Seen here at the Tudor City Place overpass on East 42nd Street, just south of the United Nations, are a pair of Corvington, or Type 24M, lampposts. Toward the end…

For some reason Manhattan’s east side has always had more north-south avenues than the west. Between 3rd and Park (4th Avenue) comes Lexington Avenue and between Park and 5th Avenue…

In January 2014 I was looking for cemeteries in Staten Island (like Queens, the borough has several small and unfamiliar ones) and boarded the John J. Marchi ferryboat for the ride…

December 2013: I was in the Chelsea area running some errands the weekend before Christmas in a preternaturally warm spell that propelled the air temperature into the 70s (right now…

The Rufus King Mansion, more properly, King Manor, stands on Jamaica Avenue and 153rd Street in Queens. It was originally built in 1730 along the main route to Brooklyn Ferry…

Thousands of NYC streets are named for people. Some are presidents — likely the more famed ones such as Washington or Lincoln. Often the practice is to develop a group…

I found myself in Bay Ridge a great deal in 2013, mainly because of extensive dental work, but the neighborhood, in which I lived from 1957-2003, is one I always…

In late summer 2013 I was again wandering in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, because the changes going on in these neighborhoods is accelerating to a breathtaking pace. What was once a…

If you have been reading FNY for awhile you know I’m fascinated with the patterns produced by Queens’ occasionally wacko street numbering system (and I also speculate what it would…

Are 10th, 11th and 12th Streets, on either side of 5th Avenue, in Greenwich Village? The East Village? The Union Square area? I can’t tell. I was scuttling furtively around…

I have lived on, or very near, 6th Avenue in Bay Ridge three times. My first couple of decades were spent in my parents’ 2-bedroom apartment at 8302 6th Avenue…

In July 2012, I was wandering around Hamilton Heights on an overcast and overhumid afternoon in quest of Alexander Hamilton‘s house, built in 1802, that he called the Grange in…