What was Times Square before the electric billboards, before the Broadway theaters and theme restaurants, before the thousands and thousands of tourists?

What was Times Square before it was Times Square? Today it’s virtually impossible to find traces of the area’s 18th and 19th century past. But in this episode, Tom and Greg will peel away the glamour and chaos — evict the Elmos and the pedicabs — to explore a far different world — of colonial estates, rolling farms, horse stables, and beer-themed hotels.

They’ll be ENDING their story today on the date December 31, 1904, when the very first New Year’s Eve celebration was held here – in the plaza newly christened as Times Square. But if you had walked through here fifty years earlier, you certainly would not have called it ‘the crossroads of the world.’

FEATURING: The Vanderbilts, the Pabsts, the Ochs, and the biggest musical of the 1900s! And a few connections in Times Square where you can still find these 19th-century traces of the past.

This show was edited by Kieran Gannon

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In 1886, during a miles-long parade celebrating the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, office workers in lower Manhattan began heaving ticker tape out the windows, creating a magical, blizzard-like landscape.

That tradition stuck. Today that particular corridor of Broadway -- connecting Battery Park to City Hall -- is known as the "Canyon of Heroes" thanks to the popularity of the ticker-tape parade.

While many cities with skyscrapers host ticker-tape parades today, New York was the place they originated in the late 19th century and for a very obvious reason -- the ticker-tape itself, a byproduct of the Financial District which revolutionized the way stocks were traded.

New York has regularly honored athletes, politicians, pilots, kings and queens, astronauts and generals with ticker-tape parades for over 125 years. Today, they're best known as a way to celebrate New York sports teams, the winners of the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup.

The story of the ticker-tape parade is also a story of modern American history in capsule form, celebrating technological achievements, victories in war, cultural milestones and international unity.

Greg and Tom are back in the studio to give you a rundown of New York's greatest parades. And they also pay tribute to those other local heroes -- the Department of Sanitation who cleans up after these festive but messy celebrations.

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Get your tickets for The Gilded Age Unplugged with Greg Young and Carl Raymond (Sept 5 at the Montauk Club) here.

One-two-three-four! The Ramones, a four-man rock band from Forest Hills, Queens, played the Bowery music club CBGB for the very first time on August 16, 1974.

Not only would Joey, Johnny, Tommy and Dee Dee reinvigorate downtown New York nightlife here -- creating a unique and energetic form of punk -- but they would join with a small group of musicians at CBGB to revolutionize American music in the 1970s.

In this episode we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Ramones' first performances in downtown Manhattan. But this also a tribute to New York rock music of the 1970s and to the most famous rock-music club in America.

CBGB & OMFUG officially stands for "Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers," and Hilly Kristal's legendary hole-in-the-wall music venue on the Bowery would be best defined by that "other music" -- namely punk, new wave and later hardcore.

Over the course of 70 performances, the Ramones would perfect their sound and appearance on the ragged little stage here at CBGB, building upon musical influences like the local glam rock scene (The New York Dolls, Jayne County) and their own nostalgic callbacks to the Beatles.

The mid-1970s CBGBs scene would produce other artists who would go on to mainstream, international fame -- Patti Smith, Television, the Talking Heads and Blondie. Not only would these artists become associated with the Bowery, but most of them would live on the surrounding streets.

On this special episode, Greg is joined by an incredible roster of guests including Ramones record producer and engineer Ed Stasium; longtime CBGBs fixture BG Hacker; tour guide and Ramones fan Ann McDermott and music historian Jesse Rifkin, author of This Must Be The Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City.

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See the Bowery Boys live at Joe's Pub this October!

After listening to this show, check out the Bowery Boys podcasts on the history of the East Village:
#416 Creating the East Village
#417 Walking the East Village

Carl Raymond of The Gilded Gentleman podcast and his guest Keith Taillon invite you into one of the most historically exclusive spaces in New York City -- the romantic and peaceful escape known as Gramercy Park.

This small two-acre square, constructed in the 1830s, has been called “America’s Bloomsbury”. Taking the reference from London’s famous neighborhood once home to many great writers and artists, New York’s Gramercy Park has similarly included noted cultural icons as architect Stanford White, actor Edwin Booth and the great politician Samuel Tilden.

Wandering along the park today it’s easy to gain a view back into the past — many of the original Greek Revival brick townhouses and brownstone mansions remain, some still in private hands. The park in the center is one of the most unique places in America — it is a private park, not a city property and its upkeep has been managed since its inception in the early 19th century by the property owners around the park itself.

Writer and historian Keith Taillon joins Carl for this episode to look back into this hidden pocket of New York City’s past and unlock its history.

Visit the website for images and other information about Gramercy Park

Follow along with Greg and Tom in this stand-alone travelogue episode as they visit several historic cities and towns in the Netherlands -- Utrecht, De Bilt, Breukelen and Haarlem -- wandering through cafe-filled streets and old cobblestone alleyways, the air ringing with church bells and street music.

But of course, their mission remains the same as the past three episodes. For there are traces of Dutch culture and history all over New York City -- through the names of boroughs, neighborhoods, streets and parks.

From Spuyten Duyvil Creek flowing into the Harlem River along the Bronx shoreline to New Utrecht, Gravesend and Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. All of those place names can be traced to the Dutch presence of New Amsterdam and New Netherland.

In the final Bowery Boys episode recorded in the Netherlands, Tom and Greg head to several places that have unique links to the New York City area, mostly through Dutch colonial connections made in the 17th century.

Utrecht -- The medieval city with its unique canal wharves and monastery courtyards that may be the bicycle capital of the world. What are its connections to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn?

Breukelen -- How did this charming, quiet old town on the Vecht River become the namesake of the borough of Brooklyn? Both places have "Brooklyn Bridges." But there are a couple of other surprising parallels.

De Bilt -- The ancestral home of the Vanderbilt family, can Tom find one of their 17th-century ancestors among the stones of an old cemetery?

Haarlem -- Manhattan's Harlem remains one of America's cultural centers, and the rustic Dutch city that inspired its name also has cultural riches aplenty -- from its museums to its historic windmill Molen de Adriaan.

WITH -- Mysterious pharmaceuticals, pedal boat misadventures, ghostly apparitions and Aperol Spritzes!

PLUS: The s pecial link between Amsterdam's Jewish Quarter and New York City's Lower East Side -- through pickles

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The name Stuyvesant can be found everywhere in New York City -- in the names of neighborhoods, apartments, parks and high schools. Peter Stuyvesant, the last director-general of New Amsterdam, is a hero to some, a villain to others -- and probably a caricature to all.

What do we really know about Peter Stuyvesant?

In their last days in Amsterdam (before heading to other parts of the Netherlands), Tom and Greg spend their time getting to know Stuyvesant, thanks to their special guest Jaap Jacobs, the author of a forthcoming biography on the elusive and controversial figure.

And outside the mayor's residence in Amsterdam's exclusive Gouden Bocht (Golden Bend), they meet up with Jennifer Tosch of Black Heritage Tours (with tours in New York and Amsterdam) to investigate the story of New Amsterdam and the Dutch slave trade.

PLUS They stroll around New Amsterdam on a dark, stormy evening. No really! Well, it's the village of Marken where one can find the closest approximation of what New Amsterdam looked like.

AND A few more myths are dispelled. What actual date should New York City mark as its anniversary -- 1624, 1625, or 1626? Did a letter describing the so-called 'purchase of Manhattan' from the Lenape actually come from New Amsterdam? And was New Amsterdam, in fact, even its real name?

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Our adventure in the Netherlands continues with a quest to find the Walloons, the French-speaking religious refugees who became the first settlers of New Netherland in 1624. Their descendants would last well beyond the existence of New Amsterdam and were among the first people to become New Yorkers.

But you can't tell the Walloon story without that other group of American religious settlers -- the Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts four years earlier.

All roads lead to Leiden, the university city with a history older than Amsterdam. Greg and Tom join last episode's guest Jaap Jacobs, the author of The Colony of New Netherland, to explore the birthplace of Rembrandt, the historic botanical garden and a site associated with Adriaen van der Donck (whose "patroonship," or manor, gives the city of Yonkers, New York, its name).

Then they visit with Koen Kleijn, art historian and editor-in-chief of history magazine Ons Amsterdam, who takes them on a journey through Amsterdam's history -- from the innovative story of its canals to the disaster known as Tulipmania, the 1630 speculative mania that set the stage for generations of stock-market shenanigans.

PLUS: A detour to Amsterdam Noord and a look at a miniature model of New Amsterdam, courtesy of the design and production team at Artitec. And while visiting Ian Kenny from the John Adams Institute, Tom and Greg come upon an old friend holding court in a fountain.

PLUS: Tom sustains an injury --- from a bitterballen!

The epic journey begins! The Bowery Boys Podcast heads to old Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to find traces of New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement which became New York.

We begin our journey at Amsterdam's Centraal Station and spend the day wandering the streets and canals, peeling back the centuries in search of New York's roots.

Our tour guide for this adventure is Jaap Jacobs, Honorary Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the author of The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America.

Jaap takes us around to several spots within the old medieval city -- Centrum, including the Red Light District -- weaving through the canals and along the harbor, in search of connections to New York's (and by extension, America's) past.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Dutch settlement in North America, led by the Dutch West India Company, a trading and exploration arm of the thriving Dutch empire. So our first big questions begin there:

-- What was the Dutch Empire in 1624 when New Netherland was first settled? Was the colony a major part of it? Would Dutch people have even understood where New Amsterdam was?

-- What's the difference between the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company?

-- To what degree was New Amsterdam truly tolerant in terms of religion? Was it purely driving by profits and trading relationships with the area's native people like the Lenape?

-- The prime export was the pelts of beavers and other North American animals. What happened to these thousands of pelts once they arrived in Amsterdam?

-- How central were the Dutch to the emerging Atlantic slave trade? When did the first enslaved men and women arrive in New Amsterdam?

-- And how are the Pilgrims tied in to all of this? Had they always been destined for the area of today's Massachusetts?

Among the places we visit this episode -- the Maritime Museum, the Rijksmuseum, Amersham's oldest building Oude Kirk, the Schreierstoren (the Crying Tower) and many more

PLUS: We get kicked out of a cloister! And we try raw herring sandwiches.

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