At the heart of New York’s Gilded Age — the late 19th-century era of unprecedented American wealth and excess — were families with the names Astor, Waldorf, Schermerhorn, and Vanderbilt, alongside power players like A.T. Stewart, Jay Gould and William “Boss” Tweed.

They would all make their homes — and in the case of the Vanderbilts, their great many homes — on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

The image of Fifth Avenue as a luxury retail destination today grew from the street’s aristocratic reputation in the 1800s. The rich were inextricably drawn to the avenue as early as the 1830s when rich merchants, anxious to be near the exquisite row houses of Washington Square Park, began turning it into an artery of expensive abodes.

In this podcast, Tom and Greg present a world that’s somewhat hard to imagine — free-standing mansions in an exclusive corridor running right through the center of Manhattan. Why was Fifth Avenue fated to become the domain of the so-called “Upper Ten”? And what changed about the city in the 20th century to ensure the eventual destruction of most of them?

The following is a re-edited, remastered version of two past Bowery Boys shows — the Rise and Fall of the Fifth Avenue Mansion. Combined, this tells the whole story of Fifth Avenue, from the initial development of streets in the 1820s to its Midtown transformation into a mecca of high-end shopping in the 1930s.

This could also serve as a primer to the HBO series The Gilded Age, the official podcast co-hosted by Tom Meyers! You can listen to the Official Gilded Age Podcast on all audio podcast players as well as YouTube.

For even more Gilded Age tales, check out The Gilded Gentleman Podcast.

People who live in Inwood know how truly special it is. Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood (aside from Marble Hill) feels like it's outside of the city -- and in some places, even outside of time and space. Unlike the lower Manhattan's flat avenues and organized streets, Inwood varies wildly in elevation and its streets wind up hills and down into valleys.

It's a twenty minute walk from the mysterious "Indian caves" to some of the best Dominican food in New York City. You can experience the ghosts of Gilded Age mansions close to New York's last remaining forest. Revolutionary War artifacts sit a few blocks away from vestiges of a 20th century Irish community.

In this special on-location episode, Greg Young and producer Kieran Gannon wind their way through the streets of Inwood and through (that's right) thousands of years of history -- from salt marshes to old amusement parks, from ancient arches to Broadway musicals, with ducks and egrets and dogs and beavers making guest appearances along the way.

And since we're on the subject -- what IS the deal with Marble Hill? What do you mean, it's a Manhattan neighborhood?

Featuring special guests Melissa Kieweit (Dyckman Farmhouse), Cole Thompson (Lost Inwood) and Led Black (Uptown Collective)

Visit the Bowery Boys website for more information on our guests and some additional images.

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

The Bowery Boys Podcast is proud to be sponsored by FOUNDED BY NYC, celebrating New York City's 400th anniversary in 2025 and the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. Read about all the exciting events and world class institutions commemorating the five boroughs legacy of groundbreaking achievements, and find ways to celebrate the city that's always making history. foundedbynyc.com

The children of the Gilded Age were seen but not heard. Until now!

Listener favorite Esther Crain, author and creator of Ephemeral New York joins The Gilded Gentleman for a look at the world of children during the Gilded Age.

As she shared in the episode “Invisible Magicians: Domestic Servants in Gilded Age New York” with writings by actual servants, Esther has uncovered documents written in children’s own voices that capture their world and reality. From a 12-year-old boy in Gilded Age Harlem to a teenage girl on what would become Manhattan’s Upper East Side, we can finally meet children who are both seen and heard.

A special replay from The Gilded Gentleman podcast, in honor of the upcoming season of HBO's The Gilded Age.

And listen to The Gilded Gentleman podcast for a wide range of shows about America's Gilded Age including this week's show on Frederick Douglass.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

While you may know the Brooklyn Museum for its wildly popular cutting-edge exhibitions, the borough's premier art institution can actually trace its origins back to a more rustic era -- and to the birth of the city of Brooklyn itself.

On July 4, 1825, the growing village laid a cornerstone for its new Brooklyn Apprentices Library, an educational institution to support its young "clerks, journeymen and apprentices." This was a momentous occasion in the history of Brooklyn, a ceremony overseen by the Marquis de Lafayette and observed by a young boy named Walt Whitman.

The library was part of a movement -- started a century before by Benjamin Franklin-- to make knowledge readily available within the young country.

The Brooklyn Museum's celebratory new exhibition Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200 looks back at its storied origins and eventual growth, encompassing most of the young city's cultural institutions and soon expanding into a monumental new home next to the new Prospect Park, designed by McKim, Mead and White.

Abigail Dansiger, the Director of Libraries and Archives, and Meghan Bill, the Coordinator of Provenance, join Greg on this week's show to explain the unusual origins of the Brooklyn Museum and the unique philosophies which inform its exhibitions.

PLUS: A couple genuine mysteries lurk within the new exhibition, including a bottle-shaped niche within the cornerstone and an Egyptologist's unencrypted notebook.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

In 1939, Robert Moses sprung his latest project upon the world -- the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge, connecting the tip of Manhattan to the Brooklyn waterfront, slicing through New York Harbor just to the north of Governor's Island.

To build it, Moses dictated that the historic Battery Park would need to be redesigned. And its star attraction the New York Aquarium would have to be demolished.

The aquarium was housed in the former military fort Castle Clinton which had seen so much of New York City's history pass through its walls under the name Castle Garden -- first as an early 19th century entertainment venue and later as the Emigrant Landing Depot, which processed millions of newly arriving immigrants.

This valuable link to American history would surely have been lost if not for activists like Albert S. Bard, a revolutionary landmarking advocate who countered and disrupted Moses every step of the way.

In this episode, Greg interviews another landmarking superstar -- author and civic activist Anthony C. Wood -- on the occasion of his new biography of Bard titled Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Secret Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero.

In his research, Wood discovered a personality far more interesting than his public persona and a man with far more at stake than just his beliefs in preservation.

Visit the website for more information and images of things discussed on this show.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon.

A long, long time ago in New York — in the 1730s, back when the city was a holding of the British, with a little over 10,000 inhabitants — a German printer named John Peter Zenger decided to print a four-page newspaper called the New York Weekly Journal.

This is pretty remarkable in itself, as there was only one other newspaper in town called the New York Gazette, an organ of the British crown and the governor of the colony.

But Zenger’s paper would call to question the actions of that governor, a virtual despot named William Cosby, and in so doing, set in motion an historic trial that marked a triumph for liberty and modern democratic rights, including freedom of the press and the power of jury nullification.

This entire story takes place in lower Manhattan, and most of it on a couple floors of old New York City Hall at Wall Street and Nassau Street. Many years later, this spot would see the first American government and the inauguration of George Washington.

Many could argue that the trial that occurs here on August 4, 1735, is equally important to the causes of democracy and a free press.

We're marking the 290th anniversary of this landmark trial with a newly re-edited, remastered version of our show from 2013.

Visit the website for more information

When Prospect Park was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York’s Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — weren’t finished.

This park came with two grand pleasure drives, wide boulevards that emanated from the north and south ends of the park. Eastern Parkway, the first parkway in the United States, is the home of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its leafy pedestrian malls running through the neighborhood of Crown Heights.

But it’s Ocean Parkway that is the most unusual today, an almost six-mile stretch which takes drivers, bikers, runners and (at one point) horse riders all the way to Coney Island, at a time when people were just beginning to appreciate the beach’s calming and restorative values.

Due to its wide, straight surface, Ocean Parkway even became an active speedway for fast horses. When bicycles became all the rage in the late 1880s, they also took to the parkway and avid cyclists eventually got their first bike lane in 1894 — the first in the United States.

FEATURING: A tale of two cemeteries — one that was demolished to make way for one parkway, and another which apparently (given its ‘no vacancy’ status) thrives next to another.

Visit the website for more information about other Bowery Boys episodes

On October 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford walked into a press conference at the National Press Club and, using more precise, more eloquent words than legend remembers, but in no uncertain terms, told New York City that the federal government was not going to bail it out.

The following day the New York Daily News -- the city's first tabloid newspaper summarized his blunt, castigating speech into one succinct and memorable headline -- FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

Of course, the president never literally said DROP DEAD. But his words did signal the severity of New York City's problem -- the city was on the brink of bankruptcy.

In this episode, Greg dives into life in New York City during the year 1975 and the circumstances surrounding its most dire financial crisis, one which threatened the livelihoods of its millions of residents and damaged New York City’s reputation for decades.

Directors Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn join Greg to discuss their new film on the New York financial crisis Drop Dead City, which uses gritty archival footage and a series of special guests (such as Harrison J. Goldin, Charlie Rangel, Betsy Gotbaum and former Bowery Boys guest Kevin Baker) to explain this complicated story.

If Michael's name looks familiar, that's because his father Felix Rohatyn played a critical role in bailing out the bankrupt city.

Visit the website for more information

More information on DROP DEAD CITY here