In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Flatbush and East Flatbush, you will find a succession of avenues that run north to south that are named for major cities in New York State.…

I had just gotten off the train at Jay/Metrotech and was stumbling toward the starting point of my Downtown to Crown Heights epic when I spotted a chalkboard on the…

When you were a child did you ever get excited when you were riding a train and suddenly, the car was awash in sunshine when the train emerged from the…

The title card shows Trimble Road, a one-block street running from 62nd to 63rd Streets along the Long Island Rail Road main line north of Woodside Avenue. Trimble Road has…

There it stands at the north end of Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge entrance, a litle-visited memorial to a little-known NYC Mayor. William Jay Gaynor (1851-1913)…

As you are going north on the Harlem River between the Bronx and Manhattan, the University Heights Bridge is the tenth in a series of eleven that includes the Willis…

Since I was hired to work in the Flatiron district in Manhattan in November 2011, I started sniffing around for places to eat lunch before actually beginning work. I will…

Astoria Village is a small area tucked into Queens’ northwest edge, south of Astoria Park and Hell Gate, east of Roosevelt Island. The area was first settled in the 1600s…

Beach Street ranks among the Forgotten men among its neighbors in Tribeca. Two blocks between West and Greenwich were hacked off in favor of the Independence Plaza apartment house development in…

While careening through Canarsie this past week, searching for lost alleys, I checked Nolan’s Lane, which I hadn’t visited since 1999. For most, unless you live there, there’s no reason…

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…