In 1908 the IRT Subway was extended to Brooklyn for the first time, and Heins and LaFarge, the architects who constructed most of the subway’s early stations and stationhouses, erected…

TRAVIS  is about as far west as you can get in Staten Island, at the west end of Victory Boulevard. Just as Proctor and Gamble made Mariners Harbor a company…

PRECIOUS and few are the streets in New York City that begin with Z, and fewer still are subway stations that begin with the 26th letter. Westchester Square can claim…

THE Brooklyn Veterans Administration Healthcare System hospital, 800 Poly Place near Fort Hamilton, has been a Bay Ridge staple for a long time, but I know little of its history,…

ONE of the more intriguing areas in Queens, at least from a street layout perspective, is the area known colloquially as “The Crescents” in Rego Park, in which the familiar…

THE Ganesh Temple of the Hindu Temple Society of North America on Bowne Street just north of Holly was opened on July 4, 1977. As the first Hindu Temple in…

At Astoria Square (Astoria Boulevard, 21st Street, 27th Avenue and Newtown Avenue) is one of Astoria’s more distinctive buildings, the former L. Gally Furniture store. In 1889 L. Gally established…

NOT long ago, I spotted this billboard outside the School of Visual Arts on East 23rd Street and 2nd Avenue, honoring Milton Glaser, perhaps the best known graphic designer of…

At the bend in the shoreline that is Corlears Hook, an amphitheater fits right in. This East River Park bandshell was funded in 2001 by consumer rights activist Erin Brockovich…

SOME of NYC’s narrowest parks can be found on either side of the Prospect Expressway, which runs in an open cut through Windsor Terrace, that narrow strip of territory between…

BETWEEN 2011 and 2018, before the Zoom era began in earnest, when I wasn’t working I would report two or three times a week to the The Quinn-Morisco Funeral Home,…

HERE’S 488 Broadway at Broome Street, the Haughwout (pronounced HA-wout) Building. Some architectural experts call it the most beautiful castiron building in NYC. It has competition there especially in Soho, but…