#460 The Brooklyn Museum and the Birth of a New City

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Brooklyn Museum, known for its wildly popular cutting-edge exhibitions, can actually trace its origins back to a more rustic era -- and to the birth of the city of Brooklyn itself.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Join me at the City Winery on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.
0:06.3	I'm bringing you another edition of Bowery Boys History Live,
0:10.2	a storytelling cabaret of all true tales and spellbinding secrets from the past.
0:15.0	And for this show, I'm bringing with me a premier lineup of special guests,
0:19.9	including author Elizabeth L. Block,
0:22.2	author and tour guide Keith Tallien from Keith York City and the Gilded Gentleman himself, Carl Raymond.
0:28.5	The show's theme is Gilded Age Golden Girls, a night of storytelling with the late 19th century's
0:34.1	most fascinating characters at its center. So join us at the city winery in the Meatpacking District on Pier 57 on July 2nd, 2025.
0:43.1	Tickets are now on sale, and you can get yours at citywinery.com.
0:50.8	The Bowery Boys Episode 460, the history of the Brooklyn Museum.
0:56.5	Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.
0:58.1	Hey.
1:17.2	Hi there, welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young with another solo show this week,
1:31.4	and again, I'm being a little selfish by celebrating my home borough of Brooklyn and one of its most enduring institutions, actually, the Brooklyn Museum, located on Eastern Parkway, New York City's second largest museum after the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an institution that, despite
1:37.8	its beautiful Gilded Age home, feels unusually modern. Its most successful exhibitions in recent years, in fact, and some of you may know
1:47.6	this, as you've probably been to them, have included celebrations of Spike Lee, David Bowie,
1:54.1	and Studio 54. Its regal facade is brought down to Earth with a new spacey glass cloaked entrance designed by
2:04.1	James Polshik, which was installed in 2004 and the striking installation by Deborah Cass called
2:12.5	Oyyo. Or in other words, if you're coming from the west side of the eastern parkway, simply, yo.
2:20.9	So you might do a double take here when I tell you that the museum this year is celebrating its 200th anniversary.
2:30.3	They trace themselves back to the foundation of the Brooklyn Apprentices Library, which was actually founded back in 1823 and then incorporated the following year.
2:42.0	But the cornerstone to its first home, which was at Henry and Cranberry streets in today's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, that stone was laid on
	...

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