Manhattan

I should really spend more time in Hell’s Kitchen — there are some old and strange buildings and signage lurking in the side streets. In mid-December I was attending a…

The Winter Garden, at Broadway and West 50th Street, was the longtime home of Cats and Mamma Mia! However, it is also a throwback to a time before Times Square…

Jones Alley, looking south from Bond Street According to Gil Tauber of oldstreets, in 1806 a laneway called at first Cross Lane was laid out beginning at Bleecker opposite Mott. It…

Here’s a trio of well-preserved, 19.5 feet wide Federal style townhouses on the west side of MacDougal Street north of West 3rd and adjacent to the Provincetown Playhouse. This part…

A nondescript brick building at 34-36 East 1st Street is panted light blue and marked with a sign saying “The Catholic Worker.” Here social activist and convert to the Catholic…

109 West 17th Street is a handsome brick building just west of 6th Avenue, just south of Ladies’ Mile and its grand department stores, or at least the buildings that…

In 2014 the last trace of the Albert Merrill School vanished as this ad on West 29th Street near 8th Avenue was painted over. The school promised training in computer…

I have been a-mews-ing myself lately (ugh… I know…) by revisiting Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s mewses, or short lanes that formerly held stables that were later converted into homes (many of…

On a morning when it dropped to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s appropriate to talk about a frieze. This aggressively Machine-age frieze is attached to a pedestrian overpass in Independence Plaza…

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, opened in May 1950 and designed by Ole Singstad, remains the longest vehicular tunnel in the world after nearly 65 years in operation. Work got underway in…

200 Hudson Street is one of those huge loft buildings with hundreds of windows built in early-to-mid 20th Century seen frequently in Tribeca lining Hudson and Varick Streets. The building…

The New York City of the years following the Civil War was a time of great population growth, as immigrants from around the globe flocked here for new opportunities. In…