TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 21
Episode 21 “The Bowery”; Dr. Robert Aronowitz, Physician and medical historian, University of Pennsylvania. “The Bowery is one of the oldest stretches of land in Manhattan, and was once a footpath used by members of the Lenape tribe to transverse Manhattan Island. Once the home of the most affluent members of New York social circles, […]
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Episode 22 “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History”: by John Barry, Author and historian. The influenza pandemic is believed to have killed somewhere between 50-100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death […]
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Episode 23 “Leo Birinski”: with Barbara Kosta, Professor, University of Arizona. For a man with a little known history, no legitimate records to prove his place of birth, or even his date of birth, and who would eventually be buried in a mass grave on Hart Island, Leo Birinski became a known playwright, , screenwriter, […]
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Episode 24 “Still Born”: with MJ Adams. Fifteen years after a Manhattan hospital sent her stillborn baby to New York City’s potter’s field for burial, MJ Adams heard the name Hart Island for the first time. Adams, then living in New York City, learned the full-term baby boy she was carrying had died in utero. […]
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Episode 25 “The Tenement Museum”: with Kevin Jennings, Director. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a National Historic Site. The Museum’s two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, […]
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Episode 26 “Ghosts of St Vincents”: with Tom Eubanks. Founded in 1849 to care for indigent immigrants in Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s Hospital was sold in 2010 to create multi-million-dollar homes. In its 161 years of existence, the legendary institution treated survivors of the Titanic, tended to victims of both World Trade Center attacks, and […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 27
Episode 27 “Greta Garbo”: with Lois Banner, Professor (ret) USC. Leo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in the United States. Birinski was the screenwriter of many Hollywood productions including, “Song of Song”s staring Marlene Dietrich, “The Lady Has Plans”, staring Paulette Goddard, and perhaps his most famous, […]
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Episode 28 “Louisa Van Slyke”: with Author Gail Jarrow. The ship lurched in the heavy North Atlantic swell, its bow plunging deep in the troughs as it pitched sharply, its seasick passengers crammed into its small hold. The young lady, dressed simply, was just another anonymous face in the crowded ship. She kept to herself, […]
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Episode 29 “Hebrew Free Burial Society”: with Amy Koplow, Executive Director. While many of the young women and men who perished in the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire could be identified, many could not. As unclaimed or identified deaths, according to New York City policy, bodies were traditionally shipped to the City Morgue at Bellevue […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 30
Episode 30 “Six to Celebrate” Simeon Bankoff, Executive Director of Historic District Council. In 2017 the annual “Six to Celebrate” initiative from the Historic Districts Council, highlighted six neighborhoods in New York City, in need of preservation attention: Hart Island, the city’s potter’s field which contains the mass grave of over one million people, was […]