LARGE cast-iron stoplights I call “Wheelies” first began to show up in the late 1920s as wide boulevards began to appear and traffic got heavier. They appeared on narrower roads as…

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, painted signs or my favorite, NEON.…

In the mid-1760s, NYC had sufficiently grown that the Episcopalian parish of Trinity Church began to expand uptown, and built St. Paul’s Chapel in 1766. When a giant fire broke…

SADLY I have never visited Big Nose Kate’s, a saloon way out in Rossville, at 2484 Arthur Kill Road, tucked near the huge Old Bermuda catering hall next to the…

THIS week I’m continuing with explorations of north-south streets in Chinatown, Little Italy and the Lower East Side. Having already covered Christie Street and Eldridge Street, I’ll complete the trio…

I got this photo at the dawn of Forgotten NY in the winter of 1998 at Bedford Avenue and North 4th, when Williamsburg was still an industrial/ethnic Eastern European stronghold,…

WHEN I lived in Bay Ridge, I would frequently bicycle down Ocean Parkway from Church Avenue to Coney Island. It boasts a world-class bike path and it’s flat as a…

YOU can find connections in NYC in places that are miles apart. Take #36 West 56th Street, a Queen Anne -style mansion built in 1882 by architect Bruce Price for Dr.…

A painted ad at #315 West 53rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues has perplexed me since I first saw it when I worked in the area between June and…

RECENTLY, there has been an interesting development for NYC lamppost aficionados, all five of us. A classic landmarked Twinlamp at 5th Avenue and 28th Street was discovered missing (by me)…

At the southernmost point in New York is Conference House Park, which Kevin visited a few times over the past quarter century, always finding something new to document. The park…

THE turn-of-the-century English Garden City movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard and Sir Raymond Unwin served as the inspiration for Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928. This housing experiment was aimed at showing civic leaders that…