Manhattan

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…

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,…

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…