Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast where every two weeks we delve into worlds light and dark in America's

Gilded Age, Francis Bellepuck, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

New York certainly has its share of famous and iconic neighborhoods that of each played a role in the city's 400-year-old history.

Greenwich Village is perhaps the most famous as the heart of a bohemian culture in the 50s and 60s

following its 19th century home to some of the city's wealthy and cultural elite.

But there is one neighborhood found east of the village's great Washington Square Park

that holds many keys and insights to the world that just preceded the great gilded age

and indeed played a leading role in fueling it.

The area known today as Noho, a sister neighborhood to the

famed Soho, which lies just to its south, was once land owned by the Astor family dynasty

and where so much of the great Astor fortune grew in real estate development. Indeed, many of the players of the Great Gilded Age,

including the famed Mrs. Astor herself, grew up in the tree-lined streets with the quaint brick-town

houses lining them of Noho. It was an elegant, close-knit neighborhood that dramatically changed as the city's

population moved north to create the Great Avenues and neoclassical mansions and palaces of the late

gilded age. Joining me today for an intimate look at NoHo and an explanation of what NoHo really means is licensed professional

Bowery Boys Walks tour guide Aaron Shilke. Aaron regularly leads public tours through Bowery

Boys' walks of the fascinating NoHo neighborhood and shares the neighborhood's unique and crucial

history from the 1600s to the early 20th century.

And as we shall discuss and discover, it is in today's no-ho that many of the seeds of the gilded age

came to first be sewn.

Aaron Schilke holds a bachelor's degree in architecture with a focus in urban design.

He has worked on a variety of projects related to the exploration of New York City,

...