Cul de sacs and alleyways have always held a fascination for me. However they are rather scarce in New York City, which has a grid system of streets not only…

The title card shows Trimble Road, a one-block street running from 62nd to 63rd Streets along the Long Island Rail Road main line north of Woodside Avenue. Trimble Road has…

While careening through Canarsie this past week, searching for lost alleys, I checked Nolan’s Lane, which I hadn’t visited since 1999. For most, unless you live there, there’s no reason…

According to maps through most of the 20th Century, Smiths Lane is a narrow alley running from Rockaway Parkway southwest to East 92nd Street just south of Farragut Road in…

There’s probably an interesting story behind the naming of Delmonico Place in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, just below its undefended border with Williamsburg. It’s a one-block street on an odd slant between Ellery…

Helping fulfill a recent self-promise to tour around in places such as upper Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island locales that have so far gotten something of the short end of the…

I have mentioned this before but in February 2005 I spent a week on vacation…in Staten Island. I rented a room at a B&B at the water’s edge, at the…

During my recent walk from downtown Brooklyn to Crown Heights, I was meandering down Montgomery Street when, just past Nostrand Avenue I spotted an odd little part-dirt, part Belgian blocked path issuing…

I moved to Queens on March 28th, 1993 and have lived there since, the first 14 in eastern Flushing and the next three (as of 2010) in Little Neck. While I…

While skulking through Pelham Bay in the Bronx in July 2010, I once again pondered the origin of the heretofore mysterious B Street, which runs south to a dead end…

When NYC had a more rural character and was dotted with farms a couple of centuries ago, grist mills, in which grain is ground into flour, were primary engines of commerce.…

Sometimes, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. Or Boston. Or even Albany, Newark or Jersey City. I’ll explain. Manhattan, once you get north of 14th Street, just doesn’t have the sheer number…