All blogs / History

Posts

2,003 from 5 May 2014 to 26 Oct 2026

Posting

weekly (130 in the last year)

Kind

personal blog

Feed

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/feed/

Latest

October 2026

1. 26 OctThe original meaning of the spooky witch and owl sculptures at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park
2. 26 OctUnraveling the backstory of an architecturally mysterious holdout house on East 75th Street
3. 26 OctSmall birds, brain sauce, and everything else on the ladies’ menu at the Astor House hotel
4. 19 OctDecoding the original cast-iron subway entrance that’s been on a Brooklyn corner for 110 years
5. 19 OctInside New York’s spookiest 19th century mansion, dubbed “the house of many mysteries” before it was abandoned
6. 12 OctA reclusive, rebellious painter captures the “sinister magic” of a moonlit city street
7. 12 OctFrom grocery to saloon to Beastie Boys’ concert venue, the story of the last wood building on the Upper West Side
8. 12 OctWhatever happened to the bridle path in Central Park—and the riders on horseback who used it?
9. 5 OctThe two panthers keeping watch over Prospect Park seem ready to pounce
10. 5 OctWhen Gilded Age New York City went to war against banana peels

September 2026

1. 28 SepIn praise of the decaying, wood-columned 1840s holdout obscured behind a board in Brooklyn Heights
2. 28 SepThese salvaged relics in a Brooklyn subway station are the ghostly remains of old New York buildings
3. 28 SepThis jewel box of a building in New York’s “Ladies Mile” shopping district was built by an actual jeweler
4. 21 SepA rich man built this hilltop dream mansion in 1850s Brooklyn, then had it confiscated to create Prospect Park
5. 21 SepA Prospect Heights manhole cover reveals the source of Brooklyn’s water supply a century ago
6. 14 SepThe remnants of an unsolved 1920 Wall Street bomb blast can still be seen on a bank’s facade
7. 14 SepA Renaissance painting inspired this New York photographer to take tender portraits of kids at play
8. 7 SepA powerful West Village 9/11 memorial asks us not to forget one young office worker
9. 7 SepThis tiny steel cottage perched on a rock pile is the smallest house ever built on Riverside Drive

August 2026

1. 31 AugIs this the last public pay phone in a New York City subway station?
2. 31 AugWhen the British took over New Amsterdam, they changed the map with these short-lived new street names
3. 31 AugThe abandoned remains of the Hudson River Yacht Club’s once-elegant clubhouse
4. 24 AugSearching a Gowanus factory for the remains of Maryland soldiers killed in the Battle of Brooklyn
5. 24 AugWhy the Union Square subway stop is the only station that relies on automatic steel platform extenders
6. 17 AugIn the dark days of the Depression, a Jazz Age artist captures a luminous, magical New York
7. 17 AugA luxury Fifth Avenue apartment tower’s strange fake rooftop
8. 10 AugWhat it was like taking a steamboat to Coney Island on a sweltering Sunday in 1895
9. 10 AugThe Fifth Avenue church that used to be a neighborhood vaudeville and silent movie theater
10. 3 AugThe world’s largest former hat factory almost looks as beautiful today as it did in 1890s Brooklyn
11. 3 AugA tenement goes down, and a century-old chewing tobacco ad returns to the uptown cityscape

July 2026

1. 27 JulA 1940s Third Avenue Elevated entrance that looks like a storybook cottage
2. 27 JulA slender remnant of Ebbets Field stands at a busy intersection in Downtown Brooklyn
3. 27 JulHidden by billboards for over 100 years, the tiny holdout building in the middle of Macy’s is back in view
4. 20 JulThe spiteful family feud behind one of New York’s oldest and most luxurious hotels
5. 20 JulThis 19th century Brooklyn house faces an early turnpike road that no longer exists
6. 13 JulThe mystery of the First Avenue tenement that had its top four floors sheared off
7. 13 JulOne writer’s melancholy visit to the “island full of idiots” in the East River in 1888
8. 10 JulExplore the 5 Great Families of the city’s Gilded Age in a live online class with Ephemeral New York!
9. 6 JulWhat you’d be wearing to Rockaway Beach or Coney Island if you were a woman in the 1860s
10. 6 JulSurrounded by concrete and apartment houses, the last farm in Manhattan was a citywide curiosity
11. 6 JulHow a former country road in the Bronx called Featherbed Lane got its evocative name

June 2026

1. 29 JunThis controversial Union Square flagpole was created to honor America’s 150th birthday in 1926
2. 29 JunThere really used to be a family’s house underneath a notorious Coney Island roller coaster
3. 29 JunWhy these quirky Gothic houses built in 1855 in Brooklyn Heights were nicknamed “honeymoon row”
4. 22 JunWhat’s inside these fake row houses that blend into the New York City streetscape?
5. 22 JunHow the anchorages under the Brooklyn Bridge became hidden 19th century wine vaults
6. 15 JunNew York’s longest “step street” is this dramatic three-block concrete staircase in the Bronx
7. 15 JunWhat a 19th century painter of the natural world saw from her Carroll Gardens front yard and rooftop
8. 15 JunVibrant color photos of 1960s Coney Island in transition, taken by a man who lived in obscurity
9. 8 JunThe story of the 19th century factory building hidden within modern Bronx high-rise towers
10. 8 JunThe teak wood carvings on a Manhattan townhouse’s front door tell an ancient epic story
11. 1 JunAll the beaches open for swimming in Depression-era New York City, according to a subway poster
12. 1 JunThe story of a nonconforming brick row house that’s stood on Grand Street for almost 200 years
13. 1 JunA defunct Downtown tool business lives on—thanks to this faded ad on the side of its former headquarters

May 2026

1. 25 MayA Decoration Day morning of buying and selling at the Canal Street flower market
2. 25 MayThis modest Bronx memorial to a forgotten war was made with scrap metal from a sunken battleship
3. 25 MayThe midcentury street photographer who documented New Yorkers in all their raw, unfiltered humanity
4. 18 MayThemes of optimism and oppression as seen in two luminous views of the Brooklyn Bridge
5. 18 MayIs this towering London Plane the oldest tree in Central Park?
6. 18 MayFrom an 1890s settlement house to a 1980s symbol of gentrification, the rocky evolution of Christodora House
7. 11 MayWhy John Sloan painted this lush scene of a woman in Union Square battling the rain
8. 11 MayThis West Side tenement seems to be precariously perched on the past
9. 11 MayThe harmony and unity of a South Bronx street once so elite, it was nicknamed the “Irish Fifth Avenue”
10. 4 MayThe return of a 1970s Hallmark card store sign on a Yorkville street
11. 4 MayThe rise and fall of New York City’s street and public park comfort stations
12. 4 MayThe Revolutionary War-era hooks drilled into the rocks at Jeffrey’s Hook in Upper Manhattan

April 2026

1. 27 AprRiverside Drive’s first four row houses were built in 1889—these two sister houses are the only survivors
2. 27 AprIs that a tiny house on the roof of an East 57th Street tenement?
3. 25 AprTake a walk back to the Gilded Age on Sunday, April 26 with Ephemeral New York!
4. 20 AprThe most unusual house number in all of New York City is on West Fourth Street
5. 20 AprA Gilded Age millionaire builds the men-only “Waldorf of the slums” hotel on Bleecker Street
6. 16 AprExplore the city’s other Gilded Age millionaire mile this Saturday on a walk with Ephemeral New York!
7. 13 AprA birds-eye view of Riverside Park in 1934 shows how much this slender green space has changed
8. 13 AprA West Side woman’s devotion to two nameless “Titanic orphans” after all three survived the disaster
9. 6 AprOnce a 19th century carriage house for elite racehorses, now the Carriage House Lofts on West 150th Street
10. 6 AprInside the untamed hidden garden behind Washington Mews in Greenwich Village

March 2026

1. 30 MarThis 1901 tobacco trading card captures the spirit of April Fools Day in New York City
2. 30 MarBefore ATMs and apps, there was “commuter banking” inside this Brooklyn subway station
3. 30 MarThe spectacular uptown apartment building from 1905 that resembles a Roman aqueduct
4. 23 MarThe ghostly remains of a legendary longtime Upper East Side movie theater
5. 23 MarThis delightful East Village faux carriage house was built in 1891 for sculptors, not horses
6. 16 MarThe enduring phantom outline of a long-gone early 19th century house on Bond Street
7. 16 MarA 1907 luxury apartment house on Riverside Drive becomes “a slum with a view” a half-century later
8. 16 MarA troubled recluse with a camera obsessively walked the streets to chronicle postwar New York City
9. 9 MarThe darkness at the center of an Impressionist’s snowy New York dreamscape
10. 9 MarThe most difficult to find Revolutionary War memorial hides in the woods of Upper Manhattan
11. 9 MarAn oil tycoon sees the future of Riverside Drive—and builds his family two dazzling neighboring mansions
12. 2 MarThe silk ribbon mill is long gone, but the company’s 120-year-old faded ad remains on the building
13. 2 MarA row of harmonious uptown houses built for the needs of Gilded Age women

February 2026

1. 23 FebThe little stories of humanity playing out on a sweltering East River pier
2. 23 FebThe story of Harlem’s last remaining wood clapboard house, built at the dawn of the Gilded Age
3. 23 FebSubtle reminders of the Covid pandemic on an Upper East Side subway platform
4. 16 FebWhat’s on the menu at the Waldorf-Astoria birthday ball to honor the U.S. President in 1939?
5. 16 FebInside Harlem’s “replica” Gilded Age rail station, tucked beneath the tracks over Park Avenue
6. 9 FebAn invitation to the opulent 19th century Bachelors’ Ball, held every year on Valentine’s Day
7. 9 FebPeek into the diary of a Manhattan schoolboy growing up in the booming city of the 1870s
8. 2 FebThis prefabricated steel diner on Pearl Street is one of the last of its kind in Manhattan
9. 2 FebThe sacred stone box of a church beneath a finance company’s 1970s Midtown skyscraper

January 2026

1. 26 JanTracing the life and legacy of an ironworker through a coal chute cover in Brooklyn Heights
2. 26 JanHow long has this faded 7Up sign been hanging on a West Side corner tenement?
3. 26 JanThe army of unemployed men who lined up to do the work of removing snow from city streets
4. 19 JanA midcentury snow scene reveals the magic and wonder of Madison Square in winter
5. 19 JanThe hucksters, housewives, and pageant of humanity once on display at Paddy’s Market in Hell’s Kitchen
6. 12 JanThe “entirely feasible” 1911 plan to extend Manhattan four miles into New York Harbor
7. 12 JanOne of Manhattan’s last wood houses has stood on this Yorkville street since before the Civil War
8. 5 JanThis dollhouse-like holdout built in 1899 is a lonely and curious Bronx anachronism
9. 5 JanHow New Yorkers paid for a subway ride when the system first opened in 1904
10. 5 JanWhat a panoramic winter landscape from the 1860s says about Central Park’s early years

December 2025

1. 29 DecThe story behind a haunting 1974 photo of a bar and cocktail lounge that once existed in the West Village
2. 29 DecChronicling the feasting and frolicking on New Year’s Day over two centuries in New York City
3. 22 DecThe huddles of humanity on an anonymous Manhattan cross street during a wintry day in 1899
4. 22 DecThis spooky holdout built in 1896 was once a “distinctly idiosyncratic” family home in a more rural Bronx
5. 15 DecWhat happened to the canal that gave Canal Street its name?
6. 15 DecThis forgotten stretch of Central Park was originally intended to be a road that celebrated winter
7. 8 DecThis tucked-away holdout house in East Midtown was built 3 years afer the end of the Civil War
8. 8 DecA decades-old subway relic hangs from the ceiling in Brooklyn’s neglected Court Street station
9. 8 DecSearching for the East Side store in the opening scene of 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street”
10. 1 DecWhat a remarkable candid photo of a “soap fat man” in Prospect Park says about Brooklyn in 1878
11. 1 DecThe enduring appeal of New York City’s lovely vintage letter boxes and mail chutes
12. 1 DecThe mysterious origins of Mitchell Place, possibly Manhattan’s most obscure one-block street

November 2025

1. 24 NovThis building is one of the last cast-iron structures in the Financial District, and it hides an unusual backstory
2. 24 NovThe Lincoln Tunnel’s 88th birthday is almost here—and it’s time to celebrate this engineering wonder
3. 17 NovThe sweet story of the 1930s “Hansel and Gretel cottage” tucked beside the Queensboro Bridge
4. 17 NovReading the sides of old factory buildings from the platform of a Brooklyn elevated train
5. 10 NovThe Art Deco beauty of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street streamlined and stylized elevators
6. 10 NovA luminous wartime scene of France’s fearless Blue Devils marching on Fifth Avenue
7. 10 NovInside the eerie, unfinished 1930s subway station under a South Williamsburg street
8. 3 NovThe geometry of 1940s New York City under the Third Avenue El
9. 3 NovDrama and heartbreak in the “lost children’s room” at the Mulberry Street police headquarters
10. 3 NovTracing the colonial-era origins of an obscure Belgian block alley deep in the Financial District

October 2025

1. 27 OctA brick facade is all that remains of a counting house that held out on Pearl Street for nearly 200 years
2. 27 OctThe beauty of Bleecker Street’s pushcarts, captured by an artist who preferred the city’s gritty side
3. 27 OctGoing on a “midnight ramble” with Teddy Roosevelt in his quest to reform the city’s corrupt police force
4. 20 OctThe Halloween trick mischief-making city kids at the turn of the century played on hapless adults
5. 20 OctWhy the glorious doors of Riverside Church depict angels, saints, kings—and Albert Einstein
6. 13 OctThe Upper East Side tailor who took poetic street scene photos over six decades from his shop window
7. 13 OctThe eccentric Hungarian princess who moved into the Plaza Hotel with 12 servants and a lion cub
8. 6 OctThe tenement is a menace to all, according to a dark and blunt illustration from 1901
9. 6 OctUnhappily married to a UK royal, this Gilded Age dollar princess became the great-grandmother of Princess Diana

September 2025

1. 29 SepA ghostly old house on the edge of the Hudson River, and the boxer who lived there with his family
2. 29 SepThe oldest street sign still functioning in New York City might be this one in Murray Hill
3. 22 SepWhat a 1912 painting might be saying about the changing social rules of New York’s public spaces
4. 22 SepA Gilded Age sugar baron and his wife build a Fifth Avenue “house of fantasy” for their family and art collection
5. 15 SepThe enchanting stained glass luring drinkers into one of Midtown’s dwindling workingman’s taverns
6. 15 SepInside the Gilded Age childhoods of six clever siblings raised in “zany confusion” on Riverside Drive
7. 8 SepThe solemn 9/11 memorial hidden behind the corporate office towers of Sixth Avenue in Midtown
8. 8 SepTracking the 19th century granite milestones that marked the distance from City Hall to Upper Manhattan
9. 1 SepA two-letter Manhattan phone exchange spotted in Midtown: what does it stand for?
10. 1 SepA disappointment to his family, this Gilded Age Vanderbilt heir ended his life in a Broadway hotel
11. 1 SepA giant faded ad on an Upper Manhattan tenement is a remnant of a holdout family business

Every year

2026 1082025 1262024 1302023 1352022 1722021 1562020 1482019 1522018 1572017 1842016 2152015 1572014 163