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…

IT’S been a few years (April 2021) since I have been in one of my favorite joints, Millard Fillmore’s on 65th Avenue and 166th Street near Queens College. It’s a…

FLATBUSH Avenue cuts across the Park Slope grid on a diagonal, making it a convenient place to put a subway line and indeed, two separate subway lines employ it, the…

ELIOT Avenue, seen here at Lutheran Avenue and 75th Street, roars through Middle Village as one of the few continuous auto northeast routes through the neighborhood. It connects Metropolitan Avenue…

THIS grouping of attached two-story residences found on 59th Drive between Fresh Pond Road and 64th Street, opposite the Rieff Playground, was built as workers’ houses of the Sampson’s Oil…

WAY back in 2011 I walked Union Street all the way from the waterfront in Carroll Gardens to Prospect Park; I haven’t yet made my way to where Union Street…