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Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts
Louis Comfort Tiffany—son of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co, the famed jeweler then located on Prince Street and Broadway—is better known for his lovely stained glass works. But as a young man, he studied painting, and from his rented studio at a YMCA he depicted impoverished Duane Street in 1877. The Belgian block [...]
The demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station in October 1963 is considered a city tragedy, a “monumental act of vandalism,” as The New York Times put it at the time. It was also a catalyst for the preservation movement that’s saved countless buildings from also ending up in pieces in a Meadowlands dump. Photos of [...]
I love the compact rooftop houses that pop on on residential buildings all over the city—especially when they look like they belong on Cape Cod or in the Catskills rather than Chelsea or the West Village. This sweet little ranch resembles something you’d find out West. Even the few trees shading the house have a [...]
At the entrance to the Children’s Zoo in Central Park is this enchanting sculpture of a dancing boy, two dancing goats, and some curious birds. They’re on top of the Lehman Gates, donated by former governor Herbert H. Lehman and his wife when the Children’s Zoo opened in 1961. “The music is provided by two [...]
Since 1869, more than 800,000 paupers and unknowns have been buried on Hart Island. This slip of land in the East River is New York’s Potter’s Field, where inmates from nearby Rikers Island place coffins in mass plots topped by granite markers. Yet there’s one solitary plot, dated 1985, that’s especially heartbreaking: it’s the final [...]
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