In New York City, the smallest possible number you can get when adding the numbers of both cross streets that have numbers is two, in the East Village, where First…

THOUGH NYC divested itself of most of its colonial-era “royal” names after defeating the British in the Revolutionary War, there are a few that doggedly hang on, sich as Prince Street…

THE name Russell Sage pops up in two disparate areas in Queens that otherwise have nothing to do with the other. The doyenne of Far Rockaway churches is the Russell…

In Bayside Hills, a neighborhood in Queens south of Northern Boulevard bordering Bayside to kits north, 48th Avenue splits in two at 216th Street, with the right side curving to…

JUST for fun, I dragged my H.G. Wells Time Machine out of the closet for another spin. It’s always tricky to travel into the past because the least little thing…

MAJOR General Franz Sigel (1824-1902) overlooks Riverside Drive at West 106th Street. Sigel, born in Baden, Germany, served in the German military until 1852, when he emigrated to the US,…

On a recent jaunt in Borough Park, I strolled over to Alben Square, where New Utrecht Avenue meets 11th Avenue and 46th Street, to check out the old Loew’s 46th…

COOGAN’S Bluff is the cliff leading down to the Harlem River from Edgecombe Avenue. It used to overlook the Polo Grounds, the ballpark home of the New York Giants, and…

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…