Tag: New York City
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Lower Manhattan, 1910: Immigrants Build the City and the Story
The island of Manhattan in the mid-19th through early 20th century was a microcosm of the larger immigrant history of the U.S. Everyone both mixed and didn’t mix. The waves of new languages, cultures, and customs rubbed alongside the many generations that continued to move uptown as the decades progressed. Irish immigration My story takes…
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The Devil’s Mile: New York City’s Most Notorious Street, 1910
Take a stroll down Bowery today and you’ll find a range of shops, museums, hotels, and other largely forgettable places. But the Bowery of a hundred years ago was a completely different place. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but the Bowery took that to a whole other level. Both the Bowery…
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The Mysterious Death of Elsie Helair, New York City, 1917
All good mysteries must have a crime. One of the key elements in writing a mystery is getting the crime right—and making it interesting. Often, truth is stranger than fiction. In reading about murders in New York City newspapers in the 1910s (it’s true; writers really do google the wildest things!), I came across an…
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Isabella Goodwin: First female detective of the NYPD
I have been interested in the immigrant history of New York City for as long as I can remember. My own family history is tied to it (more on that in a future post). But it took time to find the story I wanted to tell. Finding the inspiration BBC History Extra, one of my…
