It wasn't just immigrants that flooded into the City during the nineteenth century, but also yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis. Kelly traces the struggle that .. show full overview
It wasn't just immigrants that flooded into the City during the nineteenth century, but also yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis. Kelly traces the struggle that finally brought the City's first permanent Board of Health to fight the epidemics that had killed thousands of New Yorkers. Plus we meet two medical heroes who saved hundreds of lives: Edward R. Squibb, who started at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1840s and perfected the manufacture of ether as an anesthetic, and a living legend of surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center who changed heart and vascular surgery, Dr. Frank Spencer.
In the 20s, when every illegal bar in Manhattan was making payoffs just to stay open, criminal enterprise became Organized Crime. On the surface the best speakeasies, like the 21 Club, .. show full overview
In the 20s, when every illegal bar in Manhattan was making payoffs just to stay open, criminal enterprise became Organized Crime. On the surface the best speakeasies, like the 21 Club, glittered with patrons willing to pay as much for a night out as the average American earned in a year. Kelly travels through the 21 Club's secret vault and onto the island of Broad Channel in Queens. There houses built on pilings over the water of Jamaica Bay still stand from the time when speedboats would load illegal booze from the rum ships floating just outside international waters. Plus we make the acquaintance of Arnold Rothstein, the Prohibition-era gangster who met his end at a secret location we'll get to visit.
Kelly takes a virtual trip back in time to see what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago before the tops of hills were scraped off and dumped into the river. Kelly also journeys through .. show full overview
Kelly takes a virtual trip back in time to see what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago before the tops of hills were scraped off and dumped into the river. Kelly also journeys through underground brooks and streams, and we learn what's really underfoot at South Street Seaport where the skeletons of sunken ships provided the City's earliest landfill. Kelly then explores how landfill changed two centuries later with the engineering marvel that created the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
