If you like our show, then we think you'll love the New York Historical Society's podcast for the ages hosted by David M. Rubenstein.

Long before the first battle of the American Revolution, the conflict between loyalists and patriots swept through all facets of American society.

In our first Civil War, patriots and loyalists in the American Revolution, H.W. Brands examined whether this would constitute America's first Civil War before the Revolution had even been won.

In Hanoi's War, an international history of the War for Peace in Vietnam, you will visit the New Historical Terrain of the Vietnam War.

With award-winning historian and former war refugee, Lee-in-hang Tina Gwynn.

That's For the Ages, available on Apple and Spotify.

Episode 412 of The Bowry Boys, The New York Parking Wars.

Hey, it's The Bowry Boys.

Hey.

Hi there. Welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.

And this is Tom Myers in the passenger seat with a story about the streets of New York City.

Yes, but we're not looking at them from the perspective of traveling upon them, as in going from one place to the next, but rather how the streets are used to essentially store cars.

Thousands, tens of thousands of cars. This is the saga of parking in New York City.

Actually, Greg, I guess you could more specifically say that this is a history of the curbs of New York and also of the parking lots and the garages of New York.

In a city where the cost of the real estate on one side of the sidewalk is among the highest in the world. Why then?

It's the space on the other side of that same sidewalk devoted to parking cars and often for free or for not very much money at all.

Everybody, it seems, has an opinion about parking. Even if you don't have a car, parking influences your life.

Motor vehicles are everywhere, but they weren't always.

In fact, Greg, if you find a picture of Old New York, let's say from the 1930s, you know, you might see an automat, you see men in Fedoras, but you will not see a long line of cars parked on the street against the curb.

Okay, maybe you'd see one or two, but in these days you could not just abandon your car there like you can today for an indefinite period.

So what happened exactly? We hope that you'll find the subject of parking rather enlightening because it says so much about how the priorities of a city change.

Today we'll be going from horse stables to parking garages with bright neon signs from the massive parking lots built by Robert Moses to the curious job occupation known as the meter made.

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