Manhattan

There are three 5th avenue stations in the NYC subways, each of them on crosstown lines. 5th Avenue, the spine of Manhattan Island, serves as the divider between East and…

As many ForgottenFans know, I have been working in the Columbus Circle/Hells Kitchen region of late. On an after-work ramble, I headed east on West 58th Street and happened upon…

The Queen Anne apartment building at the southwest corner of 9th Avenue and West 50th has a few years on the odometer — it was constructed by Ellsworth Striker in…

My fascination continues with the so-called “special posts” that lurked under elevated trains in the early 20th Century, especially in Manhattan. They seemed to be found most often under the…

Gre-Solvent soap, first produced in 1903, was the equivalent to Lava Soap (which in fact was a competitor since that brand launched in 1893). It was the soap used by…

I recently took a walk from Penn Station, exploring the newest and final section of the High Line that will open to the public, into Chelsea, south along 4th Avenue…

Here’s the entrance to the Columbus Circle subway station, officially 59th Street for the IND trains this entrance was constructed for, at Central Park West at Central Park South. It’s…

The Empire was created by the Fodero Dining Car Company in the 1940s and renovated into a haute-cuisine restaurant in 1979. A stainless steel model of the Empire State Building was…

Baxter Street begins at NYC’s more infamous precincts (for two separate reasons over the years) and runs generally north and northwest to Grand, where it ends at the old but…

This month, I’m working at 1740 Broadway at West 56th Street, which is up the street from the famed Brill Building of pop music fame. However, 1740 Broadway, a 1950…

I am working in the Columbus Circle area for a few weeks, on Broadway and 56th. At lunch I get out and wander around a bit, marveling at the “supertall”…

I recently took a walk on the east-west streets in lower Manhattan looking for oddities and anachronisms. There aren’t many 19th-century buildings surviving on John Street in lower Manhattan, but…