I often find myself in Straus Square, an overlooked little triangle formed by Rutgers Street, Canal Street and East Broadway. Here, two streets are generated: Canal, which roars west to…

By the time I snapped this formidable smokestack once belonging to the Peter Van Iderstine glue factory along Newtown Creek in the spring of 2017, operations had long ago moved…

I was staggering around in western Queens in July 2020, crazed from the humidity, when I found this mailbox trio. The mailbox on the left, painted olive green, is called…

STUYVESANT Town sits on an almost-square defined by East 14th and East 20th Street, 1st Avenue and Avenue C, with 89 buildings containing 8,757 apartments. By auto it’s accessed by…

IT’S no-frills dining at its finest in this restaurant on Laurel Hill Boulevard in 1938. Straight-backed wood seats, tables and checkered tablecloths in what was likely an Italian eatery. Within…

LIKE most Brooklyn parents, mine accompanied me to Coney Island on numerous Sundays when I was a kid; I seem to remember getting a string of tickets that would let…

ODDLY enough, both The Bronx and Queens have Rainey Parks, named for two separate Raineys. The Bronx Rainey Park, pictured here, is by far the newer one as it was…

As a kid, I was a parishioner at St. Anselm Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, named for an 11th-Century bishop originally from Burgundy in what is now Italy, but immigrated…

In Manhattan, there are a pair of “mystery poles” that continue to flummox and vex me, as no satisfactory identification of their purpose seems imminent. This one can be found…

I don’t have too much to say about this 5-story walkup building at #105 Broad Street, corner of Water, in the Financial District except to say it’s unusual for the…

THERE was a time when Blimpie ruled the roost as far as fast food submarine sandwiches (known by a variety of names elsewhere in the country) in the New York…

LEHIGH Valley Barge Number 79, a 30’x90’ railroad barge built in 1914 with a wood exterior, is the last of its kind still in existence. During New York’s era as…