I was in the New-York Historical Society on July 4th, 2024 puttering around the exhibits, when i saw a rectangular post in a glass case, marked with a “4” on…

FOR some time I wondered about the original purpose of this Greek temple on the Riverside Drive viaduct just south of West 135th Street. I recently discovered it: historian Fred…

As a kid, I was far from amiable. Pretty much all I wanted to do was read, or fill writing tablets with drawings of lampposts. My parents’ constant refrain was,…

MANY think I have nothing good to say about new architecture. Nonsense. Here’s a new building I like, at #78 Amity Street, on the corner of Hicks. It employs classic…

HERE’S a 1930s look at Feitsen’s Drug Store in the 1930s, on 45th Avenue and 147th Street. Out of the picture across the street are Parsons Boulevard and Flushing Hospital…

TWO very different eras of American history appear side by side in Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. 7th Avenue South was created in the 1910s by the extension of the…

WHO is Hugh O’Neill, and why is his name on this building high above Sixth Avenue and 22nd Street? Back in the good old days, circa 1900, Hugh O’Neill owned the…

On a rare clear weekend day in February, I strolled through Williamsburg, a neighborhood I have had a hard time getting a handle on as it is ever-changing; when I…

In the running for the most attractive building on Metropolitan Avenue‘s 14-mile length from Williamsburg to Jamaica is the Hess-Miller Funeral Home at 65th Street. Its location is no coincidence,…

I have always been fascinated by the massive masonry arches (that cover a steel framework) that pop up around town. Probably the greatest concentration is in Astoria, where a series…

MUCH to my regret I was unable to partake at Roebling Pizza at #324 Roebling between South 8th and 9th in Williamsburg simply because I was scuttling past like a…

PERIODICALLY, I check on my favorite bits of infrastructure around town and sometimes I’m disappointed, like when I saw the Twinlamp at 5th Avenue and 28th Street had disappeared. Well,…