I sometimes hear the musical question, so what was at JFK Airport before JFK was built? Well, there was something there, though not a whole lot. Before the 1940s, the huge area that became…

“Ok, we’re back and here it comes for ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Which former Joey Bishop sidekick, cookbook author, singer and fitness video auteur not only has the most popular show…

In the center of Staten Island there is a place of odd, derelict beauty and Stygian, impenetrable ruin. It is located in the Seaview Hospital complex on Brielle Avenue, Willowbrook, Staten…

The Steinway Family, the master piano builders, transit magnates, and resort developers, and the Kreischers, the brick makers who left their mark on far-flung New York City neighborhoods, put a…

I’ve always been proud of the fact that I know quite a bit about the artifacts of a New York City of long ago. After all, that’s why I got…

I don’t drive. Not only don’t I see the sense in laying out hundreds a month for car payments, gasoline and repairs, I’m carphobic, and don’t see the sense in…

But we are, Dorothy. There’s a section in Manhattan with winding, quiet streets, country villas, and gently sloping hills a lifetime away from the traffic choked gridiron and honking horns usually…

When I began this page way back in 1999 there were still a number of lamppost mounted small slot mailboxes to be found around NYC, mostly in outlying areas. It…

The lampposts of the East Village, along Broadway and Astor Place, seem to be festooned with psychedelic crockery. What mad home decorator has glued broken plates, cups, dishes, sea shells,…

There’s a pretty boring-looking, undistinguished building painted gray along Third Avenue between First and Third Streets at the end of Park Slope, where it meets the Gowanus Canal. Walking past,…

Most people who have commuted into New York City from New Jersey or Long Island, or perhaps taken the train from other parts of the country like Washington, Boston, or…

Ever heard of a Brooklyn neighborhood called White Sands? If you haven’t, no big deal…most Brooklyn historians haven’t either! Perched in the no man’s land between Bath Beach and Coney Island, White…