Brooklyn

There are more streets still sporting their original brick or Belgian block pavements than you may think. There are still dozens, as a matter of fact… here are some of…

The streets of New York City used to be paved with bricks. The term ‘cobblestones’ refers to uneven stones of varying shapes and sizes. This style of paving went out…

Constructed exclusively to light the network of parkways that Robert Moses constructed beginning in the Twenties, these distinctive poles are made of both wood and iron. Some are still in…

Before Hollywood became the center of the motion picture industry in the 1920s, New York City boasted several studios that produced silent motion pictures. At left we see a scene from Vitagraph…

Signs on subway platforms sometimes have a way of preserving for posterity the former names of streets under which they ran, or former names of station stops. This is especially true…

Every year, the New York City Transit Museum trots out a vintage subway train from the golden era of transit and takes it for a three-hour spin along the subways and elevateds…

Appearing to be a hybrid of the bishop’s crooks and long-armed poles, these distinctive lamps originally found a home on Seventh Avenue, though today they’re generally used for decorative effect…

Vinegar Hill is about a four or five block square neighborhood in Brooklyn located just east of the Manhattan Bridge anchorage. It’s a charming little area marked by brownstone buildings…

Once upon a time, New York City avenues were dominated by a long-armed, chocolate-colored cast-iron pole that my fellow lamppost maven Jeff Saltzman (whose site you can reach here) calls…

Scattered throughout the five boroughs are the remnants of the previous generation of street signs that predated the familiar green and white signs of today. Porcelain signs featuring raised letters…

There are still a few of them left and some are actually working. “Crescent moon” style luminaires, called “crescents” because of their shape, were in vogue from the mid-40s until…