On a recent jaunt in Midwood, Brooklyn I made sure to check on a pair of classic neon drugstore signs I’ve been aware of for quite some time. Unfortunately the…

I admit, I learned cursive writing in grade school but I haven’t used it since, except to write my name (I am one of those people who try to make…

While staggering aimlessly on West Kingsbridge Road one afternoon in October 2011, delirious from unseasonable heat, I encountered this redundant yet evocative half-handpainted sign just east of University Avenue. More…

I’d say there are still  a few dozen of these clocks still in use in the subways, especially on the BMT and IND where countdown clocks have not been installed…

Who knows how long Bartunek Hardware has been on 23rd Avenue between 28th and 29th Streets in Astoria? A long time, judging by this plastic-lettered sign. As New Jersey DJ…

The last “humpback” of the thousands that served Manhattan and the Bronx barely made it into the 21st Century at a Bronx intersection you’ve never heard of (and one I’d…

By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent Remember E.J. Korvettes, Woolworths, A&S, Coward Shoes, Gage & Tollner, Mays and Martins?  If you’re a Brooklynite of a certain age, you will.  The…

I did a presentation on Monday, March 7, 2016 in Astoria about Travis, Staten Island, a place formerly known as Linoleumville, where between 1873 and 1931 there was a large…

Now home to the Prop N Spoon Company, which provides props for retail shows and conventions, and the City View Racquet Club, this building which fills an entire block and…

Many of the streets in Williamsburg and northern Bedford-Stuyvesant are named for signers of the Declaration of Independence. Not every signer is represented, but most are. Ben Franklin, George Clymer,…

Samuel Klein founded the discount chain S. Klein in 1906, with the flagship store at Union Square East and East 14th Street, and the business eventually grew as large as…

Sicilian immigrant Joseph Bari opened his first pizzeria in 1973, purchasing a –what else — Ray’s Pizza at 3rd Avenue and East 76th Street and renaming it for himself, in…