By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent Several large mass merchandise stores were patterned after the success of F.W. Woolworth, both large and small. Kresge (now K Mart), Lamston’s,  McCrory and…

By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent Your webmaster Kevin Walsh missed this sign for the former Orloff Shoes at 753 Grand Street in East Williamsburgh, Brooklyn in a recent Grand…

Across the street from The Flatbush Reformed Church and cemetery, and two doors down from historic Erasmus Hall High School, another chapter in Brooklyn history has been temporarily revealed at…

There’s a short street in Gravesend, between East 4th Street and Ocean Parkway north of Avenue X, that illustrates how the city’s method of bestowing honorific street names has changed…

There’s just a bit of bad news in Richmond Hill, where two panels of the historic Bangert’s Florists sign have been removed — so I noticed during a Richmond Hill…

These handsome red, white and blue signs, designed by artist Richard Deon, working with the cooperation of NYC’s Public Art Fund, first appeared in Astoria / Long Island City and Sunnyside in the…

In the Fab Fifties, there was a short-lived craze of drilling kids in school to hide under their desks if the Russkies ever Dropped the Big One. Never mind the…

NYC exploration never fails to surprise. I had just emerged from lunch at Zeke’s Roast Beef, once a weekly trip when I lived in Bay Ridge (Zeke’s was at 8th…

I was waiting for a dinner companion, furtively pacing around on Washington and 4th in the Sixth Borough recently when I happened upon a classic sidewalk sign for Hoboken Cleaners…

Here’s a photo of the station ID plaque on the 50th Street station on the elevated West End Line on New Utrecht Avenue. In 1949 all BMT trains were numbered,…

I was staggering down 91st Avenue in what was western Richmond Hill or eastern Woodhaven just past the old Long Island Rail Road Rockaway branch overpass that some wish to…

104-29 Jamaica Avenue is a long way from Austin Street, but there’s a reason for the name on this worn sign under the Jamaica elevated. In 1954, Bernard Titowsky opened a…