Flushing Airport, the former Queens private aircraft facility, hasn’t seen a landing or takeoff in many years. It’s not even in Flushing. Along with the Whitestone Expressway, it’s the chief…

When you get off the El at the Gates Avenue station and Broadway, you have only to walk up the street about a block or so to be transported back…

Scattered throughout New York City are streets that are composed entirely of steps, and steep ones at that. As a rule they were placed on hills that were too steep…

Many people don’t know it but many of the buildings of the original village of Astoria still survive, in a tiny area west of 21st Street and north of Astoria Boulevard,…

Smack in the middle of the East River, near the UN Headquarters, is an artificial island built in the 1890s. U Thant Island was named for the Burmese secretary-general of…

Every summer/fall, the NYC Transit Museum takes over Schermerhorn Street, outside the Museum, for its annual Bus Festival, in which buses from decades ago, right up to the present, are…

Ten-lane, pedal to the metal Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens … once a country lane dominated by horses and carriages? It’s true. And, the evidence is still there in plain view.…

The rural aspect of Staten Island, so much apparent before the construction of the Verrazano Bridge in 1964, has been gradually stamped out by construction of cookie-cutter housing and suburban…

This bridge, on Carroll Street spanning the Gowanus Canal, was built in 1889 by the Brooklyn Department of City Works (when Brooklyn was a city) and is one of two…

What in the world can a “Hamilton Fish Court” possibly be? What is a “fish court” and why is it named for Hamilton? Actually this apartment building, at 286th East 2nd Street…

Take a walk down 11th Avenue, south of the Chelsea Piers, past 14th Street. You’ll see a semicircular tower of rusting metal, seemingly awaiting the wrecking ball, at the remains…

New York City used to have political designations called wards, which were the smallest political units in NYC. Each ward elected an alderman and an assistant alderman to the City…