2020 has been a strange year to say the least. I haven’t been in Staten Island at all for the first time since I began initial site photography in 1998,…

Many of the buildings along Flushing Avenue between Marcy and Tompkins Avenues are emblazoned with signs denoting the Pfizer Company. The drug manufacturer was opened by Charles Pfizer and cousin Charles…

I was joywalking around Auburndale over the weekend and I found a box of old power tools in vintage Black & Decker boxes by the sidewalk. The tools were there…

You find the darndest things, just walking around with a camera. At Francis Lewis Boulevard and 35th Avenue there’s a mini-mall, a shopping center really, anchored by a Food Universe…

I have been thinking more and more about where I’ll end up. My late uncle’s family has a plot in St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, a cemetery that…

Though I live in Little Neck and my needs are seen to by Little Neck Drugs on Northern Boulevard, I thought I’d note Harpell Chemists on 150th Street and 14th…

I had overlooked this rusted iron post on Frankfort Street and Park Row. These posts with finned masts…thicker versions of the finned streetlamps that originally lit the FDR Drive, Gowanus…

College Point was originally settled by the Native American Matinecocks. The Indians sold much of it to New Netherland Governor William Kieft in 1645. William Lawrence was the first British…

The White Horse Tavern is one of NYC’s long-lived literary hangouts, and yet another with an ancient neon sign. It has been here on Hudson Street and West 11th since 1878,…

Bronx Park was acquired by the city in late 1888 and early 1889. By 1891, the city had allocated fully 250 acres to be used as a botanical garden, which…

A relatively new “ghost sign” can be found at 6408 Fort Hamilton Parkway, where there is still a painted ad for Rocco’s Famous Calamari. The Italian eatery was founded by…

Mayor Ed Koch named these steps leading from 1st Avenue to Tudor City at East 43rd Street in 1981 for Nathan Sharansky (1948 – ), a native Ukrainian who worked tirelessly to allow…