The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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 the most infamous tempests ever to strike New York City: the now-legendary Great Blizzard of 1888, a devastating collision of wind and snow.

The battering snow-hurricane of 1888, with its freezing temperatures and crazy drifts three stories high, was made worse by the condition of New York’s transportation and communication systems, all completely unprepared for 36 hours of continual snow.

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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 locomotive whole. It's the latest setback in an audacious plan to tunnel beneath the river and bring trains into Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad is the largest corporation in the world, but the goopy riverbed keeps fighting back. How did they finally break through? And why are these 115-year-old tunnels still the most critical infrastructure in America?
Special thanks to our guests: Polly Desjarlais, content and research manager at the New York Transit Museum; Jill Jonnes, author of Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels; and Andy Sparberg, former LIRR manager, transit historian, and author of From a Nickel to a Token: The Journey from Board of Transportation to MTA.
Link: http://historythisweekpodcast.com

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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 believed were about to assault him. The incident made international news, amplified by the city’s shameless tabloid newspapers because it so perfectly embodied all the cultural stereotypes about New York City in the 1980s.
Goetz became a sort of folk hero, the so-called Subway Vigilante, who took things into his own hands because the city’s weakened and inept services could not.
The facts of this case only came to light in the courtroom, playing out over the years. And, if you’re old enough to remember this incident, chances are that you may not be remembering it accurately.
To untangle the truth from the hype, Greg is joined in the studio by Elliot Williams, the author of the gripping new book Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ‘80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial that Divided the Nation.
This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon
Other Bowery Boys episodes you may enjoy: Ford To City: Drop Dead, the Subway Graffiti Era 1970-1989 and Taxi Driver (Bowery Boys Movie Club)
Visit our website for more information and for other shows in the Bowery Boys catalog.

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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 Tammany Hall cronies, not the courts. When the story finally broke, it became the most famous missing persons case in New York history.
Judge Crater was a rising star in the city’s legal world—a Tammany Hall insider who’d just landed a prestigious judgeship paying $23,000 a year (about $450,000 today). But he was also tangled up in corruption, office-buying schemes, and shady real estate deals. He had a taste for Broadway chorus girls, speakeasies run by gangsters, and envelopes stuffed with cash.
His disappearance rocked the city and captivated the nation for decades. The phrase “to pull a Crater” entered the popular lexicon. Psychics came forward with tips. Grand juries investigated. Deathbed confessions emerged decades later.
This week, Tom takes you through one of the city’s greatest unsolved mysteries—a story of Tammany corruption, Broadway nightlife, and Depression-era New York. What happened on that hot August night? Was it murder? Blackmail? A carefully planned escape?
96 years later, the mystery endures.
This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

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“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 Brooklyn Promenade, the romantic walkway that offers sumptuous views of lower Manhattan.
Everybody loves the Promenade. Nobody loves the BQE, especially in its present state. So how did we get here? You have to go all the way back to the origins of the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights for the answers.
A stroll through Brooklyn Heights presents you with a unique collection of 19th-century homes — all preserved thanks to the efforts of community activists in the 20th century. Each street sign traces back to an original landholder from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
When Robert Moses began planning his Brooklyn Queens Expressway in the 1940s, he planned a route that would sever Brooklyn Heights and obliterate many of its most spectacular homes. It would take a devoted community and some very clever ideas to re-route that highway and cover it with something extraordinary — a Promenade, allowing all New Yorkers to enjoy views of New York Harbor.
To tell the whole story, we’ve put together two previous Bowery Boys episodes into one epic, newly remastered, newly re-edited show, which recounts the glorious history of Brooklyn Heights.
This episode was edited and remasterd by Kieran Gannon.

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