In 1939, Robert Moses sprung his latest project upon the world -- the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge, connecting the tip of Manhattan to the Brooklyn waterfront, slicing through New York Harbor just to the north of Governor's Island.

To build it, Moses dictated that the historic Battery Park would need to be redesigned. And its star attraction the New York Aquarium would have to be demolished.

The aquarium was housed in the former military fort Castle Clinton which had seen so much of New York City's history pass through its walls under the name Castle Garden -- first as an early 19th century entertainment venue and later as the Emigrant Landing Depot, which processed millions of newly arriving immigrants.

This valuable link to American history would surely have been lost if not for activists like Albert S. Bard, a revolutionary landmarking advocate who countered and disrupted Moses every step of the way.

In this episode, Greg interviews another landmarking superstar -- author and civic activist Anthony C. Wood -- on the occasion of his new biography of Bard titled Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Secret Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero.

In his research, Wood discovered a personality far more interesting than his public persona and a man with far more at stake than just his beliefs in preservation.

Visit the website for more information and images of things discussed on this show.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon.

A long, long time ago in New York — in the 1730s, back when the city was a holding of the British, with a little over 10,000 inhabitants — a German printer named John Peter Zenger decided to print a four-page newspaper called the New York Weekly Journal.

This is pretty remarkable in itself, as there was only one other newspaper in town called the New York Gazette, an organ of the British crown and the governor of the colony.

But Zenger’s paper would call to question the actions of that governor, a virtual despot named William Cosby, and in so doing, set in motion an historic trial that marked a triumph for liberty and modern democratic rights, including freedom of the press and the power of jury nullification.

This entire story takes place in lower Manhattan, and most of it on a couple floors of old New York City Hall at Wall Street and Nassau Street. Many years later, this spot would see the first American government and the inauguration of George Washington.

Many could argue that the trial that occurs here on August 4, 1735, is equally important to the causes of democracy and a free press.

We're marking the 290th anniversary of this landmark trial with a newly re-edited, remastered version of our show from 2013.

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When Prospect Park was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York’s Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — weren’t finished.

This park came with two grand pleasure drives, wide boulevards that emanated from the north and south ends of the park. Eastern Parkway, the first parkway in the United States, is the home of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its leafy pedestrian malls running through the neighborhood of Crown Heights.

But it’s Ocean Parkway that is the most unusual today, an almost six-mile stretch which takes drivers, bikers, runners and (at one point) horse riders all the way to Coney Island, at a time when people were just beginning to appreciate the beach’s calming and restorative values.

Due to its wide, straight surface, Ocean Parkway even became an active speedway for fast horses. When bicycles became all the rage in the late 1880s, they also took to the parkway and avid cyclists eventually got their first bike lane in 1894 — the first in the United States.

FEATURING: A tale of two cemeteries — one that was demolished to make way for one parkway, and another which apparently (given its ‘no vacancy’ status) thrives next to another.

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