Join us for an interview with Instagram historian Keith Taillon (@keithyorkcity), whose detailed posts about New York's history have earned him nearly 60,000 followers and launched a successful tour business.

Keith shares the story behind his remarkable pandemic project of walking every single block of Manhattan in 2020, capturing the empty city in photographs that now appear in his first book, "Walking New York: Manhattan History on Foot."

From his childhood fascination with urban history to his graduate studies at Hunter College, Keith reveals how his personal journey led him to become one of the city's most engaging historical storytellers. You'll hear how he crafts walking tours that go beyond landmark-hopping to explain why New York looks and functions the way it does.

Plus: Listen to Keith's appearances on The Gilded Gentleman Podcast episodes on The Real Mamie Fish, The Hidden World of Gramercy Park, and a Gilded Age Tour up Manhattan.

Visit the Bowery Boys website and become a member of the show at Patreon.com/BoweryBoys.

We invite you to come with us inside one of America’s most interesting art museums – an institution that is BOTH an art gallery and a historic home.

This is The Frick Collection, located at 1 East 70th Street, within the former Fifth Avenue mansion of Gilded Age mogul Henry Clay Frick, containing many pieces that the steel titan himself purchased, as well as many other incredible works of art from master painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Turner, and Whistler.

Frick himself had a rather complicated legacy. As a master financier and chairman of Andrew Carnegie's massive steel enterprise, Frick helped create the materials for America's railroads and bridges.

But his intolerance of labor unions led to a bloody confrontation in the summer of 1892, making him, for a time, one of the most hated men in America.

New Yorkers' love for the Frick Collection, however, remains far less complicated. The institution, which has been a museum since 1935, allows visitors to experience the work of the great master painters in an often regal and intimate setting, allowing people to imagine the fanciful life of the Gilded Age.

The Frick Collection reopens this month after an extensive renovation (temporarily relocating the collection to the Breuer Building for a few years) and we've got a sneak preview, featuring Frick curator and art historian Aimee Ng.

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The history of the United States Postal Service as it plays out in the streets of New York City -- from the first post road to the first postage stamps. From the most beautiful post office in the country to the forgotten Gilded Age landmark that was once considered the ugliest post office.

The postal service has always served as the country's circulatory system, linking the densest urban areas to the most rural outposts, a necessary link in moments when the country feels very far apart in other ways. The early American colonies knew this. Benjamin Franklin knew this The Founding Fathers who placed the postal service within the Constitution knew this.

And inventions such as the stagecoach, the steamship, the railroad, the pneumatic tube and even the electric car have helped keep the mail steadily flowing over the centuries.

New York has even played a pivotal role in the development of the American mail service, from the creation of the Boston Post Road (the first mail road which snaked through Manhattan and the Bronx) to the first mail boxes. Even the first postage stamps were sold in New York -- within former church-turned-post office in lower Manhattan.

Why are there so many post offices from the 1930s? Why is New York's largest post office next to Penn Station? And why does New York City have so many individual ZIP codes? And who, pray tell, is Barnabas Bates?

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This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon