By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten New York correspondent If you live in NYC, you know that construction is ever present.  If you don’t believe that concept, take a stroll around Downtown Brooklyn…

It could be the end of the line for the Cameo Pet Shop, a venerable Richmond Hill institution at Jamaica Avenue and 116th Street, as well as its venerable handpainted…

I can’t believe I have ignored this painted ad for Ragú spaghetti sauce on the side of a restaurant on 6th Avenue between White and Walker Streets in Tribeca until…

Barely discernible at this point on a garage wall on Patchen Avenue between Putnam Avenue and Madison Street is an ad for B.F. Goodrich tires. The company was founded by…

A Uneeda Biscuit ad from the 1910s can still be seen faintly on a Bridge Plaza Street building in downtown Brooklyn. The National Biscuit Company was formed in 1898 by…

The Arbuckle Brothers were the first national retailers of coffee and produced America’s first national coffee brand, Ariosa, which remains available, complete with a traditional piece of peppermint candy in…

It’s interesting that the phrase “TO LET”, as in “for rent”, seems to have passed out of English completely. “Let,” in this sense, and “lease” have the same roots in…

There must have been a time when the familiar script handwritten signature of Charles H. Fletcher stuck fear in the hearts of crumb crunchers everywhere. Fletcher began selling his Castoria, a mild…

During recent scuttlings in the Midtown area, I passed right through Times Square, a place I’m rarely spotted, because in general, crowds don’t much interest me. This particular morning the…

The Coca-Cola script logo is virtually unchanged for over 110 years — there are variances in the stroke and swash widths in the lettering but that’s about it. When I…

“Oil heats best for less,” White Plains Road north of the Nereid Avenue el station up north in Wakefield. A similar ad commissioned by the same firm can also be…

In 2014 the last trace of the Albert Merrill School vanished as this ad on West 29th Street near 8th Avenue was painted over. The school promised training in computer…