104-11 39th Avenue in Corona is one of a pair of Italianate-style houses just east of the Queens Library Corona branch building located on 39th Avenue a block north of the…

From the NYC Municipal Archives comes this image of a Depression-era ragpicker making his way along Batavia Street at New Chambers Street just north of the Brooklyn Bridge. If that…

From the NYC Municipal Archives (which has helpfully watermarked the photo by way of encouragement for you to buy the photo at their website without such obstruction) is this look…

Horace Harding Boulevard was initially  developed as a through route from Elmhurst to Nassau County as Nassau Boulevard in the 1930s, and was later named for a financier and friend of NYC…

In 1975, I hit an inside the park grand slam in a wiffleball game in this place. I hit  drive to center and the kid who was out there needed…

Los Angeles lamppost buff Glen Norman points out that a “radial wave” incandescent luminaire survives in Pasadena, on Grand south of Bellefontaine. Los Angeles, while diligently converting to LED, has…

For most of the 20th Century, between about 1915 and 1965, Manhattan and the Bronx were dominated by classic “humpback” street signs in navy blue (coincidentally NY Yankee colors) with…

Though the Grand Concourse in the Bronx is filled, top to bottom, with Art Deco and Moderne masterpieces, one of its most intriguing buildings is sedately set back from the…

The following first appeared in Huffington Post on 11/21/2009. The “Huff Post” does not pay contributors, so I didn’t stick around very long. I lived on the outskirts of the…

Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza runs from 2nd Avenue east to 1st Avenue at East 47th Street, constructed by the NYC Parks department shortly after the UN opened on 1st Avenue in…

There’s a 3-story Italianate brownstone building at 102 Willow Street just off Clark, a handsome building on  a street full of them in a neighborhood full of them (Indeed, NYC’s…

Though innumerable glass towers are now going up in Queens Plaza and Hunters Point, one of the most notable buildings in western Queens turns 110 years old this year. The…