To wrap up our 15th anniversary celebration -- and to set up our big 400th episode -- we take a fond look at one corner of New York City which taught us to love local history.
Perhaps you know this area for Seward Park, the first municipal playground in the United States, or for Straus Square, named for Nathan Straus, philanthropist and co-owner (with his brother Isidor) of Macy's Department Store. Today, trendy artists and influencers instead spend their weekends in Dimes Square, just one block (and seemingly one world) away.
In the 19th century, as Rutgers Square, this area became a small portion of a large German immigrant community called Kleindeutschland. In an inconceivable historical moment, a statue was almost raised here -- to William 'Boss' Tweed, leader of Tammany Hall.
By the late 19th century, this place was the center for American Jewish culture, and East Broadway became Yiddish publishers row, hosting newspapers and magazines from a host of perspectives. In the 20th century, thanks to a mid-century housing boom (fueled partially by the labor unions firmly rooted to this place), some also called it Cooperative Village, with hundreds of old, deteriorating tenements replaced with new high rises.
It's a neighborhood that means so much to so many -- and we hope you learn to love it all yourself, no matter what you call it.
PLUS: We're join by staff members of the Forward, celebrating its 125th year of publication. Forward archivist Chana Pollack joins us along with Ginna Green and, hosts of the the newspaper column-turned-podcast version A Bintel Brief.
#407 New York by Gaslight: Illuminating the 19th Century
Rewind: When The Irish Came To New York
#406 How Wall Street Got Its Name
#405 Mona Lisa at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The First Woman Ever Photographed
#404 Nighthawks and Automats: Edward Hopper's New York
#403 The Fulton Fish Market: History at the Seaport
Rewind: A Bar Named Julius', New York's Newest Landmark
#402 Treasures from the World's Fair
Side Streets: Good Diners, Great Pizza and Mars 2112
#401 The World Before Wordle: Talking Puzzles With AJ Jacobs
The Mysteries of Absinthe: Dancing With The Green Fairy
#400 Jacob Riis: 'The Other Half' of the Gilded Age
#398 Marilyn Monroe in New York
Rewind: Birth of the Five Boroughs
#397 Ghost Stories of the Hudson River
Rewind: An Evening at Sardi's
#396 Samuel Tilden and the Presidential Election of 1876
#395 Jefferson Market and the Women's House of Detention
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