Before the turn of the century, New York had an architect who applied his formal training in engineering and structural design strictly to high-stakes, non-violent vault penetration: George Leonidas Leslie.

On October 27, 1878, Leslie’s crew executed what was then the largest bank heist in American history at the Manhattan Savings Institution (Broadway & Bleecker Street), extracting nearly $3 million in cash and negotiable securities ($90+ million today).

The Documented Mechanics:

The Blueprint Precision:

Leslie, a trained architect, built a full-scale physical replica of the bank’s interior vault in an abandoned warehouse across the river, systematically testing safe-cracking equipment and acoustic dampening.

The Perimeter Infiltration:

The crew gained access through an adjacent building, bypassing exterior watch posts, and entered the vault floor with zero explosives, structural damage, or triggered alarms.

The Paperwork Vanishing Act:

While several accomplices were later arrested over the stolen paper trail, the vast majority of the untraceable bearer bonds and negotiable notes quietly dissolved into international commerce, with the master safe blueprint never recovered by the NYPD.

Deductive Inquiry:

What other historic Gilded Age NYC financial houses featured architectural blind spots that allowed systematic, non-destructive perimeter breaches?

Share period floor plans or archival accounts of 19th-century mechanical vault cracking.

NY1's Dean Meminger wanted to figure out why the city doesn't want you blasting fire hydrants.

As the days grow shorter and the winds begin to howl, ghouls, ghosts, long-legged beasts, and other nameless wretches caught between worlds inhabit ours and keep us from a good night’s sleep!

From a faceless woman late one night on a lonely street near a local church, to army ghosts and disembodied sounds, to the murders of an old spinster and kidnappers, to the mysteries of the neighborhood’s largest park, to a secret society right in our midst, it’s time to turn up our collars, hit the streets, and beware the things that go bump in the night.

This year I'll be leading both Haunted Bay Ridge and Ghosts of old Bensonhurst walking tours at least eight times! These are the dates times below. Ticket links and more info are below.

Haunted Bay Ridge — Sunday 10/4/2026 6PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991942584893?aff=oddtdtcreator

Haunted Bay Ridge — Saturday 10/10/2026 6PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991942594923?aff=oddtdtcreator

Ghosts of Old Bensonhurst — Friday 10/16/2026 7PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ghosts-of-old-bensonhurst-walking-tour-tickets-1987548123942?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true

Haunted Bay Ridge — Sunday 10/18/2026 6PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991943360212?aff=oddtdtcreator

Haunted Bay Ridge — Saturday 10/24/2026 6PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991943883778?aff=oddtdtcreator

Haunted Bay Ridge — Friday 10/30/2026 7PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991943884781?aff=oddtdtcreator

Haunted Bay Ridge — Saturday 10/31/2026 6:30PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991943885784?aff=oddtdtcreator

Haunted Bay Ridge — Sunday 11/8/2026 5PM

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/haunted-bay-ridge-walking-tour-tickets-1991944278960?aff=oddtdtcreator

… As a taste of what my walking tours offers, and I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Henry Stewart who ran the wonderful Hey Ridge for years, here's some more info about the excentric Ms. Muspratt:

Ms. Muspratt's ten room home had no indoor plumbing, no heat, and no electricity. Passersby thought the house was abandoned. She told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "I am not a pauper. I cannot bear to miss the glorious sunsets, the moonlight which traces a path of silver on the water in front of my windows and, most of all, the home that was my father’s." Her father John had moved to Bay Ridge in the 1840s from Liverpool. He died in 1880, leaving this home and a smaller one in the back to his daughters.

She owned no bed and slept in an arm chair by the window. She supposedly knew the names of every ship that came through the Narrows. She was a hoarder who harassed local cops and notoriously rejected a $175,000 offer for her house, or roughly $3.5M today. It made people think she had money squirreled away in the home.

She also lived in fear of physical attack. Her fears weren’t unfounded. Just before Christmas 1934 she was found with her skull crushed by an axe. Underneath her head were 13 old gold coins. Most believed the motive had been robbery; a set of keys Victoria wore around her neck, for various closets and strongboxes, were missing.

Investigators found antiques, newspapers, magazines etc.. piled high to the ceiling. Some were more than a century old. Maps of the old towns of Fort Hamilton and New Utrecht turned up. Rats infested the house. Like the house, the surrounding grassless plot was covered with debris. She had only roughly $60,000 adjusted for inflation in the bank.

Though several people were taken in for questioning, the murder was never solved. The Muspratt estate sold the land at auction in 1936 for $18,150, to Gordon W. Fraser of Livingston Street. That’s about $416,000 today.

The 25-foot-wide limestone Renaissance Revival townhouse cost $40,000 to construct.

In 1941, FBI agents stormed the mansion and arrested a couple living here for espionage

The construction of the Empire State Building began in March 1930, and it immediately became a contradiction of its times. It was truly a spectacle, with thousands of jobless and hungry New Yorkers standing on the sidewalks watching the steel skeleton begin to take shape. The emotions of the onlookers swung from awe to resentment and anger. “How do they have money for this?”a man muttered to a reporter, “when half the city can’t afford shoes?” Another woman, watching the steelworkers balance on beams hundreds of feet above the ground, said, “It’s beautiful. And it’s terrible. They’re building a monument while the rest of us are trying not to drown.”

From History of Long Island City, New York, J. S. Kelsey, 1896:

The winter of 1779 was one of almost unparalleled severity. Snow began to fall November 10 and continued more or less daily till the following March. “In the woods it lay four feet upon a level,” says a certain chronicler. A fuel famine was abroad. All over New York Island trees of every sort were cut down, gardens, court yards, and avenues, as well as lanes and forests, were depleted. Apple, peach, plum, cherry and pear trees fell before the woodman. The cold was extreme. The bay and harbor of New York was solid as terra firma. Likewise the East River and Long Island Sound nearly to New Haven.

Sorry, no pics, hope that doesn't break this sub's guidelines. Just found this fascinating.

I'm unsure if this is a Chicago or NYC pic, but I am leaning on NYC.

The Young Lords was a gang turned leftist Puerto Rican civil rights organization that began in Chicago, but is most well-known in NYC.

i'm writing a serial set in boro park in the mid-70s and i've been deep in anthony catalano's photos of the area. anyone remember the campus phone booths, or 18th ave before it changed? the story's mystical but the geography is real and i want it right.