April 2000

Unbeknownst to most, an abandoned Long Island Railroad tunnel runs for a couple of blocks below Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights. But this isn’t just any tunnel…it was abandoned for…

The Lower East Side of Manhattan, roughly defined by Houston Street on the north, the East River on the east and south, and by the Manhattan Bridge and the Bowery…

There’s no real story here. But for years, I’ve noticed that many liquor stores in the five boroughs have the same signage they must have had decades ago…whether they’re ceramic,…

I sometimes hear the musical question, so what was at JFK Airport before JFK was built? Well, there was something there, though not a whole lot. Before the 1940s, the huge area that became…

Most people think Manhattan is buried under layer upon layer of concrete, with all evidence of its primordial past vanished. There’s still hundreds of acres of natural Manhattan Island still…

In the past few months (as of this writing, April 2000) the Long Island Rail Road (or, as some call it, the Long Island Fail Road) has completely replaced its…

The Rockaway Line is a mighty good road, the Rockaway Line is the road to ride, to paraphrase the old song. Or rather, it used to be the road to…

Continued from Part 1 This time, our survey of little-noticed Queens alleyways takes us from gritty, concrete-enveloped Long Island City all the way east to bucolic, rural Little Neck–which could…