ALMOST unnoticeable, a bust of social reformer Jacob Riis can be found at the pavilion on the boardwalk in his namesake park on the Rockaway peninsula near the Marine Parkway…

I am taking the July 4 weekend off and doing minimal website activity (and even pausing from “real” job activities; I usually do a couple of hours on Saturday and…

I was in the New-York Historical Society on July 4th, 2024 puttering around the exhibits, when i saw a rectangular post in a glass case, marked with a “4” on…

FOR some time I wondered about the original purpose of this Greek temple on the Riverside Drive viaduct just south of West 135th Street. I recently discovered it: historian Fred…

As a kid, I was far from amiable. Pretty much all I wanted to do was read, or fill writing tablets with drawings of lampposts. My parents’ constant refrain was,…

MANY think I have nothing good to say about new architecture. Nonsense. Here’s a new building I like, at #78 Amity Street, on the corner of Hicks. It employs classic…

HERE’S a 1930s look at Feitsen’s Drug Store in the 1930s, on 45th Avenue and 147th Street. Out of the picture across the street are Parsons Boulevard and Flushing Hospital…

IT was time to “call an audible” as they say in football, when the quarterback decides to change the play at scrimmage when the defense is lined up to defend…

TWO very different eras of American history appear side by side in Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. 7th Avenue South was created in the 1910s by the extension of the…

WHO is Hugh O’Neill, and why is his name on this building high above Sixth Avenue and 22nd Street? Back in the good old days, circa 1900, Hugh O’Neill owned the…

In an area rich with architectural gems like the Yale Club, General Society of Mechanics and tradesmen and the Algonquin Hotel, all on West 44th, FDNY Engine Company #56, a…

On a rare clear weekend day in February, I strolled through Williamsburg, a neighborhood I have had a hard time getting a handle on as it is ever-changing; when I…