These handsome lamps were standard issue in the 1950s for very specific purposes: they lit pedestrian walkways on expressways built during that decade. Poles very much like it can be…

The Astoria Elevated runs from Queensboro Plaza north to Ditmars Boulevard on 31st Street; it has been here since 1917, and was originally run in an unusual joint operation by…

Over on my Facebook page (you should try it — if you’re a Facebook subscriber, “friend me” — it’s 100% fun with no nastiness, politics and personal attacks) I occasionally…

Central Flatbush, clustered around Flatbush and Church Avenues, boasts a number of historic buildings in a relatively small area, similar to other originally Dutch Colonial NYC towns like Flushing and…

Danish-born crusading journalist and photographer Jacob Riis (1849-1914) made his home in Richmond Hill, Queens, beginning in 1886. In 1887, Riis photographed the squalid, inhumane conditions prevalent in New York City’s…

The Yorkville Clock at 1501 3rd Avenue and East 85th Street has been here since 1898 — lasting an entire century and parts of two others. Like many other sidewalk clocks it originally…

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko isn’t the only Polish Revolutionary-era patriot honored with a bridge across Newtown Creek. Manhattan Avenue formerly connected with Vernon Avenue (now Boulevard) in Long Island City via a…

Staten Island is calling. 2020 was the first year I didn’t set foot on the island of myth since Forgotten New York began “principal photography” in 1998. In fact I…

From the NYC Municipal Archives, here’s a look at 71-66 Austin Street in Forest Hills which then housed a Womrath’s library. Since I remember Womrath’s in Bay Ridge as a…

10th and Broadway in Williamsburg? You might think these signs would be found in the Union Square area, where East 10th and Broadway do intersect (at Grace Church, one of…

There’s a very old, rusted, arrow-shaped sign pointing toward New Jersey on Richmond Terrace just east of Port Richmond Avenue, and if you look carefully you can just make out…

The corner of 6th Avenue and West 8th Street, #396 6th Avenue, was a book store as long as I can remember it, beginning in the 1980s and continuing into…