In 1940, Diamond’s Dry Goods held down 2516 Mermaid Avenue, west of West 25th Street in Coney Island. The name was displayed in a diamond-shaped motif with a window display…

SADLY I have never visited Big Nose Kate’s, a saloon way out in Rossville, at 2484 Arthur Kill Road, tucked near the huge Old Bermuda catering hall next to the…

THE turn-of-the-century English Garden City movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard and Sir Raymond Unwin served as the inspiration for Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928. This housing experiment was aimed at showing civic leaders that…

THE Sholem Aleichem Cooperative on Giles Plae west of Sedgwick Avenue in Kingsbridge Heights was built by labor unions and progressive Jewish organizations. Sholom aleichem, in Hebrew, means “peace be…

MANY of New York City’s longest and most important roads begin in inconspicuousness and humble spots. Metropolitan Avenue is one of the lengthiest routes between Brooklyn and Queens. It was…

At #178 Norfolk Street south of East Houston, keep looking up for a triumphant statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the chief architect of the Soviet state that ruled much of eastern…

SOMETIMES historic buildings are hiding in plain sight. Take this unassuming two-story house on Woodrow Road and Rossville Avenue, in an area that has gone from rural to suburban to…

THIS building on the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue and East 45th looms large in my memory. From 1982-1988, I was in the building most nights between 2 and 3…

HERE’S a tableau that’ll be familiar to Bronx residents in Norwood and Bedford Park: the Mosholu Parkway and in the background, the Tracey Towers. Mosholu Parkway is among the many…

THIS past May I went on a couple of swings through Kingsbridge Heights along Bailey Avenue and Kingsbridge Terrace, in Kingsbridge Heights, which are positioned on a steep ridge the…

THE west end of Rutland Road in central Brooklyn runs through one of Brooklyn’s most attractive neighborhoods, Lefferts Gardens; indeed the west end is part of a landmarked district, and…

ALFRED Pancoast Boller (February 23, 1840 – December 9, 1912) was a civil engineer and bridge designer. He was the chief engineer on several bridge building projects during the late…