#4 Gramercy Park West is a pleasant 4-story brick mansion with a porch framed by intricate metalwork (that it shares with the adjoining #3 GPW) that has an indirect connection…

I’ve always preferred Boston’s “T” route maps to the MTA’s in New York (though apparently the locals disagree with my assessment). One one large surface, you have a line map,…

Fire alarm call boxes were first installed in Washington, DC in the 1860s– around the same time they first appeared in NYC — and largely resembled and worked the same…

When I am out of town I carry on just the same way I do while in NYC — I notice ancient infrastructure, such as this rusted fire alarm at…

Francisville is a small neighborhood north of downtown Philadelphia. Like Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, the neighborhood doesn’t conform to Philly’s overall street grid due to its status as a small town…

I visited San Francisco for a week in August 2008. I seem to find the heat waves — the usual weather is between 65 and 75 degrees in August, but…

FNY Correspondent Gary Fonville: This is what I believe to be a sign that dates from the White Plains Road line’s construction around 1915. The only other extant vintage IRT…

In the summer of 2014 I took multiple walks up and down the streets of Hoboken, NJ, hoping to do an epic series of posts capturing its small-town minutiae. I…

I have often lamented the lack of named back alleys in New York City. Pittsburgh, PA fills the bill with hundreds of them, almost all called “ways.” This is Osterburg…

The neon is falling off this amazing neon sign on Broad and Ellsworth Streets in south Philly. This sign would have been removed decades ago in New York City. Photo:…

Though New York City continually strives to rid itself of old signage and other relics of the past, a new trend has arisen of actually maintaining relics and reusing them…

In a residential section of North Los Angeles, a pair of guy-wired telephone pole masts with incandescent lamps survived until early 2014 at Kittridge Street and Radford Avenue (above)…  …