BLEECKER STREET, often misspelled without its “c”, was named for William Bleecker, a friend of Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant, who was a writer himself: a renowned punster, his work appeared in several…

So the word has come down that another NYC classic diner, the Neptune, at Astoria Boulevard and 31st Street, will close at the end of business on July 28, 2024.…

I have long had a fascination with the land borders of New York City. I have traveled much of the “undefended” Queens-Nassau border, and did a multipart series in 2011.…

I am taking the July 4 weekend off and doing minimal website activity (and even pausing from “real” job activities; I usually do a couple of hours on Saturday and…

FEBRUARY 18, 2024 was actually looking wintery around town, as we had just wrapped up a couple of snowfalls, rare in NYC winters of late, and it was a sunny,…

As we embark on another summer in NYC, my 66th, it can be said that summers have grown in uncomfortability in recent years. Heat waves in which it stays in…

THE New York Surrogates’ Court is one of the most extravagant Beaux Arts buildings in NYC and one building I’d really like to enter one day to see the fantastic…

In 1877, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway was incorporated, opening the next year in 1878. It originally ran from the Prospect Park entrance at Flatbush and Ocean Avenues…

I don’t have a lot of time before heading to bed around midnight as usual, but here’s a preview of my Bay Parkway page, which will appear soon, perhaps as…

A pair of streets called Magenta and Bartholdi can be found south of East Gun Hill Road and east of White Plains Road in Williamsbridge. On the face of it,…

SCANDINAVIANS have largely disappeared from Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, just as other neighborhoods have radically changed over the years. Immigrants from northern Europe first began arriving in Brooklyn in great…

WOODHAVEN Boulevard is but a mere local station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line, which runs express between Rooosevelt and Continental Avenues, but were it built today instead of the…