Episode 1 – Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of history and social science at Columbia University in New York City. “A few miles from Manhattan there is a parallel New York. Instead of screeching sub-way trains, granite and glass museums, and dirty-water hot dog stands, lies a small island where the tourists never go. This place […]
Episode 2 – “Superstorm” with Dr. David A. Robinson Professor at Rutgers University and the New Jersey Climatologist. “What would become the largest Atlantic storm on record swirled violently from the Caribbean creating a devastating oceanic force that at its zenith reached 900 miles across and 1000 miles long. It was called Super-storm Sandy. Sandy […]
Episode 3 “The Island at the Center of the World”: with Russell Shorto Author, Historian, and Journalist. Before there was a Hart Island, even before there was a New York City, there was, “The Island at the Center of the World”. Join us as we explore the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten […]
Episode 4 “Inside Rikers: Stories From the World’s Largest Penal Colony” Professor Jennifer Wynn, City University of New York. “Wynn teaches a writing class to male inmates at Rikers Prison as part of a rehabilitation program known as Fresh Start, and is the editor of Rikers Review, an illustrated magazine featuring short stories, profiles, true […]
Episode 5: “Ship Ablaze” Professor Edward T. O’Donnell Holy Cross University. “There were few experienced swimmers among the over 1,300 Lower East Side residents who boarded the General Slocum on June 15, 1904. It shouldn’t have mattered since the steamship was chartered only for a languid excursion from Manhattan to Long Island Sound. But a […]
Episode 6: “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, […]
Episode 7 “Hart Island A Musical” by Michelle Elliot and Danny Larsen. “Hart Island”, is the story of two people on the fringe of society. Their lives intersect on Hart Island, New York City’s public burial ground. Although marginalized by the rest of society, they come to appreciate each other’s humanity-a powerful action in a […]
Episode 8 “Bobby Driscoll”; With Dave Bossert Director/producer Disney Animation Studios. “The clean cut child star with an impish, upturned nose, and beguiling expression was handpicked for an acting career by Walt Disney, himself—Of all the roles he played, Peter Pan seemed most like his alter-ego. He grew up—and worked—in Hollywood, but it might have […]
Episode 9 “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 […]
Episode 10 “Five Points”, with Professor Tyler Anbinder. By the late 1820’s the Five Points had already been considered a slum where poor immigrant and African American’s came to live and toil amid filthy tenements and converted industrial dwellings. Author Charles Dickens visited Five Points in 1842 and noted, “So far, nearly every house is […]
Episode 11 “Dawn Powell”, Tim Page Professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic, writer, and editor. Does the name Dawn Powell mean anything to you? I thought so. But you’re not alone. Just as millions of people knew nothing about Hart Island, millions of people never heard of Dawn Powell, perhaps the greatest writer no-one has ever […]
Episode 12 “Bellevue”: Dr. Danielle Ofri Essayist, editor, and practicing internist in New York City. “How exactly did bodies end up on Hart Island? Their first stop use to be the Bellevue Hospitals Morgue. During the 19th century, the Bellevue Morgue had become the first official repository of deceased New Yorkers. If a body was […]
Episode 13 Leola Dickerson: Peter Strauss Senior Partner at Pierro, Connor, and Strauss. She lay on the floor for three days. A slip and fall had rendered her helpless, at the mercy of fate as neighbors came and went just feet from her door. Ii was the mailman who became concerned she had not been […]
Episode 14 “The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire” Hasia Diner Professor New York University. As historian Robert Hughes notes, “The Tenth Ward of Lower Manhattan—the Lower East Side—had by the 1890’s, the highest concentration of people in the world: 344,000 people packed into one square mile, or nine square yards each, including street and pavement […]
Episode 15 “Hebrew Free Burial Society”: 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 and […]
Episode 16 “Shelia Terry”: Larry Powell Professor University of Alabama at Birmingham. “American film actress Shelia Terry was a true Hollywood starlet of the 1930’s, staring in among other films, three with John Wayne before she ended her life with an overdose of sleeping pill in 1947. Described as one of films first glamour stars, […]
Episode 17 “The Orphan Trains and Charles Loring Brace”: Stephen O’Connor Professor Sarah Lawrence University. In 1848 Ireland was gripped by famine. Nearly a million people would die of starvation and typhoid Fever. Desperate for survival a million more Irish would abandon their homeland and come to America. Many settled in the Five Points section […]
Episode 18 “Leonard Melfi”: Edward Berkeley Professor the Julliard School. Leonard Melfi was revered by his peers as one of the most respected and creative playwrights of his generation. He is most associated with the offbeat La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club on East 4th Street in New York’s East Village which produced twenty-two of his […]
Episode 19 “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, […]
Episode 20 “Ruth Proskauer Smith”: Ian Dowbiggin Professor at University of Prince Edward Island. Ruth Proskauer Smith or Ruth P. Smith as she became more commonly known as, was a historic pro-choice reproductive rights, and pro-right to die advocate. Even after she was over one hundred years old, she spent much of her time teaching […]
Episode 21 “AIDS”: Michael Bronsky Professor, Harvard University. “On a hot midsummer night in June of 1969, a group of police officers stormed into Greenwich Village’s tiny Stonewall Inn, one of Manhattans early gay and lesbian bars. The patrons of Stonewall revolted. For many this confrontation would eventual become known as the Gay Liberation Movement. […]
Episode 22 “AIDS-The First Five Years”: Jean Ashton Director New York Historical Society Resources & Programs. It is estimated that during the AIDS epidemic thousands of AIDS victims were buried on Hart Island. Many because they had become disowned by their family and died unclaimed, and many more because there was no one left to […]
Episode 23 “Leo Birinski”: Barbara Kosta Professor at the 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, , […]
Episode 24 “Potters Field(s)” Andrew Berman, Executive Director Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “By the early 1800’s New York City boasted a population of over 200,000 qualifying it as the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. As New York City’s population grew, so did its number of dead. The fact that the number of […]
Episode 25 “Lloyd “The Whistler” Threlkeld” Douglass Fraser Professor and Musicologist. “Lloyd Buford Threlkeld, also known as the “Whistler” for his ability to make sweet melodious sounds emerge from his practiced nose flute also played the guitar and sang. “Whistler and his Band” was one of the most famous jug bands of its time. Threlkeld […]
Episode 26 “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 […]
Episode 27: “Boroughs of the Dead” with Marie Carter Editor, writer, teacher, and tour guide. When detectives and forensic scientists were called to investigate the Hart Island human remains found littering its beach, none of them could have known they had been probably treading on additional mass graves hidden beneath the New York City’s parks, […]