Bowling alleys. I thought bowling was enjoying a revival in the 80s and 90s, with electronic exploding scoreboards and spiffed-up bowling establishments that put the lie to the commonly held impression…

Midtown Manhattan between 5th and 7th Avenues and between about 14th Street and 42nd Street is home to hundreds of mural ads on the tall buildings that were built between 1915…

Just a bunch more superannuated ads you can find walking around Manhattan. Not only do some of them show off now-forgotten products, they play up the stark changes that have come…

Trudge from the Williamsburg to the Manhattan Bridges in search of aged ads, and sink a cold Pepsi when you’re done. My home borough, Brooklyn, has its own set of ancient…

What ads did Forgotten Fans find on a five-hour journey down Brooklyn’s Broadway? What ads DIDN’T they find? A recent walk by about a dozen intrepid Forgotten Fans down Broadway (turned…

Once one of New York’s most notorious slums, Hell’s Kitchen has made a comeback  but some of its ancient ads remain. Hell’s Kitchen, the area west of 8th Avenue and…

Buildings that line the routes of elevated trains are always fertile ground for seekers of ancient advertising. Customers walking along Broadway in Brooklyn under the el tracks, or perhaps looking out…

Delancey Street, on the Lower East Side, is a repository of elderly, fading advertisements from bygone eras. Sharp-eyed observers will see this ad for Gold Medal Flour on this building set back…

At the top of a grand old building at Broadway and Washington Place in Greenwich Village is a sign that says “Treffurth’s.” Treffurth’s was a noted restaurant on Broadway at the turn…

  Bohacks was a chain of supermarkets in the five boroughs that closed in the early seventies. This smokestack is on the corner of Flushing and Metropolitan Avenues in Ridgewood, Queens.…

Bull Durham tobacco advertised on thousands of wall murals all over the country in the early part of the Twentieth Century by the Duke family, who contributed to Trinity College which…

  Walk through the Garment District (7th Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets), and you’ll see, besides the men dragging coat and clothing- laden carts through the cramped streets, a plethora…