Everybody had a neighborhood! Whether you lived in an apartment building, tenement, or a row house, it was home. It was a self-contained world where you lived, worked, and played; a place that gave you your identity.

NEW YORK THE WAY IT WAS: THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD is a celebration of New York City neighborhood ethnicity: From the Germans of Yorkville, to the Italians and Irish of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, to the Jewish and Latino experience and Harlem life. You’ll revisit the struggles of the immigrant generation who truly believed they would make their children’s lives better. You’ll almost smell the familiar cooking in the family kitchen and remember the neighborhood “characters” who made each block unique.

It’s all meticulously recalled, entwined with interviews of such famed New Yorkers including the late musician Tito Puente, opera singer Roberta Peters, St. John’s University basketball coach Lou Carnasecca and former Mayor Ed Koch. Travel back with them to a simpler time as we stir the embers of life and living…the way it was in the old neighborhood.

The Old Neighborhood is the second installment in WLIW New York’s Emmy Award-winning NEW YORK THE WAY IT WAS series.