New York City expunged the last of its small slotted mailboxes that were mounted on lampposts or separate concrete posts several years ago, but Boston still has a few, or…

Boston does a great job marking war heroes and local luminaries on hundreds of street corners with these embossed black and gold signs, like this one in the West End.…

Four auto traffic bridges connect Staten Island to the outside world. In order of construction, they are the Outerbridge Crossing (named for its engineer, not because it is in the…

Nuvern Avenue runs for a few blocks in Mount Vernon, near the Bronx line, in Westchester. But, there is a small piece of it in the Bronx, near its intersection…

Though Hibernia Bank was acquired by Security Pacific in 1988 and has been long forgotten, its 1892 “temple bank” building [Albert Pissis, arch.] still stands proudly, if a bit worse…

One of the most beloved artifacts in downtown San Francisco is at Market Street where it meets Kearny and Third Streets, where the city’s oldest public monument, Lotta’s Fountain, can…

Classic light post, Union Street near Mason, San Francisco. San Fran has done a good job preserving classic posts — Union and Market have the same poles they had for…

The last time I was in DC (December 2007) I quite accidentally stumbled on these remaining streetcar rails on O and P Street in Georgetown. Looks like the city is…

This line in the Watergate area of Washington, DC, was used by USA mapmakers to divide the world into eastern and western hemispheres between 1848-1884. Thereafter, the USA accepted the…

Despite federal guidelines elsewhere that mandate green and white reflective street signs, Brookline, Massachusetts (the birthplace of John F. Kennedy) has always been permitted to retain its handsome set of…

Over the years my pal Allen Dade has passed along several dozen images of the strange and varied lampposts found in the London area. I know next to nothing at…

During my August 2008 visit to San Francisco, it occurred to me that I had never seen the sun set in the Pacific Ocean, or an ocean of any kind. This…