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.
#350 The World Trade Center in the 1970s
Rewind: Strange Hoaxes of the 19th Century
#349 The Queensboro Bridge and the Rise of a Borough
Rewind: The Destruction of Penn Station
Rewind: The Construction of Penn Station
#348 Cheers! The Stories of Four Fabulous Cocktails
Rewind: Historic Vaccines -- The End of Polio and Smallpox
#347 Steam Heat! A Gilded Age Miracle
Rewind: The City in Flames - The Great Fire of 1835
#346 The Beatles Invade New York!
Rewind: The Curious Case of Typhoid Mary
#345 LaGuardia's War on Pushcarts: The Creation of Essex Street Market
Rewind: On The Radio: A History of the Airwaves
#344 Ghostbusters (Bowery Boys Movie Club)
#343 Literary Horrors of New York City
#342 Ghost Stories of Old New York (ALIVE at Joe's Pub)
#341 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rewind: The Mystery of the Central Park Obelisk
#340 The Real Life Adventures of Tom Thumb
Rewind: The Revolutionary Tavern of Samuel Fraunces
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