Manhattan

YEAR-END Billboard charts for 1979 included the top hits “My Sharona,” “Bad Girls,” “Le Freak,” “I Will Survive,” and “YMCA” as disco reached its chart peak that year. None of…

I recently revisited Beaver Street, downtown in the financial district. One of Manhattan’s oldest streets was named very early on, in the 1660s, and commemorates the paddle-tailed, dam-building, aquatic rodent…

SADLY, this painted sidewalk sign for glazier Ideal Glass at #20-22 East 2nd Street near 2nd Avenue (that’s a lot of “2”‘s) has been painted over, giving the space a…

I have always had a fascination for the structure in the wedge of territory between Lafayette and Mulberry where they meet Bleecker. Right now the building comes to one of…

EARLY December 2023 was mild, in the 50s and 60s, foretelling a winter that was milder than usual…again. In the era of climate change, no winter has been below normal…

HAVING roamed Governors Island for the first time in a few years, my mission was to pay attention to the older infrastructure. I first stopped on the island at Christmas…

I recently walked much of East and West 45th, which will eventually turn up in an FNY Crosstown page. On the street, I worked for 6 straight years at what…

JUST outside the turnstiles in the concourse of the 14th Street station on the IND 8th Avenue line (A, C, E trains) there’s a handsomely lettered sign in the black…

I was plodding along West 23rd Street west of 5th Avenue in June 2024 when I spotted something curious. Over the past 20 years, a new species of lamppost has…

At 463 West Street you will find the old Bell Labs HQ whose various buildings take up an entire block, between Washington, West, Bank and Bethune Streets. This complex was…

THIS photo of the long-gone West Side Highway in Manhattan has been making the rounds today (it’s in Facebook’s Lost New York page) so I thought I’d wade in. Surprisingly…

In February 2024 I walked the length of 37th Street from west to east, as part of FNY’s ongoing Crosstown series. I have yet to tackle it for a feature…