MANY of New York City’s longest and most important roads begin in inconspicuousness and humble spots. Metropolitan Avenue is one of the lengthiest routes between Brooklyn and Queens. It was…

At #178 Norfolk Street south of East Houston, keep looking up for a triumphant statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the chief architect of the Soviet state that ruled much of eastern…

By PATRICK O’CONNORGuest post I’ve always been fascinated by the inaccessible islands of the New York City archipelago.  I purposefully use the term inaccessible rather than abandoned.  Many of the…

In recent Lower East Side wanderings I came once again to one of NYC’s best Roman Catholic mini-cities, way over in the far east of the Lower East, at Pitt…

CANARSIE is named for the indigenous Canarsee Indians the Dutch found in residence when they arrived in the 1640s. The name “Canarsee”’s etymology is in dispute, but it some scholars…

Continued from Avenue B FROM late 2024-early 2025, I decided to walk Manhattan’s lettered avenues from A to D (Brooklyn has the full panoply, with a few exceptions, from A…

SOMETIMES historic buildings are hiding in plain sight. Take this unassuming two-story house on Woodrow Road and Rossville Avenue, in an area that has gone from rural to suburban to…

THIS building on the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue and East 45th looms large in my memory. From 1982-1988, I was in the building most nights between 2 and 3…

HERE’S a tableau that’ll be familiar to Bronx residents in Norwood and Bedford Park: the Mosholu Parkway and in the background, the Tracey Towers. Mosholu Parkway is among the many…

THIS past May I went on a couple of swings through Kingsbridge Heights along Bailey Avenue and Kingsbridge Terrace, in Kingsbridge Heights, which are positioned on a steep ridge the…

CONTINUING a series begun on Avenue A earlier in the month, I decided to walk Manhattan’s lettered avenues from A to D (Brooklyn has the full panoply, with a few…

I  have not spent much time in East Flatbush lately or even over the years; in fact I used to bicycle through more frequently when I lived in Brooklyn. Once…