REX Cole (1887-1967) was originally a lamp manufacturer, then became associated with General Electric in the 1920s and designed white enamel Monitor Top refrigerators. Famed architect Raymond Hood designed a series…

HERE’S a painted ad for the Loew’s Woodside Theatre, which is actually still standing on Roosevelt Avenue and 58th Street. In one of the most unusual reuses for a theater,…

OFTEN, developers give names to apartment buildings that can be seen above the entrances. Family members, wives, husbands, children are often used; presidents or local politicians; but occasionally, developers will…

HERE’S the front doorway of #5-#7 Ten Eyck Street at Union Avenue. Ten Eyck Street runs in three pieces in East Williamsburg, through the Williamsburg Houses, where it’s reduced to…

BEFORE Brooklyn was a borough, it was a city; before that, it was a smaller city; before that, it was a small town; before that, a few huts by the…

NEW York’s first water system was built between 1837 and 1842. Prior to those years, water was obtained from cisterns, wells and barrels from rain. Construction began in 1837 on…

WHILE West 33rd passes the Empire State Building as it nears 5th Avenue, I was more fascinated by the Bawo and Dotter Building across the street at #20 West 33rd,…

PUGSLEY Creek, an inlet of the East River, forms a fork with the much longer and deeper Westchester Creek in Clason Point, Bronx, with Castle Hill Park at the foot…

A look north up Bond Street from Livingston in downtown Brooklyn reveals the dignified domed Dime Savings Bank and its new neighbor, the  74-story, 1,066-foot residential Brooklyn Tower. The Dime…

UNTIL 2015, this had been a very special sidewalk on the west side of West between Milton and Noble, since it was the only sidewalk paved with wood blocks embedded…

No, the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is hardly “forgotten,” but at heart Forgotten NY is an infrastructure website and I thought I’d mention it on the 60th anniversary of…

In 1901, the Scottish philanthropist/industrialist Andrew Carnegie Foundation gave $5.2 million to New York City for its libraries across the five boroughs. This started a remarkable project that would go…