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At the turn of the 20th century, New York City's millionaires started moving to the suburbs in Long Island and Westchester County. They had enormous homes and just about everything money could buy. There was just one problem: they weren't alone. Around the same time, ordinary, middle-class New Yorkers started exploring the suburbs themselves. The millionaires were horrified to see commuters and tourists enjoying their suburban paradise. But the beaches and the roads were public: how could th ...
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Welcome to Briarcliff Manor! Like our regular episodes, this is the story of the incorporation of one of New York City's suburbs. It is a bonus ep because it's shorter and has less music than a regular episode (which you may recognize from previous episodes!). We are working on more full-length episodes in the same style as the first four. In the m…
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Bronxville wasn't exactly an estate village, since it wasn't incorporated under Section 33. (What is Section 33? That's the law that allowed rich people to incorporate their tiny neighborhoods as villages, which we talk about in the first three episodes.) But, like estate villages, the village of Bronxville was the passion project of one man, a mil…
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This bonus episode is about Episode 3: The Beaches! Here Jon and Paulina talk about: Writing songs that are not supposed to sound evil, creepy or ironic Good guitar solos (and silly-in-a-good-way guitar solos) Achieving the whistling tea kettle sound during the Norma Mayo story (pure luck) Stay tuned for Episode 4: Bronxville!…
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In 1910, New York State made it possible for tiny neighborhoods to incorporate as villages. Some villages incorporated to dodge local taxes, or escape a school district they didn't feel like contributing towards. But many villages incorporated to prevent outsiders - even people who lived just a couple of miles away - from enjoying the public beache…
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Welcome to the Sands Point bonus episode! In this episode, Jon and Paulina talk about: Making quotes sound different even when they're all read by one person (throw some vintage tone on the audio, and/or impersonate Winston Churchill) How much power the town supervisor had to stop the villages from incorporating (a decent amount, actually, although…
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In 1910, the New York State legislature made it possible to incorporate any neighborhood with at least 50 people into a village. (What is a village? We explain in Episode 1, but it's an unnecessarily cutesy synonym for "municipality." It's basically a very small city.) In Episode 1, we talk about how a wealthy landowner named Roswell Eldridge incor…
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Welcome to the Saddle Rock Bonus Episode! (If you haven’t listened to Episode 1 of this podcast, you may want to do that first, since we talk about how we made the episode here.) Jon and Paulina talk about recording the music for Episode 1 of this podcast: How to play drums when you’re not a drummer (step 1: never think about how awesome you sound)…
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In 1910, Roswell Eldridge had it all: cars, yachts, money, and a beautiful beachside mansion. There was just one problem... In New York, villages are a type of municipality. They were intended to be densely-populated places where officials could tax residents and provide infrastructure, like running water or sewers, with the proceeds. But in 1910, …
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In 1910, a group of rich people who owned massive homes in Long Island were tired of middle-class people moving to the neighborhood. The middle-class people wanted public schools, police departments, municipal water and public parks, but the millionaires didn't need any of this. They had private security, they sent their kids to private schools, an…
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