According to maps through most of the 20th Century, Smiths Lane is a narrow alley running from Rockaway Parkway southwest to East 92nd Street just south of Farragut Road in…

My interest in subway mosaics has been re-fired again, as it is every few years. I have a new admiration for the intricate mosaics that were assembled on station walls…

On Sunday, October 16, 2011 I agreed to meet up with a Open House New York-sponsored Newtown Creek walk led by the Newtown Pentacle‘s Mitch Waxman. Bloggers like Mitch fill…

It looks like the first lamppost produced by industrial design firm Thomas Phifer and Partners, the winner of the City Lights contest administered by the Museum of the City of…

1/9/13: ***HINSCH’s DOOMED AGAIN, as its new owners couldn’t make a profit.*** 10/17/11: ***HINSCH’S  SAVED, as the owners of Skinflint’s on 5th will operate it.**** I’ll admit it, I had…

Forgotten NY has always been a bit sparse on Forgotten aspects of the Upper East Side. There has always been apractical side to this, as the Long Island RR brings…

Above: Triborough Bridge at dusk, seen from the platform of the Astoria Blvd. station on the N/Q elevated Astoria Line. The  station, since the mid-1930s, has been positioned over the…

9/4/11. I do eat seafood. Thing is, though, I anti-seafood-ize it as much as possible. The more it’s sheathed in bread crumbs, butter, lemon, tartar sauce the better, to remove…

I was making my way through the merciless blazing sun in East Willliamsburg the other Sunday, on my way to a radio appearance on the Mike and Judy Show [archived here] heading east…

There’s probably an interesting story behind the naming of Delmonico Place in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, just below its undefended border with Williamsburg. It’s a one-block street on an odd slant between Ellery…

In July 2011 I crawled through the postmodern wasteland of modern Flushing, a land increasingly scattered with empty lots testimony to the golden dreams of the go-go 2000s and a mayoral…

A fascinating exhibit has turned up on the plywood boards surrounding a construction site on Church Street downtown, between Barclay Street and Park Place. It is the second in a series…