HERE’S a classic subway placard ad found on one of the vintage trainsets the Transit Museum rolls out every so often, mostly in June, September and December, an ad for…

I have been a NYC explorer since boyhood; I used to make my parents or grandmother take me on bus rides all over Brooklyn in the early to mid-60s, all…

THE late 1960s and early 1970s were, without a doubt, an era when Fun City was descending into madness and it was thought that NYC was an ungovernable city (in…

I consider myself fortunate to come from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and though I have been in Queens since 1993, a good 30 years now, I keep threatening to return. I…

RECENTLY home to Newel Props, which rents furniture for movie and stage productions, and the City View Racquet Club, this building which fills an entire block at Skillman Avenue and Van…

THIS is one of the many Irish-themed pubs on Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn Heights, though every persuasion is welcome. In fact the Irish inscription on the sign means “1,000 100,000…

STEINWAY Village in northwest Queens was a small company town that was instituted by William Steinway, son of German immigrant Henry, who had moved his operations to Astoria on the…

JOHANNES Lott built a small house on his Flatlands property about 1720 on land first settled by Dutchman Hugh Aerens as far back as 1636. In the 1700s, Gerritsen Creek…

JOHN. It’s probably the most common given name in the English language. Most Johns walking around today are likely named for their father, or a prominent family member, who were…

WHEN the NYC Department of Purchase Building, at Water and New Dock Streets under the Brooklyn Bridge, was demolished in 2008, it wasn’t without protest from preservationists who wanted to…

PURELY guesswork on my part, but I’ll bet Five Mile Stone, a tavern on the corner of 2nd Avenue and East 85th Street in Yorkville, is named for a marker…

THE famed Silk Clock in the Schwarzenbach Building, 470 Park Avenue South, periodically disappears for repairs, but it was apparently in working order when I passed it on PAS and East…