of other goodies

Share your love of the city’s history with a Bowery Boys Walks gift certificate! Our digital gift cards let your loved ones choose their perfect tour and date.

Grab a Bowery Boys tee-shirt, mug or water bottle at our merchandise store.

There were very few history podcasts around back in the year 2008, but the Bowery Boys Podcast was certainly here ... and so was The Memory Palace, hosted by Nate DiMeo, presenting small, often forgotten vignettes from history in a descriptive, narrative format.

In this special interview episode, Greg talks with Nate on the occasion of his new companion book "The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past" (Penguin Random House) which features many of his fable-like historical portraits, including many from New York City history -- from revolutionary amusements on Coney Island to less frequented corridors within the Metropolitan Museum of Art

And Greg and Nate go deep on the relationship between history and memory, on the reliability of memory to help us relive the past and how our own experiences can help fill in the gaps within histories that seem lost to us today. 

Featuring a couple of elephants, the Wallendas, Parks and Recreation, the X-Men, a very large painting of Versailles, and the big secret about the monster hiding in your closet right now.

Listen to episodes of The Memory Palace here. it's also available on Spotify, Apple and the other podcast players, the same places you find the Bowery Boys. 

This episode was produced by Kieran Gannon. 

To donate to those affected by the California wildfires, head over to these verified fundraisers at GoFundMe

Join us on Patreon for extra podcasts and lots of other goodies

Share your love of the city’s history with a Bowery Boys Walks gift certificate! Our digital gift cards let your loved ones choose their perfect tour and date.

Grab a Bowery Boys tee-shirt, mug or water bottle at our merchandise store.

Just the name "Tiffany" evokes the glamour and elegance of the Gilded Age. But there is much more to the story than just the eponymous retailer who continues to sell fine jewelry and decorative objects today. 

In this episode of the Gilded Gentleman podcast, Carl Raymond is joined by Lindsy R. Parrott, the Executive Director of The Neustadt Collection, one of the country's most important collections of Tiffany glass and archival materials, to discuss the two Tiffanys - Charles Lewis Tiffany who began the original retail silver and jewelry and his son Louis Comfort Tiffany who created revolutionary designs in stained glass.   

Subscribe and follow The Gilded Gentleman Podcast for more tales of America during the Gilded Age.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

Greenwich Village is one of America's great music capitals, an extraordinary distinction for an old neighborhood of tenements, townhouses, dive bars and a college campus.

So many musical titans of jazz, folk, pop and rock and roll got their start in the Village's many small nightclubs and coffeehouses, working alongside artists, writers, actors and comedians to create an American cultural mecca unlike any other.

And it was here, on January 24, 1961, that a nineteen-year-old young man from Minnesota entered the fray -- Robert Zimmerman, otherwise known as Bob Dylan.

The Village completely transformed the young folk singer into the voice of a generation, working out his transformation on the minuscule stages of the Gaslight, Cafe Wha? and Gerde's Folk City.

But this show isn't strictly about Dylan's ascent to greatness, but the neighborhood -- the people, the streets, the basements! -- which cultivated artists like Dylan (and Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and Pete Seeger and Barbra Streisand and Joan Baez and so on.)

PLUS: Bob Moses and Jane Jacobs stop by for a hootenanny (and a protest)

Visit the website for a list of music credits, research sources and further listening ideas

Join us on Patreon for extra podcasts and lots of other goodies

Share your love of the city’s history with a Bowery Boys Walks gift certificate! Our digital gift cards let your loved ones choose their perfect tour and date.

Grab a Bowery Boys tee-shirt, mug or water bottle at our merchandise store.