HOW I would have liked to have accompanied photographer Percy Loomis Sperr on his expeditions around NYC in the 1920s and 1930s, when he took upwards of 40,000 street photos…

At the Powhatan Democratic Club, 41-05 Newtown Road, the sign looks much the same as it did in 1940. The political club is now officially known as the Powhatan and Pocahontas Democratic…

At 22nd and 6th Avenue in Chelsea, northwest corner, is the former Ehrich Brothers Emporium, constructed in 1889, and currently home to a Burlington Coat Factory on the ground floor.…

UNTIL mid-century, mid-Queens was still rather sparsely settled and was a place of wide open spaces. This photo from 1947 shows Kissena Boulevard looking south from Rose Avenue at the…

THE Klein Farm, 73rd Avenue and 195th Street, sold produce for years in a roadside stand until 2003, when the family sold it to a realtor. The farm had been in…

NEW York City is marked by clusters of streets with a theme-based naming scheme. Many of the northeast Bronx streets are named for early NYC mayors beginning in the 1600s;…

THE Gil Hodges Community Garden is a green spot in gritty Gowanus, at Carroll Street and Denton Place. It was founded as early as 1982, but over 30 years later…

THE Walloons were Protestants from what is now Belgium who had fled to Holland to escape religious oppression from the Catholic majority, but also faced the same trouble in the…

In the days before central plumbing, you had to attend to the necessities somehow. New York City used to feature dozens of public baths. A remaining one, on 268 East…

KNOWN as the Castle on the Concourse, the former PS 31 at the Grand Concourse and East 144th Street, south of Hostos Community College, was designed by NYC school architect…

WHEN I worked for half a year at a small design shop called Design Matters Inc. on Broadway and West 54th in 2019, I would take full advantage of the…

In 2019, I was wandering on the High Line with the other out of town tourists (on the High Line and Staten Island Ferry, English is a language you’ll hear…