Idling in Ridgewood the other day, I spotted this truly ancient painted ad on Seneca Avenue between Stanhope and Himrod. Other bits of the ad are visible but have mostly…

It’s an oft told tale for Forgotten NY fans, so stop me if you’ve heard it before. For those who haven’t, you can see three rats scurrying up the struts supporting…

I was ambling along West 14th Street just outside the A/C/E/L train on 8th Avenue on my way to the Apple store on 9th to get my IPhone unlocked (I…

I was staggering around Fort Greene on a mild February Saturday. The rain had not arrived but it was coming up fast. In my estimation, I had about an hour…

From NYC King of Lampposts Bob Mulero’s collection comes this photo of a 1950s-era wall bracket map from somewhere on South Street; the street has maintained very few of its…

162nd Street in Flushing, my home base between 1993 and 2007,  was bookended by two ancient and hoary taverns, the Velvet Cup near Northern and Paddy Quinn’s, near Sanford. Quinn’s…

I’m not a smoker and I’m glad I never got started with it in any form, cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, marijuana, any of it. That’s not to say I’m not attracted…

The Westinghouse MO-8 (some say OV-8) once lit NYC streets by the hundreds or perhaps thousands from 1962 to 1972. Known as “open-bottom” or “cutoff” luminaires, they were designed to illuminate…

The former Jamaica Savings Bank on Queens Boulevard and 56th Avenue exhibits phases, like the moon, depending on where you view it. Designed and built for Jamaica Savings Bank in…

Woodside is, perhaps, best known by NYC commuters as a major interchange of the Long Island Rail Road — the only other station in addition to Pennsylvania Station where all major…

A classic picture of Deep Queens here at 51st Avenue looking west from Jacobus Street, an intersection only Elmhurstians might know. It is an eastern extension of Maurice Avenue, which…

While stumbling around Woodside and avoiding the ice patches on the sidewalks that Queens property owners refused to clean, I arrived at a cluster of familiar-looking apartment houses on either…