The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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#495 Gouverneur Morris: The Thrilling Adventures of a Founding Father Nov 06, 2026

Show notes

Gouverneur Morris was no ordinary Founding Father. His story seems tailor-made for an action-packed, bodice-ripping Netflix series.

Morris, whose family estate, Morrisania, lay in what is now the South Bronx, wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution and delivered some of the founding era’s most forceful denunciations of slavery.

On the Bowery Boys podcast, his name comes up again and again, whether we’re exploring the history of the Bronx or the creation of the Erie Canal. New Yorkers may know him best for his late-in-life involvement in the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which established the visionary grid of streets and avenues that defines much of Manhattan today.

But you may also know Morris as the Founding Father with the wooden leg—or the one who was very popular with the ladies. He not only braved the American Revolution but also survived the French Revolution without losing his head.

Greg is joined on this week's show by Scott S. Greenberger, author of The Forsaken Founder: Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up To Slavery and Survived the Reign of Terror, to reintroduce this fascinating figure and explore his distinctive contributions to American history and New York City.

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

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Boss Tweed and His Gilded Age House of Corruption (Rewind) Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

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 landmark. Once called the New York County Courthouse, the Courthouse better known for many traits that the concepts of law and order normally detest -- greed, bribery, kickbacks and graft.

Tammany Hall, the oft-maligned Democratic political machine, served a unique purpose in New York City in the 1850s and 60s, tending to the needs of newly arrived Irish immigrants who were being ignored by inadequate city services. But they required certain favors like the support of political candidates.

And that is how William 'Boss' Tweed rose through the ranks of city politics to become the most powerful man in New York City.

It was Tweed, through various government organizations and his trusty Tweed Ring, who transformed this new courthouse project into a cash cow for the greediest of the Gilded Age.

How did the graft function during the construction of the Tweed Courthouse? What led to Tweed's downfall? And how did this literal temple to corruption become a beloved landmark in the 1980s?

We're pleased to re-introduce this classic Bowery Boys episode, remastered and reedited by Kieran Gannon, and first released in 2019. Visit the website for more images from this show and other episodes relating to it.

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Ghost Stories of Old New York (Live At Joe's Pub 2025) Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

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 stories from the pages of New York City history, including...

-- A tormented actress in Hell's Kitchen fights off a colonial-era spirit, thanks to a world-renowned paranormal investigator

-- The haunting last days of an ancient Upper West Side mansion with a padlocked room that nobody had dared to open

-- The terrifying story of a haunted tenement in today's Two Bridges neighborhood and the gangster who attempted to enter it

-- A mysterious sighting of three dancing ghosts within the old Flushing Meeting Housecauses a stir in an old Dutch village

And the return of Edgar Allan Poe! Also -- what happened to Cheryl Crow (the much-beloved stage prop, not the singer)?

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#494 Scary Stories of Old New York Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

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 State Building go dark, and the subway car you’re riding suddenly stops in the middle of a shadowy tunnel.

That's right, it's an all-new ... Bowery Boys Ghost Stories of Old New York podcast! Tom and Greg have been recording ghost story podcasts since 2007, and this year they have somehow managed to conjure up yet another batch of historical urban legends, taken from actual newspaper reports:

-- Stand Clear of the Closing Ghosts: An eerie encounter on the elevated train, from 1899, leaves one rider running for her doctor in fear

-- Severed from the Spirit World: In 1896, a Flatbush man finds a disturbing artifact buried in his cellar, awakening a wandering nighttime spirit who frightens his nosy neighbors

-- The Ghost That Slapped Back: A crowded Lower East Side schoolroom became a chamber of nightmares, sending the community to the streets in protest

-- Who Is The Ghost In the Window? It's street gangs vs. strangely beautiful spirits in this 1902 tale of a deteriorating house on 42nd Street

-- Rosabelle, Believe! This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Harry Houdini, the legendary escape artist with an unusual relationship with death. His mysterious grave site in Queens has become the site of spooky ceremonies. But will he soon be making a return to his former Harlem brownstone?

This show was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon.

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New York's Most Haunted Historic Places (Best of) Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

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 wandering spirits and other unpleasant things as a way to share historical tales about the city.

Before the arrival of next week's brand new episode, get in the mood with this best-of compilation of our favorite stories from past shows, featuring places that you can still visit today, pulled from past episodes and compiled together for the very first time. Newly scared, er, I mean, scored and remastered by our producer Kieran Gannon.

Whether you're having a drink at the Ear Inn, a rest at the Chelsea Hotel or a meal at the historic One If by Land, Two If By Sea, you're never too far away from an old New York City legend. Not even the Statue of Liberty is exempt from a good ole fashioned ghost story.

PLUS: A walk through the most mysterious house in Manhattan, with a surprise appearance by the Gilded Gentleman

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#493 The Mysterious Fox Sisters Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

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 house.

In 1848, the teenage girls Kate and Maggie Fox claimed to receive spiritual transmissions from the murdered man. Their gifts included interpreting mysterious knocking sounds and an unusual ability to conjure such otherworldly communications on a whim.

Later joined by their sister Leah, the Fox Sisters soon exhibited greater powers to communicate with the dead. They took this “act” on the road and enchanted some of New York City's most famous men. Through their atmospheric ‘spirit circles’, the Fox Sisters inspired an entirely new belief known as spiritualism.

They became household names — and attracted their share of skeptics who vexed the young women throughout their entire lives, attempting to debunk their haunted activities.

Were the Fox Sisters truly blessed with a gift of spiritual communication — or were they entertainers with an exquisite ability to deceive? You decide!

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

Visit the Bowery Boys website for a whole list of ghost-story podcasts. And see Greg and Tom live at Joe's Pub this Halloween season.

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#492 How Mamie Fish Partied Her Way to Gilded Age Power Sep 18, 2026

Show notes

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 practiced their curtsies. But what walked through the door that night was no prince, but did tell you everything about who Mamie Fish was.
She hadn’t started anywhere near the top. Raised in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in the 1850s, she watched her family’s fortune vanish and they relocated to the working class neighborhood of Astoria. She was barely educated, no beauty, and armed with nothing but a wit that could cut glass. It was enough to win Stuyvesant Fish, heir to one of New York’s oldest names and a future railroad president, who adored her for the rest of his life.

Mamie essentially invented the theme party at a time when New York society under Mrs. Astor and Ward McAllister was incredibly dull. Mamie’s response was to make it fun: live ducklings paddling down the dinner table, a harvest ball with golden pitchforks, a formal dinner for the dogs of Newport, and a party for the Czar of Russia who turned out to be her partner in crime, Harry Lehr, in a tinfoil crown.
Then the world changed around her — the press turned, her husband lost his railroad in a boardroom feud, and her 1913 Mother Goose Ball landed her on the wrong side of history.
This week, Tom sits down with Jennifer Wright, author of Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time: How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Gilded Age, Partied Her Way to Power.

PLUS:

Stand across from Mamie’s Stanford White mansion on the Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue tour at boweryboyswalks.com.
Listen to more glorious tales of the Gilded Age on The Gilded Gentleman Podcast hosted by Carl Raymond
Support the show and get our patron-only podcast Side Streets at patreon.com/boweryboys.

This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon

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The World Trade Center in the 1970s (Rewind) Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

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 forget that the World Trade Center, designed by Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, was a very complicated addition to the New York skyline when it officially opened in 1973.

While it might be fun to think of New York City in the 1970s through the lens of places like Studio 54 or CBGB, the Twin Towers were what really redefined New York.

The journey to build the world’s tallest building and its expansive complex of office towers and underground shops began in an effort by David Rockefeller to stimulate development in Manhattan’s fading Financial District. By the time Port Authority got on board to fund the project, the Twin Towers were bonded together with another vital project — a commuter train from New Jersey.

The World Trade Center inspired strong opinions from critics and the public alike, but eventually many grew to admire the strange towers which marked the skyline.

And for some, the Twin Towers became objects of obsession.

FEATURING: The insane, completely outlandish and ultimately successful feat of acrobatics by a very bold French tightrope walker.

PLUS: An interview with Kate Monaghan Connolly of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum about how that institution memorializes those lost in the tragedy while still celebrating the technological marvels that once stood there. And visit our website for more historical images of the Twin Towers.

This show was recorded in 2021 for the 20th anniversary, reedited and remastered by Kieran Gannon. We have a batch of brand new episodes of the Bowery Boys starting next week.

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Little Italy: From Immigrant Enclave To Italian Theme Park (Rewind) Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

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 podcast in a new light, exploring how these historic areas survive sudden changes in economic growth, housing needs and tourism. And listen to our prior shows on SoHo and Downtown Brooklyn.

Little Italy is the pocket-neighborhood reminder of the great wave of Italian immigration that came through New York City starting in the late 1870s. It was once a densely packed, vibrant district of pushcarts, cheese shops, barbershops, and organ griders, the home to thousands of new immigrants living in aging tenements.

The area still contains some of New York’s oldest continuously operating shops, from Ferrara Bakery to Di Palo’s. But the neighborhood also has a darker history, marked by Black Hand extortion plots and the enduring presence of organized crime.

Today’s Little Italy remains charming, though it continues to shrink, existing more as a tourist destination than a true Italian enclave. What does the future hold for this important landmark in American immigration history?

A version of this show was released in 2015—this newly re-edited and remastered version by Kieran Gannon. Watch an video version of this show, with a stroll through the neighborhood, on YouTube.

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What's Up With Downtown Brooklyn? (Rewind) Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

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 significant remnants of Brooklyn’s past; many areas have been radically altered and hundreds of old structures have been cleared over the decades.

But, in fact, Downtown Brooklyn is one of the few areas to still hold evidence of the borough’s glorious past — its days as an independent city and one of the largest urban centers in 19th century America.

Around Brooklyn City Hall (now Borough Hall) swirled all aspects of Brooklyn’s Gilded Age society. With the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and a network of elevated railroad lines, Downtown Brooklyn became a major destination with premier department stores on Fulton Street, entertainment venues like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and exclusive restaurants like Gage & Tollners.

The 20th century brought a new designation for Brooklyn — a borough of Greater New York — and a series of major developments that attempted to modernize the district — from the creation of Cadman Plaza to New York’s very own ‘tech hub’.

In 2004 a major zoning change brought a new addition to the multi-purpose neighborhood — high-end residential towers. Today these streets are darkened with the shadows of the borough's tallest buildings -- including the very tallest Brooklyn Tower.

What will the future hold for the original heart of the City of Brooklyn?

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 podcast in a new light, exploring how these historic areas survive sudden changes in economic growth, housing needs and tourism. See last week's show on SoHo for the first part in this series.

This episode was remastered by Kieran Gannon

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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