On Lexington Avenue sits a special food store named Kalustyan's with a second floor stocked with international spices, syrups, and bitters. In 1881, this was the home of Chester A. Arthur, and it was here in the early morning hours of September 20, that he became the 21st President of the United States.

He is one of only two men inaugurated as president in New York City -- the other was George Washington. And Arthur was certainly no Washington!

Fans of the Netflix series Death By Lightning have already been introduced to Arthur's rugged, street-toughened personality, an efficient operator of Republican politics in a city governed by Democrats and Tammany Hall. He was quite famous, in fact, for converting Tammany men to Republican voters by using similar bare-knuckle tactics.

He eventually became the Collector of the Port of New York, one of the most lucrative jobs in American government. And then, through a strange series of events, he was catapulted onto the national ticket for president as the running mate of James Garfield.

But nobody really wanted the New Yorker for president, did they?

This is a story not only of a man out of his depth, but of the two very different individuals who helped hone his reputation -- the New York power broker Roscoe Conkling, and the Upper East Side recluse Julia Sand, who may have helped guide Arthur through the most challenging moments of his 'accidental' presidency.

PLUS: How Madison Square Park has become one of the only true monuments to his legacy.

Visit the website for images and more information about this story.

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon.

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Bowery Boys History Live is a live-show series at City Winery hosted by Greg Young featuring a variety of historians and tour guides. The last installment this summer featured author Liz Block and tour guide Keith Taillon. As live performances, they're a bit more loose and irreverent than the regular podcast and sometimes feature references to images being projected on stage.

As a special holiday bonus, step into the season with this festive dose of “Hot Victorian” history, naughty-list edition.

Join Greg Young of the Bowery Boys Podcast as he hosts this special holiday edition of Bowery Boys History Live!, recorded before a live audience at New York’s City Winery on Dec 12, 2025.

Featuring an all-star lineup: Carl Raymond of The Gilded Gentleman Podcast, Aaron Radford-Wattley—creator and author of Hot Victorians: Meet Your Dream Man from the Past—and historian and tour guide Kyle Supley — aka the clock whisperer.

So pour yourself some eggnog, cozy up by the fire, and enjoy live shenanigans full of holiday history and vintage comedy.

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New Yorkers have gotten around their cities by subways, buses, elevated trains, streetcars and ferries. And the ways in which they have paid for them have changed as well. And keeps changing!

This month, the city is saying farewell to the MetroCard, the magnetic-stripe card that has gotten the town moving since the early 1990s. When the orange cards debuted, they replaced the strange physical tokens commuters had been using since 1953.

Mass transit fares were also a key issue in the past New York mayoral race — and they’ve always been a key issue for voters since the late 19th century. That’s part of the reason that fares famously remained five cents for decades. But as the subway system expanded, stretching through Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, it soon became evident that it was becoming too expensive to operate.

But changing the price is one thing; going from currency to token to MetroCard to OMNI (our latest method) requires technical modifications of every station in the system. In 1953, that entire system changed — literally overnight — to accommodate the first tokens.

Jodi Shapiro of the New York Transit Museum joins the podcast to discuss the museum’s latest exhibition, FAREwell MetroCard, which celebrates the newly retired fare system.

This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon

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This month marks the 190th anniversary of one of the most devastating disasters in New York City history — The Great Fire of 1835.

This massive fire, among the worst in American history in terms of its economic impact, devastated the city during one freezing December evening, destroying hundreds of shops and warehouses and changing the face of Manhattan forever.

It also underscored the city’s need for a functioning water system and a permanent fire department.

So why were there so many people drinking champagne in the street? And how did the son of Alexander Hamilton save the day?

PLUS We give you a another reason to check out the Stone Street Historic District

To mark this special anniversary, we have newly remastered and edited our classic Bowery Boys podcast on this subject which was originally released on March 13, 2009

This episode was produced by Kieran Gannon

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She stands in New York Harbor as America’s most recognizable symbol—but the story of the Statue of Liberty begins thousands of miles away, in the charming Alsatian city of Colmar, France.

In this special on-location episode, Tom ventures to the picturesque town where sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in 1834. Walking through Colmar’s cobblestone streets and half-timbered facades, Tom sits down with Juliette Chevée, curator of the Musée Bartholdi, to uncover the French side of this iconic American monument.

Who was Bartholdi? What did the statue originally mean to the French republicans who conceived it at an 1865 dinner party? How did a rejected Egyptian lighthouse design become the template for Liberty’s form?

And how did two Frenchmen—Bartholdi and the historian Édouard de Laboulaye—manage to convince a foreign country to accept a colossal structure without any government assistance from either France or the United States?

This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon

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Our second in a series of podcasts about New York City and American immigration history.

Between the late 1890s and early 1920s, over 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe fled their homes and made the long journey to America, escaping persecution and violence in their native countries. Many were fleeing state-sanctioned antisemitism in Russia.

This mass immigration effort was, in large part, brought about by three entrepreneurial men: Albert Ballin, the director of the Hamburg-America line; Jacob Schiff, the German-born New York-based philanthropist and financier; and the Gilded Age financial titan J.P. Morgan.

It is through the research and writing of historian Steven Ujifusa that many details of this story have finally been brought to light in his book The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I.

In this special presentation of the Gilded Gentleman podcast, Steve joins Carl to discuss these momentous events. In addition, Steve shares his personal story about how he uncovered little-known material to bring this history to life. Check out last week's show on Ellis Island after you've listened to this one.

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Ellis Island is one of America’s great landmarks, a place in New York Harbor that represents the millions of people who arrived in this country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The north side of Ellis Island, now operated by the National Park Service as the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration (part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument), saw nearly 12 million immigrants processed between 1892 and 1954. Part of the "processing" involved medical and mental health tests. Most people passed successfully, then boarded a ferry to the mainland — and a new life.

But some were kept behind, those who did not pass those tests. They were then sent to the other side of Ellis Island.

In this special episode, sponsored by Founded By NYC, Greg and Tom recount the history of immigration into New York during the 19th century and the founding of Ellis Island in the 1890s. Then they pay a visit to ‘the other side’ — the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital — with Justin Southern and Jim Dessicino of Save Ellis Island.This non-profit leads hard-hat tours through these spectacular and unique ruins.

Visit the website to see more images from today's show. This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon.

Read all about New York City during the holiday season and all the other 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 at Founded By NYC.

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The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has a surprisingly dramatic history.

Millions tune in each year to watch the tree lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around the tree’s massive branches during the holiday season, adjusting their phones for that perfect holiday selfie.

But the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is more than just decor. The tree has reflected the mood of the United States itself — through good times and bad.

The first tree at this site in 1931 became a symbol of hope during the Great Depression. With the dedication of the first official Christmas tree two years later, the lighting ceremony was considered a stroke of marketing genius for the grand new “city within a city” funded by JD Rockefeller Jr.

The tree has also been an enduring television star — from the early years in the 1950s with Howdy Doody to its upgrade to prime time in the 1990s.

Join Greg for this festive holiday history featuring kaleidoscopic lighting displays, painted branches, whirling snowflakes, reindeer and a very tiny owl.

Please enjoy this newly edited and remastered version of our 2021 show on New York City's most famous Christmas tree and the surprisingly fascinating story of how its annual lighting became a national event.

And check out this list of New York City holiday activities, provided by Founded by NYC

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