2017–2026

2026 108

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

2025 126

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

August 2025

1. 25 AugAn East Village restaurant’s ghost sign is a relic of the neighborhood’s Italian immigrant past
2. 25 AugThis Upper East Side Russian Orthodox cathedral has dramatic beauty—and a dramatic backstory
3. 18 AugMeet the miniaturist who painted exquisite portraits of the Gilded Age’s best-known characters
4. 18 AugTake a walk through the Beatles-inspired co-op on 24th Street that built a Liverpool Street in its lobby
5. 11 AugWhy the Greek goddess of sacred poetry and music stands tucked behind a fence on the Upper East Side
6. 11 AugThis sweet 1820s house is a reminder that the Bowery was once a middle-class residential street
7. 4 AugThe mysterious blocked-off entryways built into a Central Park transverse road
8. 4 AugWhat happened to the flashy amusement park nicknamed the Coney Island of Canarsie?

July 2025

1. 28 JulThe faceless men haunting the Third Avenue El in the twilight of the 1930s city
2. 28 JulThe holdout houses on a former colonial-era farm by the East River meet the wrecking ball in 1914
3. 21 JulThe strict rules of decorum at Rockaway Beach, established by a police captain in 1904
4. 21 JulA movie mogul builds an opulent theater on Avenue B where his childhood tenement once stood
5. 21 JulThe circular beauty of a “ferris wheel” sewer cover in the South Bronx
6. 14 JulAn elegy for an 1850s mansion with no place in the rapidly urbanizing Upper West Side
7. 14 JulThe last remnants of a legendary Brooklyn department store born in the Gilded Age
8. 14 JulA luminous Coney Island beach and sky you’ve never seen before
9. 7 JulDelivering barrels of ice cream by horse and wagon in Central Park
10. 7 JulWas there ever a deli below this neon ghost delicatessen sign on West Fourth Street?
11. 7 JulInside a glorious West Side church built with stones salvaged from 19th century city landmarks

June 2025

1. 30 JunA simple way New Yorkers kept apartments cool during summer days before air conditioning
2. 30 JunStep into this West 12th Street courtyard oasis behind a row of 1840s residences
3. 30 JunThe outline of an early 19th century church can be seen at this Greenwich Village movie theater
4. 23 JunThe strange and stunning renaissance-style villa that fronts a historic Bronx row house block
5. 23 JunThis image from the 1870s of a sparse, country-like Riverside Drive is older than the Drive itself
6. 16 JunUnloved when it opened in 1958, a Greenwich Village “superblock” apartment complex is finally embraced
7. 16 JunJohn Sloan captures the sidewalk drama outside a long-gone Carmine Street movie theater
8. 9 JunA black and white etching of a 1940s street corner captures New York’s menacing film noir feel
9. 9 JunThis Gilded Age holdout house still stands because the widow who owned it said no to developers
10. 2 JunWhat caused the 1904 General Slocum disaster, according to one bitter newspaper illustration
11. 2 JunDiscovering two of the hidden backhouses secluded inside an East Village tenement block

May 2025

1. 26 MayA vintage postcard reveals the difference between the subway and the Hudson Tubes
2. 26 MayThe three New York City memorials built to honor the prison ship martyrs of the Revolutionary War
3. 26 MayAn ironworks foundry leaves its unusual mark on a Grand Street manhole cover
4. 19 MayThe mystery cupola on a colorful mosaic inside Brooklyn’s Borough Hall subway station
5. 19 May200 years of revelry and tragedy on the Bowery at New York’s oldest continuously run hotel
6. 16 MayThis weekend, explore mansions, mysteries, and hidden history of Gilded Age Riverside Drive!
7. 12 MayA 19th century grammar school built on the Lower East Side marks its place on the cityscape
8. 12 MayFrom mission house to mannequin factory to arts space, the many lives of a Broome Street building
9. 5 MayThe Hindenburg flew over New York City hours before its fiery demise in 1937
10. 5 MayThe after hours guard dogs that patrolled Macy’s on 34th Street in the 1950s
11. 5 MayFrom horse stables to police station, the evolution of one of the oldest buildings in Central Park

April 2025

1. 28 AprA 1914 photo reveals the rural-like intersection where Riverside Drive crosses paths with Broadway
2. 28 AprThe mysterious Brooklyn manhole cover that references an electric subway
3. 28 AprThe story of the Villa Charlotte Bronte, a magical 1920s cliffside co-op high above the Hudson
4. 21 AprA painter who lived in Depression-era Williamsburg captured the struggle of the neighborhood around him
5. 21 AprInside the renovated Frick museum are intimate remnants of the family (and servants) who lived there
6. 14 AprThe Upper West Side country villa of the most famous couple to perish on the Titanic
7. 14 AprA look inside the abandoned Worth Street subway station in Lower Manhattan, shuttered in the 1960s
8. 7 AprWelcome to Terminal City—a Midtown district that generated big excitement in the early 1900s
9. 7 AprA New York heir survives the sinking of the Titanic—then writes a book about the harrowing details

March 2025

1. 31 MarFrom girls’ convent school to transitional housing, the story of a Gothic castle on Riverside Drive
2. 31 MarA towering memorial to Henry Hudson that stands in “magnificent isolation” on a Bronx hilltop
3. 24 MarThe intrigue and elusiveness of two 1930s photos of New York’s skyscraper skyline
4. 24 MarTwo lovely subway station “head houses” from the early 1900s that are still part of the cityscape
5. 24 MarHer social power fading and New York changing, a look at the last years of Mrs. Astor’s life
6. 17 MarAn elegy for an iconic, now-shuttered cigar store in Greenwich Village’s Sheridan Square
7. 17 MarThe storybook-style Gramercy carriage house built in 1893 by a “bachelor maiden”
8. 17 MarMeet the 19th century Riverside Drive visionary who was dubbed “the father of the Upper West Side”
9. 12 MarEphemeral New York’s walking tours of Gilded Age Riverside Drive are back for spring!
10. 10 MarMissing the vintage neon coffee sign in Union Square that’s been transformed into a bank logo
11. 10 MarThe last remaining street in the neighborhood once known as Italian Harlem
12. 3 MarA portrait of the stylish shop girls flowing en masse through turn of the century New York City
13. 3 MarThe push to get New Yorkers to conserve wheat by touting “war bread” and wheatless lunch menus
14. 3 MarA passenger plane crashes on Rikers Island in the 1950s, and dozens of inmates assist survivors

February 2025

1. 24 FebThis two-block stretch of Lexington Avenue might be the steepest hill in Manhattan—and it has a forgotten name
2. 24 FebThe colonial-era burial ground underneath an MTA bus depot in East Harlem
3. 24 FebA rich family abandons their Gilded Age brownstone on Madison Square, its contents not revealed until the 1940s
4. 17 FebFrom elite club to speakeasy, the early life of an ornate house called a “hot-air balloon of masonry”
5. 17 FebThe unmarked Harlem grave of one of Revolutionary War-era America’s first spies
6. 10 FebWhen subway signs spell simple words wrong
7. 10 FebThe problem with the enormous “sun towers” that illuminated Madison Square Park in the 1880s
8. 10 FebThis former schoolhouse built in 1849 in Chelsea is a remnant of New York’s segregated past
9. 3 FebThe delightful 1960s-era sign above an old-school pastry shop in Kips Bay
10. 3 FebFrom horse stables to art studios to university housing, the changing face of Washington Mews
11. 3 FebHow these fairy-tale gates in Central Park connect to an 1860s hospital for the “ruptured and crippled”

January 2025

1. 27 JanA winter scene on Christopher Street in the 1930s that looks eerily similar today
2. 27 JanHow 19th century New York City fell in love with brownstones—a love story that endures today
3. 20 JanYou can practically feel the biting wind and snow in this raw 1911 New York winter street scene
4. 20 JanWhat a photo of a scruffy boy says about desolate, industrial East 79th Street in the 1890s
5. 20 JanThe mysterious hole in the wall inside a beautiful 19th century Stuyvesant Square church
6. 13 JanThis 1958 residence is the only house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City
7. 13 JanDeciphering the meaning behind a 1918 Financial District subway mosaic
8. 6 JanAll that remains of an old-school Gramercy pawn shop is its wonderful two-sided sign
9. 6 JanThe lonely Italian cheesemaker on East 29th Street immortalized in a 1949 painting

2024 130

December 2024

1. 30 DecOne New York painter’s luminous vision of nighttime Central Park in the snow
2. 30 DecThe old-school dive bar on St. Marks Place hiding a vintage wood phone booth
3. 30 DecThis East Village tenement is all that’s left of a row of colorful shops made famous by a 1937 photo
4. 23 DecWhat boarding an airplane at LaGuardia Airport looked like in 1945
5. 23 DecThe mystery of a missing 19th century monument that marked New York’s devastating fire of 1835
6. 16 DecThe bulldozer comes for a Brooklyn mansion built in 1902 for a prosperous provisions dealer
7. 16 DecA painter’s strange vision of the “hard life of the streets and teeming crowds” of 1920s Union Square
8. 9 DecHow to eat at a New York City automat, according to the directions on a 1940s postcard
9. 9 DecThe story of a Brooklyn dead end that evokes Elizabethan England off Flatbush Avenue
10. 2 DecThe slow slide of a postwar Bronx hotel once patronized by the New York Yankees
11. 2 DecThis closed-up relic of 1860s Central Park helped bring fresh water to New York faucets

November 2024

1. 25 NovThe Brooklyn Bridge casts a mesmerizing magic spell over the city in this early 1900s painting
2. 25 NovA Thanksgiving dinner menu from 1899, and the rise and fall of a legendary Downtown hotel
3. 18 NovIn praise of a Midtown Italian restaurant founded in 1944 and its wonderful old-school neon sign
4. 18 NovFifth Avenue officially opened 200 years ago—here’s what it was like in its early, country road days
5. 11 NovWhat John Sloan saw one Saturday night outside a butcher shop on Bleecker Street
6. 11 NovA dramatic Victorian building with an understated bronze tablet honoring World War II veterans
7. 11 NovThis might be the most beautiful and historic fraternity house in New York City
8. 4 NovA remnant of the late 19th century city at the corner of First and First in the East Village
9. 4 NovThis crude wood hut is a surviving relic from the Revolutionary War years in Upper Manhattan
10. 4 NovThe cliffside subway entrance that cuts through the rockface of Upper Manhattan

October 2024

1. 28 OctThe delightfully ornate building that brought the feel of the Bowery to the 1870s Bronx
2. 28 OctThe Lower East Side clothing store merchant behind a 1940s Stanton Street ghost sign
3. 21 OctThe century-old appliance store that has one of the East Village’s oldest neon signs
4. 21 OctThis slender 1877 holdout townhouse on the Upper East Side looks more like a dollhouse
5. 21 OctThe 1930s squatters colony that built its shacks beneath the luxury apartments of Riverside Drive
6. 14 OctIn praise of long-gone, one of a kind New York City restaurants like the Viennese Lantern
7. 14 OctA jewelry-loving widow, her young butler, and a 79th Street mansion make a Gilded Age murder mystery
8. 14 OctThe “tenement synagogues” that filled in the streetscape of New York’s Jewish neighborhoods
9. 7 OctA midcentury painter’s rich, reflective portrait of a Manhattan tenement hallway
10. 7 OctAn elegy for a long-gone, cobweb-covered bar opened in a downtown alley before the Civil War
11. 7 OctA forgotten plaque in Brooklyn puts a spotlight on the city’s first official street cleaners

September 2024

1. 30 SepTwo 1970s-era store signs still going strong in Brooklyn and the South Bronx
2. 30 SepGrowing up in the Gilded Age: the remarkable memoir of a prosperous girl in 1880s New York
3. 23 SepA rich display of humanity on the grass and benches of Depression-era Tompkins Square Park
4. 23 SepA Third Avenue holdout tenement subsumed and swallowed up by modern luxury condo towers
5. 23 SepThe beautiful widowed heiress who may have been the model for the Statue of Liberty
6. 16 SepWhen did the far East Village become known as Alphabet City?
7. 16 SepAn 1870s painter from Queens captures the stark reality of “the way the city is built”
8. 16 SepThe mystery of the copper and glass awning on a brick row house in the West Village
9. 9 SepDeciphering the brick facade of faded ads on a forlorn First Avenue tenement
10. 9 SepEerie footsteps, a woman’s remains, and a mysterious ghost story in a Bank Street row house
11. 3 SepExplore the stories of Riverside Drive with Ephemeral New York on a September walking tour!
12. 2 SepThe construction workers embossed in bronze on a 1929 Art Deco skyscraper’s elevators
13. 2 SepInside a West Village passageway leading to a hidden courtyard and 1820s backhouse

August 2024

1. 26 AugA relic of a mailbox found in Brooklyn reveals something about how New Yorkers mailed letters
2. 26 AugFrom a Gilded Age senator’s home to a 1920s speakeasy, the unusual life of a faded Midtown brownstone
3. 19 AugA boarded-up Gothic church hangs on in what was once Manhattan’s Hungarian immigrant enclave
4. 19 AugThis early 1900s summer resort and amusement park was the Bronx’s version of Coney Island
5. 12 AugThe blueish skies and orange glow of 1910 New York City at night
6. 12 AugThe Ziegfeld showgirl, the media mogul, and their Riverside Drive townhouse hideaway
7. 5 AugWhat remains of an 1830s church walled off and unrecognizable behind East Fourth Street
8. 5 AugDecoding a vintage two-letter phone exchange from a plumbing supply sign in Brooklyn

July 2024

1. 29 JulA peek at the rudimentary playground for city kids in 1870s Central Park
2. 29 JulThis stunning 19th century building on the Bowery has a mystery balcony
3. 29 JulDecoding the colors of the globes outside New York City subway stations
4. 22 JulNew York City’s oldest stone mile marker stood on this Brooklyn road for almost 200 years
5. 22 JulThe colorful ghost ad that brings to life a long-defunct New York appliance chain
6. 19 JulExplore the beauty and backstory of Riverside Drive this weekend with Ephemeral New York!
7. 15 JulThe changing social rules John Sloan captured in a Greenwich Village restaurant in 1912
8. 15 JulThe 200-year-old brick holdout house hiding behind a restaurant supply sign on the Bowery
9. 8 JulDeciphering the faded ads on a brick building along the Bowery
10. 8 JulSearching for the Lower East Side corner saloon as seen in a 1930s street life painting
11. 1 JulAll the colorful characters celebrating July Fourth on Lower Broadway in 1834
12. 1 JulThe American president buried in—and then exhumed from— an East Village cemetery
13. 1 JulThe cute pink house on top of an East 52nd Street co-op where a Beatle once lived

June 2024

1. 24 JunExploring the mystery of a forgotten concrete railroad marker in Brooklyn
2. 24 JunThe restored vintage terra cotta subway signs that greet you at Coney Island
3. 24 JunOne July day, a painter captured a colorful glimpse of the beach and bathers at Far Rockaway
4. 17 JunThe Art Deco magic of Bloomingdale’s Lexington Avneue store sign
5. 17 JunThis opulent Fifth Avenue townhouse built in 1901 was home to the “world’s richest boy”
6. 13 JunExplore the Gilded Age past of Riverside Drive on a breezy walking tour with Ephemeral New York!
7. 10 JunWhat Washington Square looked like when it was a military parade ground
8. 10 JunThe shell of a 1911 movie palace still stands on this Harlem block
9. 3 JunA left-behind ghost sign in East Harlem for New York City’s home-grown fried chicken chain
10. 3 JunA building is demolished in Brooklyn, and a vintage faded bank ad comes back into view
11. 3 JunThe mystery of the “phantom phaeton” driving in Central Park and astonishing crowds in 1893

May 2024

1. 27 MaySolemn scenes from Decoration Day at Green-Wood Cemetery
2. 27 MayA vanished Henry Hudson memorial on Riverside Drive, and the sculpture that replaced it
3. 20 MayA ghost shoe store sign keeps Art Deco alive on bustling 34th Street
4. 20 MayA carriage house with an upstairs artist studio is the last survivor of an East Side stable row
5. 13 MayThe holdout stable squeezed between white brick apartment houses on the Upper East Side
6. 13 MayWhat a 1960s road map reveals about New York’s hospitals and department stores—then and now
7. 6 MayWhat’s on the menu for Mother’s Day 1960 at the Park Lane Hotel
8. 6 MayFrom a merchant’s mansion to a home for friendless women, the many lives of an 1847 brownstone on 14th Street

April 2024

1. 29 AprWhat remains of an East Harlem five and dime store that opened almost a century ago
2. 29 AprThe forgotten painter who captured the contrasting landscapes of 1930 New York City
3. 25 AprJoin Ephemeral New York on a time-traveling walking tour of Gilded Age Riverside Drive!
4. 22 AprThe magnificent mantelpiece that greeted guests at the Vanderbilt mansion on 57th Street
5. 22 AprThe mystery of the gilded glass booth outside Midtown’s St. Regis Hotel
6. 15 AprThree New York City subway stops, three different design styles
7. 15 AprA cluster of delightful West Side row houses that look like one enormous mansion
8. 8 AprWhat a breathtaking aerial view of Riverside Drive says about Manhattan in 1910
9. 8 AprThe story of New York’s oldest Titanic memorial, unveiled exactly one year after the disaster
10. 1 AprWhy this subway grate off East 52nd Street is the most famous grate in New York City
11. 1 AprThis forgotten Uptown apartment house is almost as old as the Dakota

March 2024

1. 25 MarThe eclectic Riverside Drive houses inspired by Elizabethan England
2. 25 MarA spooky remnant of the Third Avenue El still stands on East 99th Street
3. 18 MarA dynamic scene at a rooftop theater reveals changes in Gilded Age society
4. 18 MarAn elegy for a surreal East Village dive bar that welcomed those in the shadows
5. 18 MarA 1950s congressman’s faded re-election ad still remains on a Bronx tenement
6. 11 MarThe “great white hurricane” that changed life in New York City
7. 11 MarWhat remains of an 1880s apartment house holding out on West 58th Street
8. 11 MarThe story of the ghost street inside a Lower Manhattan park
9. 4 MarAn 1895 photo shows one of the last “squatter shacks” on Riverside Drive
10. 4 MarIt’s always 1910 at this East Houston Street knish shop

February 2024

1. 26 FebTwo subway signs, but only one with vintage vibes and charm
2. 26 FebThe two heiress sisters who in 1890 funded a Yorkville school for needy kids
3. 26 FebA pioneering photographer’s snowy street scenes soften the unruly 1890s city
4. 25 FebJoin Ephemeral New York on a Tour of Gilded Age Riverside Drive!
5. 19 FebTaking a trip back in time at this Wall Street subway station
6. 19 FebThe “crusty old men” who shuffled in to drink at McSorley’s during the Depression
7. 12 FebFebruary means boot scraper weather in New York City
8. 12 FebSearching for remnants of a stunning 35-room Upper Manhattan castle from 1905
9. 12 FebThe story of a reclusive heiress—and what she saw outside her Fifth Avenue window
10. 5 FebA faded ad holding on in a shrunken Manhattan business district
11. 5 FebThe great Upper Manhattan sleigh races that thrilled the wintertime city
12. 5 FebThis hidden rustic shelter in the Ramble dates back to Central Park’s earliest days

January 2024

1. 29 JanWhat it was like walking under the Ninth Avenue El
2. 29 JanWhy an 18th century church bell sits just steps from Fifth Avenue
3. 29 JanGhost addresses of 19th century Williamsburg found on tenement walls
4. 22 JanThe boy in red lobbing snowballs on a desolate tenement street
5. 22 JanA night at Mrs. Astor’s January ball, the crowning event of the Gilded Age social season
6. 15 JanThe wrecking ball comes for a Gilded Age relic mansion on Riverside Drive
7. 15 JanThe “footsore and hungry” men waiting on the coffee line at Madison Square
8. 8 JanA revealing wintertime photo of lower Fifth Avenue taken before the Civil War
9. 8 JanThe delightful 1890s sidewalk clock on Third Avenue is missing its ancient symbol
10. 8 JanThe despondent artist who painted a dark and distorted 1920s New York City
11. 1 JanThe mystery of the 50-foot plaster female statue that once towered over Times Square
12. 1 JanA Yorkville shop from the 1950s hangs on to its old-school phone exchange

2023 135

December 2023

1. 25 DecA New York City painter captures the light and magic of Christmas morning
2. 25 DecWhat became of Virginia—the girl who asked the New York Sun in 1897 if Santa Claus is real?
3. 25 DecAll that remains of a Yorkville toy store referenced in 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street”
4. 18 DecA painter’s atmospheric view of the Harlem River from the High Bridge
5. 18 DecThe stone and brick remains of a 19th century snuff mill on the Bronx River
6. 18 DecThe baby cage craze never really caught on in New York City in the early 1900s
7. 11 DecAn airship floats through the cloudless skies above 1930s Manhattan
8. 11 DecA huge new home for 19th century orphans in the countryside of today’s Riverside Drive
9. 11 DecThis elegant object in a historic East Side synagogue had a lowly but crucial function
10. 4 DecThis lonely First Avenue pay phone is a relic from another New York City
11. 4 DecFrom Gilded Age beer garden to 1970s strip club: 100 years of vice on a Chelsea corner

November 2023

1. 27 NovA painter captures the rich street life of a busy day in Lower Manhattan in 1951
2. 27 NovThe lonely last days of Gilded Age New York City’s biggest Fifth Avenue mansion
3. 20 NovIt’s a working Thanksgiving for this late 19th century streetcar driver
4. 20 NovWhat a Midtown lunch counter’s Thanksgiving menu says about dining in 1917
5. 20 NovThe 1886 Chelsea church that grew a condo tower on top of it
6. 13 NovThis 1911 map is a wishlist of bridges and tunnels New York City would never build
7. 13 NovA captivating photo of a marketplace, a fire tower, and the Greenwich Village of the 1860s
8. 6 NovThe most sorrowful doughboy statue is in this Hell’s Kitchen park
9. 6 NovA Gothic Gilded Age asylum built for “respectable, aged, and indigent” women

October 2023

1. 30 OctHow long this peaked-roof ghost building has haunted Jane Street
2. 30 OctWhy this Upper Manhattan home perched on a cliff is called the “Pumpkin House”
3. 30 OctThe West Village sconce lights inspired by tendrils and tentacles
4. 23 OctA midcentury painter’s spooky and foreboding view of the Octagon on Blackwell’s Island
5. 23 OctA Riverside Drive sewer cover from 1872 predates the Drive by eight years
6. 23 OctHow a 200-year-old Yorkville farmhouse ended up as a private home in today’s West Village
7. 16 OctOne pioneering Ashcan painter, four views of Washington Square Park
8. 16 OctAn elegy for the short-lived Striker Cottages, built in 1850 in today’s Hell’s Kitchen
9. 14 OctEphemeral New York presents: “Life Below the Stairs in Gilded Age New York”
10. 12 OctAutumn Riverside Drive walking tour dates from Ephemeral New York!
11. 9 OctWhat the 1910s stained glass windows say about a 19th century Brooklyn tavern
12. 9 OctThis Fifth Avenue church had an iron fence built around it in 1854—here’s why
13. 2 OctHot coffee and pie at the Times Square Automat
14. 2 OctGilded Age Manhattan’s primitive shack houses, as painted by landscape artists
15. 2 OctAn early 1900s laundry detergent ad comes back into view on East 72nd Street

September 2023

1. 25 SepThree eras in New York City history, three vastly different subway sign styles
2. 25 SepThe short, forgotten life of New York City’s first skyscraper
3. 18 SepThe story of a magnificent 1850s house dubbed the Blue Belle of Brooklyn
4. 18 SepA faded sign with a mystery two-letter phone exchange beside a Bronx highway
5. 11 SepTwo very different scenes painted from an 1889 artists studio building on Eighth Avenue
6. 11 SepThe fantastical 1886 plan to turn the Brooklyn Bridge towers into glass observatories
7. 11 SepHow fate and coincidence brought a firefighter statue honoring 9/11 to East 43rd Street
8. 4 SepA little old house surrounded by tall apartment buildings on a changing Riverside Drive
9. 4 SepTwo glimpses of life in Prohibition-era New York, one in sunlight and the other in shadows
10. 4 SepDiscarded wood planks from the 1920s Coney Island Boardwalk inside a seaside bar

August 2023

1. 28 AugA rare vintage wooden phone booth inside a fabled Brooklyn tavern
2. 28 AugTales of a hidden Brooklyn lane with a row of delightfully unusual 1870s wood houses
3. 25 AugUpcoming talks, tours, and a summer-themed podcast episode with Ephemeral New York!
4. 21 AugThe glow of the city on a Depression-era summer night
5. 21 AugFrom 1860s firehouse to Andy Warhol’s 1960s studio, the many lives of a Yorkville building
6. 14 AugThe colonial-dressed grotesques on an Upper Manhattan apartment house
7. 14 AugThe once-delightful, now decayed 1892 terra cotta house under the Queensboro Bridge
8. 7 AugA painter depicts the moody early 20th century East River as a “landscape of industry”
9. 7 AugA tucked-away holdout house built before the Civil War hides on 73rd Street

July 2023

1. 31 JulA dramatic view from 1916 of the cliffside mansions of Riverside Drive
2. 31 JulOn a changing block in Chelsea, a Broadway set designer’s 1904 studio still stands
3. 31 JulOne of the first botanical gardens in America bloomed in 1810 where Rockefeller Center is today
4. 24 JulWhat’s on the menu at a Ladies’ Mile department store lunch room?
5. 24 JulThe freed slave who ran a famous 19th century roadhouse on today’s Second Avenue
6. 17 JulSun-struck and recovering in the hospital in 19th century New York
7. 17 JulAn 1850s red schoolhouse hiding in the middle of the Flower District
8. 17 JulThe color and drama at a beachside Coney Island fruit stand
9. 10 JulThe faded remains of a Brooklyn shoe factory
10. 10 JulWhere tenement dwellers slept during brutal summer heat waves
11. 6 JulJoin a time-traveling walking tour of Manhattan’s most beautiful avenue!
12. 3 JulA snowy Village park by a midcentury painter of New York’s streets and squares
13. 3 JulThis tiny garage built over a century ago holds out between two East Side towers
14. 3 JulThis Lower Broadway boot scraper may have been used by a US President

June 2023

1. 26 JunWhat a 1935 Edward Hopper painting says about the “transitory nature of modern life”
2. 26 JunThe mystery back houses behind East 26th Street
3. 26 JunA warning about fireworks from a 1930s New York public health poster
4. 19 JunA Croton Water jewel of a manhole cover found on Riverside Drive
5. 19 JunThe story of an alley almost nobody knowns near Grand Central Terminal
6. 19 JunThe modest East Side park inspired by a 15th century church in Rome
7. 12 JunBefore it was the Limelight, this Chelsea church appeared in an 1890 painting
8. 12 JunWhy the Bryant Park lawn has two hidden trap doors leading underground
9. 5 JunThe mystery abbreviation on a Williamsburg sewer cover
10. 5 JunThe unconventional woman behind Central Park’s Angel of the Waters sculpture

May 2023

1. 31 MayDiscover the secrets of Riverside Drive with Ephemeral New York!
2. 29 MayThe stone-carved men watching you from a Williamsburg tenement
3. 29 MayOnce a 1903 public bathhouse, now a pricey condo in Brooklyn
4. 29 MayFrom posh residences to art movie theater, the many lives of two Bleecker Street houses
5. 22 MayThe stories of 4 holdout buildings that refused to bow to the wrecking ball
6. 22 MayHow a student’s senseless death led to a New York behind scaffolding
7. 15 MayA Brooklyn coal hole cover with an ironworker’s name leads to a life story
8. 15 MayThe long search for a site to build Manhattan’s most glorious war memorial
9. 8 MayAn unusual boot scraper in front of a Chelsea brownstone
10. 8 MayVintage subway signs that point the way to Queens
11. 8 MayTwo Vanderbilt sisters, two eclectic Fifth Avenue mansions given as wedding gifts
12. 1 MayA 1927 painting that captures the “rapid modernization” of Greenwich Village
13. 1 MayArt Deco mystery nudes on a Park Avenue apartment house
14. 1 MayThe scheme behind the way Astoria got its name

April 2023

1. 24 AprNew York’s oldest statue is in one of the city’s oldest parks
2. 24 Apr19th century architectural remnants hiding in today’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
3. 17 AprA century-old West Village restaurant that’s kept its old-school phone number
4. 17 AprThis mostly forgotten war memorial to fallen Brooklyn transit workers is especially poignant
5. 14 AprTake a time-traveling tour along Riverside Drive with Ephemeral New York!
6. 10 AprAll that remains of a legendary Astor Place department store few New Yorkers remember
7. 10 AprA public bathhouse in Brooklyn built by the architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial
8. 3 AprAn ironworker leaves his mark on a West Village street
9. 3 AprThe unusual beauty of a 1908 row house “oasis of tranquility” in the Bronx

March 2023

1. 27 MarA midcentury artist captures the anonymity of the subway in 5 paintings
2. 27 MarThe giant rock that helped end a bitter colonial-era dispute between Brooklyn and Queens
3. 20 MarTaking a leisurely drive in the peaceful, pastoral Central Park of 1900
4. 20 MarTwo mystery gargoyles on a West 29th Street building
5. 20 MarWhy a modest 1827 home is missing from its row in Greenwich Village
6. 13 MarA couple, a brownstone stoop, and an “unspoken question” in a 1956 Hopper painting
7. 13 MarTwo early Bronx subway signs that still point the way “up town”
8. 13 MarTea porches were once popular in city houses—this 1830 Greenwich Village home still has one
9. 6 MarThe bright colors and small figures of a Depression-era Midtown block
10. 6 MarThis stunning Lafayette Street theater was the city’s first free public library in the 1850s
11. 6 MarThe city’s most neglected war memorial might be this granite marker in the Bronx

February 2023

1. 27 FebThe streetcars and street characters of 14th Street in 1905
2. 27 FebLate winter was boot scraper season in 19th century New York City
3. 27 FebDecoding the words on a mystery faded food ad in the Meatpacking District
4. 20 FebA grimy subway sign points the way to an uptown Presidential mansion
5. 20 FebHow Hell’s Kitchen got its rough and ready name
6. 13 FebThe wise owls adorning the facade of a 1906 West Side high school
7. 13 FebThe 1872 plan to get around Manhattan via elevated pneumatic tubes
8. 7 FebA presentation about a notorious Gilded Age scandal—free for Ephemeral New York readers!
9. 6 FebThe pretty peacocks holding court in the Garment District
10. 6 FebA famous writer recalls his boyhood on an 1850s working-class Williamsburg block

January 2023

1. 30 JanA “wonderfully gaudy” Fifth Avenue chateau for a Gilded Age financier’s large family
2. 30 JanWhy St. Patrick’s Cathedral was ablaze with spectacular light in 1912
3. 23 JanWhat it was like commuting by sleigh in snowy 1860s Manhattan
4. 23 JanWhat the figures on the doors of a Third Avenue Gap store tell us about the building
5. 23 JanThe story behind the flowers in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
6. 16 JanThe hard work of shoveling snow during a New York winter
7. 16 JanDiscovering another vintage two-letter phone exchange on a West Side sign
8. 16 JanWhat happened to the missing mansion built in 1906 on Upper Fifth Avenue
9. 9 JanWilliamsburg used to be Williamsburgh—when did it lose the h and why?
10. 9 JanThis freewheeling French cafe and artist hangout had a colonial-era past
11. 5 JanJoin Ephemeral New York for a Gilded Age talk and tea at the Salmagundi Club!
12. 2 JanWinter beauty and misery at the arch at Washington Square
13. 2 JanThe story of a Fifth Avenue mansion scorned by its second owner as a “gardener’s cottage”

2022 172

December 2022

1. 26 DecA soft, shimmering Times Square after the post-Christmas blizzard of 1947
2. 26 DecThe blazing colors and old-school design of two Manhattan store signs
3. 26 DecGeorge Washington opens his Cherry Street presidential mansion to New Year’s callers
4. 19 DecA newspaper magnate builds a soundproof, Venetian-style mansion steps from Fifth Avenue
5. 19 DecTwo married artists, two similar views looking outside their East Side hotel window
6. 12 DecA Yorkville tenement with mystery architectural details
7. 12 DecWhat happened to the young couple who held an 1896 winter wedding on Washington Square
8. 5 DecLooking for the backstory of an abandoned Chelsea tavern
9. 5 DecJohn Sloan’s “obvious delight” with Jefferson Market Courthouse
10. 5 DecWhen a public bathhouse opened on West 60th Street

November 2022

1. 28 NovThe 1820s organization formed to improve the character of New York servants
2. 28 NovA vision of a colonial-era country mansion inside an East Side apartment lobby
3. 21 NovWaiting for Thanksgiving dinner at a Bronx orphanage
4. 21 NovAn immigrant printmaker and painter gives color and light to Depression-era New York City
5. 14 NovWhen Longacre Square became Times Square
6. 14 NovStop and admire the Chelsea Hotel’s beautiful iron balconies
7. 14 NovHow an authentic Swedish cottage from 1875 ended up in Central Park
8. 7 NovA glorious birds-eye view of early 1900s Brooklyn at night
9. 7 NovThe ghost photographer who became a sensation in Gilded Age New York City
10. 7 NovA forgotten war memorial in Madison Square Park honors the “glorious dead”
11. 4 NovTalks and Tours This Month With Ephemeral New York!

October 2022

1. 31 OctBellevue Hospital’s old-school wrought iron sign
2. 31 OctThe vintage interior of a 1927 bank building that’s now home to a CVS
3. 31 OctTracing the owner of a former stable and blacksmith shop in Yorkville
4. 24 OctThis Brooklyn corner store has one of the last vintage soda signs
5. 24 OctThe story of the two young faces on an 1861 Turtle Bay row house
6. 17 OctStrange carriages on an unpaved, unknown stretch of Seventh Avenue
7. 17 OctScenes of misery and charity on Gilded Age New York’s most famous breadline
8. 15 OctTake a Walk up Riverside Drive with Ephemeral New York This Sunday!
9. 10 OctBoot scrapers are a hidden relic of 19th century New York City
10. 10 OctThe Art Deco-style Chelsea mosaics that illustrate the needle trades
11. 10 OctThe West Side school perched on top of a massive rock pile
12. 3 OctOnce an 1880s public library, now a private home in the West Village
13. 3 OctWho carved a horse above the entrance to this East Side brownstone?
14. 3 OctThe mysterious woman on the “little penthouse” of a 1930s tenement roof

September 2022

1. 30 SepThe spooky spider web windows on 57th Street
2. 30 SepThis decaying building was Central Harlem’s first apartment house
3. 26 SepThe short life of the multi-family Tiffany mansion on Madison Avenue
4. 26 SepCapturing the magic of rainy nights in New York City
5. 23 SepCountry houses left behind on Riverside Drive
6. 23 SepThe story of how the Bronx got its name
7. 23 SepThe little Hell’s Kitchen synagogue where old Broadway stars once worshipped
8. 19 SepThe Feast of San Gennaro festival, painted by a Little Italy artist
9. 19 SepThe roses in the window guards outside an East 51st Street townhouse
10. 19 SepThis empty shell on Delancey Street was once a movie palace
11. 17 SepCheck out these upcoming talks and tours with Ephemeral New York!
12. 15 SepThe colorful mystery mosaics on a Lenox Hill block
13. 15 SepThe ghost of a colonial road on the eastern side of the Chrysler Building
14. 12 SepThe hidden beauty of these blocked-off fanlight windows in Chinatown
15. 12 SepThe visiting British royal who dazzled 19th century New York City
16. 12 SepThe little-known 9/11 memorial to kids in Central Park
17. 5 SepThis Gothic building near Avenue C was an “industrial school” for poor and homeless kids
18. 5 SepThe Lower East Side’s Division Street: What exactly did it divide?

August 2022

1. 29 AugA 1905 Brooklyn school building so lovely, it’s on a postcard
2. 29 AugThe tabloid drama after a rich Riverside Drive businessman goes missing
3. 29 AugAll the different business districts of Manhattan, according to a 1939 magazine
4. 26 AugA squatter’s shanty and the creeping 20th century city around it
5. 26 AugOne of New York’s last 18th century farmhouses sits on an East River island
6. 22 AugThe anonymity of a nighttime pushcart market under the elevated
7. 22 AugSpotting a Bowery street sign carved into a Lower East Side building
8. 22 AugThe early 1880s apartment building you’ve probably never noticed on Seventh Avenue
9. 19 AugThe relaxing country drive that New Yorkers like George Washington enjoyed in 1790
10. 19 AugThe magnificent iron window railings on an 1850s Murray Hill mansion
11. 15 AugThe mystery of the shuttered Italian restaurant with a wonderful vintage store sign
12. 15 AugThe Fifth Avenue mansion of a millionaire who built houses for the poor
13. 12 AugTwo views to New York from the countryside of Brooklyn Heights
14. 12 AugThe staircases left behind after the original Penn Station was demolished
15. 8 AugPity the tenement dwellers outside on a sweltering summer night in 1883
16. 8 AugThe richest woman in New York’s Gilded Age is not who you think
17. 5 AugA Yorkville faded sign with a two-letter old phone exchange
18. 5 AugNew York’s most perfectly preserved Gilded Age mansion is in Murray Hill
19. 4 AugJoin a Walking Tour of Gilded Age Riverside Drive With Ephemeral New York!
20. 1 AugThe pleasures of a New York summer on the Speedway
21. 1 AugThe blissful Upper West Side garden hiding on top of a condo garage
22. 1 AugThe two holdout houses that forced Rockefeller Center to be built around them

July 2022

1. 28 JulThe mystery of the mermaid on East 23rd Street
2. 25 JulThe Automat is gone—but a faded Automat ad still remains in the Garment District
3. 25 JulThe Wild West street names once proposed for the Upper West Side
4. 22 JulA midcentury painter’s magical nocturne of the Brooklyn Bridge
5. 22 JulA writer recalls “the beauty of it all” after a visit to 1890s Manhattan Beach
6. 18 JulAn Upper West Side apartment house’s facade of flowers
7. 18 JulThe Lower East Side’s Mechanics Alley is one of the last true alleys in Manhattan
8. 18 JulA live connection to James Madison stands tall in Madison Square Park
9. 14 JulThe geometric stillness in a Precisionist painter’s view near Avenue A
10. 14 JulThe first roller coaster in America was at Coney Island
11. 14 JulA teenage immigrant who became a “sweatshop girl” tells her life story
12. 11 JulWhere life in New York City was lived “on the steps”
13. 11 JulThis 1905 power plant is one of the West Side’s most beautiful buildings
14. 11 JulWhat remains of the horses that powered Gilded Age New York City
15. 9 JulJuly Walking Tours of Gilded Age Riverside Drive With Ephemeral New York!
16. 4 JulJoin Ephemeral New York for a free presentation on women of the Gilded Age!
17. 4 JulThe misery of trying to sleep during the New York City heatwave of 1882
18. 4 JulA once-elegant Lower East Side house where a gruesome sport played out

June 2022

1. 27 JunThe bookseller at the door in 1940s Greenwich Village
2. 27 JunThree holdout brownstones hiding in the Diamond District
3. 27 JunThis magical Coney Island building was home to an early New York restaurant chain
4. 20 JunThe charming wooden houses time forgot in Carnegie Hill
5. 20 Jun5 wildly different sign styles outside New York’s subway entrances
6. 16 JunThe long tradition of New York City’s ice cream man
7. 16 JunThis Riverside Drive traffic signal looks like a relic from another era
8. 16 JunA touch of Art Nouveau on a former Fifth Avenue Gilded Age mansion
9. 13 JunWhat a Gilded Age servant girl had to say about Coney Island
10. 13 JunAn awe-inspiring arch in Central Park’s North Woods
11. 10 JunThe short life of an amusement park dubbed “Harlem’s Coney Island”
12. 10 JunWhat makes Central Park’s “whisper bench” so unusual and enchanting
13. 10 JunThe stone and iron turtles decorating New York City
14. 6 JunThe sweet side of a New York tenement roof in the summer
15. 6 JunLooking for remnants of Paisley Place, a lost row of back houses in Chelsea

May 2022

1. 30 MayThis is how New York celebrated Decoration Day in 1917
2. 30 MayThe last “vulgar” survivor of a row of four Fifth Avenue mansions
3. 30 MayThe seafaring symbols on a Turtle Bay church’s stained glass window
4. 23 MayThis holdout brownstone is a monument to the 1980s tenant who refused to leave
5. 23 MayManhattan’s most ornate early apartment house comes back into view
6. 19 MayA painter’s mystery scene on the Sixth Avenue elevated after midnight
7. 19 MayThe Manhattan country estate houses of old New York’s forgotten families
8. 19 MayUpdated info on Talks and Tours From Ephemeral New York!
9. 16 MayThe solitary walkers across the Depression-era Manhattan Bridge
10. 16 MayThe visionary artist with his own museum in a Riverside Drive Art Deco masterpiece
11. 9 MayThis Art Deco skyscraper on 57th Street rightfully celebrates itself
12. 9 MayThe amazing survival story of the last 3 single-family row houses on Central Park West
13. 6 MayUpcoming Talks and Walking Tours with Ephemeral New York!
14. 5 MayThis 1883 apartment rental on Madison Avenue was one of Manhattan’s first co-ops
15. 5 MayWhat to order from a 1950s Mother’s Day menu from the Gramercy Hotel
16. 2 MayJust how old is the lovely stained glass ceiling at Veniero’s pasticceria?
17. 2 MayThis 1850s Lower Manhattan image might be one of the oldest street photos
18. 2 MayCity Hall festooned with flags and finery to celebrate ‘Tunnel Day’

April 2022

1. 28 AprA painter’s dazzling mosaic of energy and color in 1901 Madison Square
2. 28 AprThe Fifth Avenue wedding present gifted to these rich Gilded Age newlyweds
3. 25 AprThree mythological Art Deco figures on a 57th Street apartment building
4. 25 AprA peek inside a 1946 Yankees program—and the New York brands that advertised inside
5. 25 AprThe mysterious faded house outline on the side of a Chelsea tenement
6. 21 AprThe touching 1913 dedication over a Grand Central Terminal entrance
7. 21 AprThe magic of a ‘complicated, chaotic’ Central Park West apartment house
8. 18 AprWhat John Sloan saw on the night before Easter
9. 18 AprStep Into the Morningside Heights rowdy resort district dubbed ‘Little Coney Island’
10. 11 AprIs this the skinniest row house in Murray Hill?
11. 11 AprThe story of the bride-to-be brought to St. Vincent’s Hospital after surviving the Titanic
12. 11 AprA midcentury printmaker celebrates machine age New York City
13. 4 AprFinding the servant call buttons in New York City’s Gilded Age mansions
14. 4 AprHow an East Village alley was renamed for a Ukrainian poet hero
15. 4 AprA colorful mural across a tenement wall honors the immigrants who built Yorkville

March 2022

1. 28 MarA painter captures humanity amid the dirt and darkness of a New York alley
2. 28 MarA rich Gilded Age ‘man of mystery’ builds Murray Hill’s most flamboyant mansion
3. 21 MarSpringtime in New York City once meant horse-drawn flower carts
4. 21 MarThis 1899 Gilded Age fairy-tale mansion on Fifth Avenue has had only 4 owners
5. 14 MarA Gilded Age chateau on Madison Avenue, and the old-money owner who never moved in
6. 14 MarA ghostly store sign returns to view on Avenue B
7. 7 MarThe teens who found splendor on the gritty East Side docks of the 1940s
8. 7 MarA stunning Gilded Age mansion on Riverside Drive—and the tabloid drama of its first owners

February 2022

1. 28 FebThe favorite way the Gilded Age elite enjoyed Central Park in the 1860s
2. 28 FebA Herald Square faded ad for a haberdashery takes you to the 1920s
3. 28 FebA lost East Village alley on a 1963 downtown map
4. 21 FebEphemeral New York explores the servants of the Gilded Age in a new podcast
5. 21 FebWhat went on at the Gilded Age ‘Patriarchs balls’ for New York society
6. 21 FebThe Murray Hill double house with a link to President Lincoln
7. 14 FebThe steerage passengers immortalized in a 1907 landmark photo
8. 14 FebClearing Gilded Age Fifth Avenue of its shacks and shantytowns
9. 7 FebThe final days of a 44th Street Gilded Age gambling house
10. 7 FebThe socialite who built ‘marble row’ and changed the face of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue
11. 7 FebThis ‘offensive’ 1874 portrait of the Vanderbilts reveals their place in Gilded Age society

January 2022

1. 31 JanQuiet glimpses of the turn of the century city through an amateur’s camera
2. 31 JanAll the terra cotta beauty of an early uptown apartment building
3. 24 JanThe two very different mansions where Mrs. Astor hosted New York society
4. 24 JanThe crossroads of Gilded Age life, as seen by a little-known New York painter
5. 24 JanAn Irish servant girl’s passionate reply to her Gilded Age wealthy employers
6. 17 JanThe men on the riverfront overshadowed by the modern city
7. 17 Jan5 Remnants of the 19th century West Side village of Manhattanville
8. 10 JanA photographer captures a New York City of abstraction in the 1940s
9. 10 JanTwo 1930s tile signs point the way in a Bronx subway station
10. 3 JanThis 1930 neon hotel sign still illuminates East 42nd Street
11. 3 JanFilling in the ghostly outlines of former buildings in Manhattan
12. 3 JanA bronze statue that survived Hiroshima has a message for Riverside Drive

2021 156

December 2021

1. 27 DecNew Year’s Eve in post-Civil War New York City
2. 27 DecAn Impressionist artist captures the rural feel of early 1900s Upper Manhattan
3. 27 DecWhat happened to New York City’s 14th Avenue?
4. 20 DecA piece of the cut-rate Lower East Side remains on Orchard Street
5. 20 DecA stunning Christmas feast served to guests at a posh Gilded Age hotel
6. 20 DecThis oldest photo of the moon was taken in 1840 on a Greenwich Village roof
7. 13 DecThe 19th century remains of a fabled Grand Street department store
8. 13 DecThe forgotten Gilded Age model who posed for Central Park’s most famous statue
9. 13 DecDuring the Civil War, Brooklyn held a spectacular ice skating carnival
10. 6 DecAn Impressionist painter’s Christmas in Madison Square Park
11. 6 DecShy lonely brownstones hiding in the cityscape
12. 6 DecThe soaring, stunning vaulted ceilings of an East Side Trader Joe’s

November 2021

1. 29 NovAn 1873 map shows rural Brooklyn on the cusp of big changes
2. 29 NovThe honorific street name near City Hall that commemorates a plague
3. 29 NovLife and humanity on the “wonderful roofs” of John Sloan’s New York
4. 22 NovShopping for Thanksgiving dinner at Washington Market in the 1870s
5. 22 NovThe modest 1924 beginning of Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Parade
6. 22 NovThe Wild West-inspired apartment house designed for urban cliff dwellers
7. 15 NovA portrait painter’s shadowy figure on a nighttime city street
8. 15 NovWhat life was like with the elevated train roaring outside your window
9. 15 NovThe lovely Art Nouveau window grille on a Riverside Drive row house
10. 8 NovThe understated war memorials inside a private Central Park South club
11. 8 NovA woman found bludgeoned in a Tenderloin hotel sparks a trial that riveted New York
12. 8 NovFrom brownstones to business: 3 centuries on a West 57th Street block
13. 1 NovA moment in time somewhere on the Bowery
14. 1 NovThe story of the hidden garden inside a Turtle Bay tenement block

October 2021

1. 25 OctThe unusual clock hands on a Third Avenue union sign
2. 25 OctThese ‘automobile stables’ on 75th Street might be the city’s first garages
3. 18 OctThere’s a lot going on outside the Third Avenue Railroad Depot in this 1859 painting
4. 18 OctThe story of the house-size rock between two apartment buildings off Riverside Drive
5. 18 OctThe faded ad that sent newcomers to the Hotel Harmony in Morningside Heights
6. 11 OctGoing back in time to 1930s Columbus Circle and Central Park
7. 11 OctThe flimsy shacks where New Yorkers lived on a pre-luxury Riverside Drive
8. 11 OctThe Gilded Age painter devoted to ‘scenes of every-day life around him’
9. 4 OctA spectacular old-school sign on Orchard Street
10. 4 OctA guide to now-defunct Greenwich Village street names in 1865
11. 4 OctHow Gramercy Park became the only private park in Manhattan

September 2021

1. 27 SepA sleek 1937 poster of New York City’s two public airports
2. 27 SepIt’s hard to believe this unspoiled beach is Coney Island in the 1870s
3. 27 SepThis was General Grant’s more modest first tomb in Riverside Park
4. 20 SepWhen rich New Yorkers and their horses took to Central Park’s new carriage drive
5. 20 SepEverything you need to know about the Greenwich Village of 1961 in one map
6. 20 SepA West Side apartment house that transports you to Renaissance England
7. 16 SepWhat happened to the big whale at the Central Park Children’s Zoo?
8. 16 SepA sculpture on a Gilded Age mansion pays tribute to the owners’ six beloved children
9. 16 SepTwo mystery initials on a 125th Street building reveal a former department store
10. 13 SepCatching up with Studio 54, the magazine
11. 13 SepThe abolitionist history of a little wood house on Riverside Drive
12. 13 SepThe mystery location of a hillside landscape in Harlem
13. 6 SepGazing at the Twin Towers from the Staten Island Ferry in the 1970s
14. 6 SepAn NYU building sparks the city’s first organized labor riot in 1834
15. 6 SepThis modest Forsyth Street walkup was once a synagogue
16. 6 SepThe last colonial-era mile marker remaining on a Manhattan Street

August 2021

1. 30 AugWhat John Sloan painted after “loafing about Madison Square”
2. 30 AugNew York City’s oldest public school is in this 1867 building in Greenpoint
3. 30 AugThe 18th century farm lane preserved in a Riverside Drive courtyard
4. 23 AugVintage store signs from the 1970s live on in Astoria
5. 23 AugThe Medieval-like reformatory for “fallen” women on Riverside Drive
6. 23 AugDeconstructing a 1905 view of East 14th Street
7. 16 AugA painter’s evocative look at an empty street beside the Manhattan Bridge
8. 16 AugWho is the rich New Yorker the Monopoly Man is based on?
9. 16 AugThe 200-year history of a Bleecker Street house
10. 9 AugDoes this Riverside Drive mansion really have a tunnel to the Hudson River?
11. 9 AugThe castles and villages of 1914 Lower Manhattan
12. 9 Aug6 photos show the dramatic transformation of an 1884 Harlem bank building
13. 2 AugThis country clapboard house was a 19th century Harlem holdout
14. 2 AugDeparting the ferry across the monolith of Lower Manhattan
15. 2 AugThe wooden phone booths inside a private Midtown clubhouse

July 2021

1. 29 JulWhat a hot night looked like on an East Side tenement block in 1899
2. 29 JulA bizarre August tradition along old New York City’s waterfronts
3. 29 JulThe last sidewalk phone booths in New York City
4. 26 JulA painter in Astoria captures what he saw across the East River
5. 26 JulThe 1916 stunt that made Nathan’s Famous a Coney Island hot dog icon
6. 26 JulThe noble mission of a Victorian Gothic building on ‘depraved’ Sullivan Street
7. 19 JulA tenement sign high up at the corner of First Street and First Avenue
8. 19 JulBeat writers and bohemians: One woman’s memoir of 1950s Greenwich Village
9. 19 JulThis pricey co-op building was once a Lower East Side public library
10. 12 JulA painter captures the last years of these East Village tenements
11. 12 JulThe Central Park spring that provided water for a forgotten village
12. 5 Jul‘Inertia and desolation’ of Sunday in New York in the 1920s
13. 5 JulBeautiful ruins of the early 1900s “Bankers’ Row” on West 56th Street
14. 5 JulThe story of the twin former horse stables of Great Jones Street

June 2021

1. 28 JunA West Side historic district packed with Queen Anne beauty
2. 28 JunOne summer night on a New York tenement roof
3. 28 JunTwo mystery gargoyles on a 57th Street building
4. 21 JunThis massive stone mansion stood for just 26 years on Fifth Avenue
5. 21 JunAn eccentric loner paints New York at dusk and in moonlight
6. 14 JunThe steam pipe repair crew fixing New York at night
7. 14 JunThe anti-slavery past of a Bowery house built in the 1790s
8. 14 JunA faded Woolworth’s store in East Harlem comes back in view
9. 7 JunThe stars, bars, bubbles, and petals of Manhattan manhole covers
10. 7 JunA 1970s remnant of a Crazy Eddie record store
11. 7 JunA metalwork dreamscape at a 1929 Gracie Square co-op

May 2021

1. 31 MayBrooklyn’s 14th Regiment armory, day and night
2. 31 MayAll the arches that were built (and then bulldozed) in Madison Square
3. 31 MayThe body of the first Union officer killed in the Civil War comes to City Hall
4. 24 MayThe solitary pleasures of browsing books in New York City
5. 24 MayThe 1957 rallies to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn
6. 24 MayTwo portraits of one lowdown saloon in 1919 Greenwich Village
7. 17 MayThe Brooklyn Bridge is celebrating its birthday
8. 17 MayIt’s hard not to love New York’s holdout buildings
9. 17 MayThe two most romantic street names in old Manhattan
10. 10 May‘Little Hungary’ was once on East 79th Street
11. 10 MaySolving the mystery of a Brooklyn cafeteria ghost sign
12. 10 MayThe Chelsea ‘Muffin House’ where a beloved brand was baked
13. 3 MayThe “romantic reality” of midcentury Village street scenes
14. 3 MayThe 6 Civil War-era survivors of East 78th Street

April 2021

1. 26 AprA 1908 fountain where Central Park horses can drink
2. 26 AprWhat remains on a Hell’s Kitchen block from an 1883 painting
3. 26 AprLook hard to see this vintage Hershey’s sign on the Bowery
4. 19 Apr5 remnants of the old Czech neighborhood on the Upper East Side
5. 19 AprWhat an artist captured on 1950s Orchard Street
6. 17 AprSpecial offer for Ephemeral NY readers for a talk on architects McKim, Mead and White
7. 12 AprThe man behind a faded store sign at 52nd Street
8. 12 AprThe oldest apartment house might be in Yorkville
9. 5 AprWhat remains of the Stern’s store on 23rd Street
10. 5 AprThe curious el train in the nocturnal 1930s city
11. 5 AprThe faded ad for a candy maker on Prince Street

March 2021

1. 29 MarA blue morning in front of the new Penn Station
2. 29 MarThe country chapel still standing on 42nd Street
3. 29 MarThe tiny historic district on an East Village block
4. 22 MarWhen everyone in New York ate at the Automat
5. 22 MarThe short life of a 1960s East Village rock venue
6. 22 MarWhy “Houston Street” is pronounced that way
7. 15 MarThe 1911 New York fire that changed history
8. 15 MarA ghost sign for a family business on Essex Street
9. 15 MarTracing Berenice Abbott’s steps in today’s Bowery
10. 8 MarAn old New York phone exchange on 47th Street
11. 8 MarA short-lived road named for a female scientist
12. 8 MarA lethal hotel fire at the St. Patrick’s Day parade
13. 1 MarA postcard shows off the pretty girls of New York
14. 1 MarTwo men, an el train, and a produce market in a 1945 mystery painting
15. 1 MarAn Art Nouveau clock on a downtown skyscraper

February 2021

1. 22 FebGreenwich Village from John Sloan’s rear window
2. 22 FebGeorge Washington never slept in this Bowling Green mansion built for him
3. 22 FebWhat an 1850s winter scene says about New York life
4. 15 FebThe most beautiful police station in Manhattan
5. 15 FebBrick and mortar phantoms of another Manhattan
6. 15 FebA rich merchant’s wife becomes a Revolutionary War heroine
7. 8 FebUnderstanding New York subway routes in 1966
8. 8 FebA forgotten artist and the city’s ‘terrible beauty’
9. 8 FebAn ode to construction workers on a 57th Street Art Deco tower
10. 1 FebA snowstorm on Broadway in the Theater District
11. 1 FebCentral Park’s Mother Goose statue tells many stories
12. 1 FebThe colonial city’s most romantic ‘kissing bridge’

January 2021

1. 25 JanA 1904 eviction in a New York tenement district
2. 25 JanThe nude statue outside Alice Vanderbilt’s window
3. 25 JanArt Deco poetry on a 1929 East Side high-rise
4. 18 JanA crowded workday street scene in the 1950 city
5. 18 JanAn 1887 example of apartment living in Yorkville
6. 18 JanThe violin over the door of a Turtle Bay mansion
7. 11 JanAn early image of ice skaters in Central Park
8. 11 JanFor rent on the Upper West Side in the 1930s
9. 4 JanOld Penn Station’s women-only waiting room
10. 4 JanFierce tigers and eagles on a 58th Street co-op
11. 4 JanLooking for traces of Sunfish Pond in Kips Bay

2020 148

December 2020

1. 28 DecA cigar box label’s charming New Year’s greeting
2. 28 DecThe Lenox Hill carriage houses from a fairytale
3. 28 DecA tender painter’s mysterious death under the el
4. 21 DecThe coal company helped the city survive winter
5. 21 DecA Christmas feast at Midtown’s new Hotel Pabst
6. 21 DecLittle Italy in 1920 in six painterly postcards
7. 14 DecA food vendor’s Christmas on 14th Street in 1904
8. 14 DecA rich family’s spectacular 18th century carriage
9. 14 DecThe former lives of a shabby Midtown brownstone
10. 7 DecWhen Christmas was in the air in 1908 New York
11. 7 DecHow New York became a metropolis of stoops

November 2020

1. 30 NovHow 1910s New Yorkers got their Christmas trees
2. 30 NovLooking for a Berenice Abbott bar on 56th Street
3. 30 NovA mystery manhole cover on a Midtown block
4. 23 NovDon’t forget New York’s other November holiday
5. 23 NovA Gilded Age mansion traded for a pearl necklace
6. 23 NovThe Pilgrim statue standing alone in Central Park
7. 18 NovFree tickets to celebrate the history of suffrage—and the NYC women who fought for the vote
8. 16 NovThe neon glow is gone from a Murray Hill deli sign
9. 16 NovThis brownstone is an anachronism in Tudor City
10. 16 NovA thermometer and clock on a Broadway building
11. 9 NovA lovely view of Trinity Church from Wall Street
12. 9 NovA famous poet forced to work in the NYC subway
13. 9 NovWho is the man on this York Avenue building?
14. 2 NovThe last in a pretty row of East Side brownstones
15. 2 NovA Midcentury artist’s muted Manhattan beauty
16. 2 NovThe election posters and banners all over the city

October 2020

1. 26 OctFive ghosts who supposedly haunt the Dakota
2. 19 OctThe seedier side of Broadway by a 1930s painter
3. 19 OctA teacher aids flu victims in a 1918 hospital ward
4. 19 OctThe story of the West Village’s St. John’s Colony
5. 12 OctAn old IRT subway sign still in view at City Hall
6. 12 OctWhy Manhattan has two streets named Beekman
7. 12 OctThe mysterious portrait artist of Spring Street
8. 5 OctThe Gilded Age beauty of the Sixth Avenue El
9. 5 OctTwo elite addresses on 1830s Bleecker Street

September 2020

1. 28 SepAn elevated train ride through the nocturnal city
2. 28 SepThe ox head mosaic fountain hiding on First Avenue
3. 28 SepA Waverly Place smoke store sign returns to view
4. 21 SepAll the ways to cross the Brooklyn Bridge in 1903
5. 21 SepA sidewalk relic of the Hotel Carter’s better days
6. 21 SepA 1941 painting reveals a lost Brooklyn street
7. 14 SepDuane Street like you’ve never seen it before
8. 14 SepThe sordid past of the East Village’s Extra Place
9. 14 SepOnly one of these Gilded Age buildings still stands
10. 7 SepThis Second Avenue sign is a visual time capsule
11. 7 SepMeet the “artist laureate” of the East River
12. 7 SepNew York City’s last unsolved murder of 9/11

August 2020

1. 31 AugNew York invented the first Labor Day parade
2. 31 AugAn elegy for Lord and Taylor—and its tea rooms
3. 24 AugThe most beautiful storage facility in New York
4. 24 AugAn Impressionist paints Brooklyn by the water
5. 24 AugTenements go down, and a church reemerges
6. 17 AugHanging laundry in a tenement backyard, 1912
7. 17 AugHow NYC taught school during a lethal outbreak
8. 17 AugA 44th Street stable built in 1865 is a survivor
9. 10 AugThe pageantry of The Drive in Central Park, 1905
10. 10 AugAll the servants of a rich Gilded Age household
11. 10 AugIn 1886, this East 77th Street house was a church
12. 3 AugWhat New Yorkers wore to Coney Island in 1879
13. 3 AugA Bryant Park memorial for a Gilded Age crusader
14. 3 AugA West Side hospital meant to look like a castle

July 2020

1. 27 JulAll the ways to get around Times Square in 1913
2. 27 JulReading coal hole covers underfoot in Manhattan
3. 27 JulPortraits of the street sellers of 1840 New York
4. 20 JulPhil’s Stationery is Midtown’s best vintage sign
5. 20 JulA British writer visits a NYC resort hotel in 1829
6. 20 JulA 20-story condo subsumes a Yorkville tenement
7. 13 JulBattery Park City used to have a sandy beach
8. 13 JulGeorge Bellows understood New York in summer
9. 13 JulThe Midtown corner where the Draft Riots began
10. 6 JulBrooklyn’s most charming doughnut shop sign
11. 6 JulThe Medieval granite fortress once on 14th Street
12. 6 JulA garden rises where a fireman died by arson

June 2020

1. 29 JunTravel back in time with vintage NYC store signs
2. 29 JunA “glorious display of pageantry” on Fifth Avenue
3. 29 JunThe brick beauty of a 1902 East Side power plant
4. 22 JunThe magnificence of Macy’s 1902 front entrance
5. 22 JunWhat the White Horse Tavern meant in the 1950s
6. 22 JunThe curious figures on a Park Avenue facade
7. 15 JunA 1904 municipal bath hiding on 38th Street
8. 15 JunA New York painter creates “order against chaos”
9. 8 JunLet the Brooklyn Bridge show you the way
10. 8 JunAn 1871 stable hiding on a modern Midtown block
11. 8 JunThe “Croton bug” infests 19th century New York
12. 1 JunThe mystery manhole cover on Central Park West
13. 1 JunAn 1897 building and a changing West 57th Street
14. 1 JunWhat did this old NYC phone exchange stand for?

May 2020

1. 25 MayA Downtown plaque for a soldier who died at sea
2. 25 MayThe most famous summer house in Manhattan
3. 18 MayThe factories of Queens sparking to life in 1910
4. 18 MayThe stunning first white brick apartment house
5. 18 MayThe 1955 plan to get rid of Central Park’s Ramble
6. 11 MayA vintage neon garage sign lights East 76th Street
7. 11 MayWhat remains of Astoria’s River Crest Sanitarium
8. 11 MayThe unused, unlit taxi signs across Manhattan
9. 4 MayA surrealistic morning commute in the 1952 city
10. 4 MayA tiny wooden house in Yorkville that time forgot
11. 4 MayThe painter who captured the soul of New York

April 2020

1. 27 AprIs this the city’s oldest Croton manhole cover?
2. 27 AprHow yellow fever rebranded a Brooklyn village
3. 27 AprA Midcentury artist’s storybook-like Central Park
4. 20 AprA portrait of tuberculosis in 1940s East Harlem
5. 20 AprA mob torches New York’s Quarantine Hospital
6. 20 AprThis Upper East Side school still has boot scrapers
7. 13 AprA 1929 luxury residence displays 2020’s best sign
8. 13 AprGhost buildings standing out in the desolate city
9. 13 AprThe walled-in settlement house by the East River
10. 6 AprA yellow fever outbreak made Greenwich Village
11. 6 AprThe pioneering clinic of NYC’s first ‘lady doctor’
12. 6 AprWhat life was like in a Manhattan “fever nest”

March 2020

1. 30 MarCholera’s grim warning for tenement landlords
2. 30 MarA smallpox victim’s mummified body resurfaces
3. 23 MarNew York in 2020 feels like Edward Hopper’s city
4. 23 MarA Brooklyn anti-spitting ad to bring back today
5. 23 MarA department store becomes a makeshift hospital
6. 16 MarLet the Subway Inn’s neon sign inspire you
7. 16 MarThe gingerbread carriage house of 38th Street
8. 16 MarWhat New York did in 1947 to evade an epidemic
9. 9 MarThe man in one of New York’s oldest photos
10. 9 MarThe secret backhouse behind East 38th Street
11. 9 MarDefunct city hospitals and their amazing buildings
12. 2 MarThe men who took the Fulton Ferry in 1914
13. 2 MarTracking the “mousetrap” of Greenwich Village

February 2020

1. 24 FebWhen Lenny Bruce hit the stage at Carnegie Hall
2. 24 FebA printmaker’s New York in shadows and light
3. 24 FebThe most dazzling luxury apartment ads of 1935
4. 17 FebThe elegant carriage houses of East 66th Street
5. 17 Feb“Hugs and kisses” on a Murray Hill manhole cover
6. 17 FebOld subway sign beauty on a 23rd Street platform
7. 10 FebWho is taking the steam ferry to Brooklyn in 1836
8. 10 FebWhy did almost all of the McAnn’s Bars disappear?
9. 10 FebThe unromantic tale of Bronx’s Valentine Avenue
10. 3 FebA mystery ghost building on Lafayette Street
11. 3 FebThe neighborhood leveled to build Penn Station
12. 3 FebThe slight curve of the platform at Spring Street

January 2020

1. 27 JanThe strange story of the Village’s “Raisin Street”
2. 27 JanHow old is this Manhattan laundry room sign?
3. 27 JanThe green lanterns of a Chinatown police station
4. 20 JanAll the ways to get to 23rd Street in 1910
5. 20 JanThe stunning old doors of a Turtle Bay townhouse
6. 20 JanA grocery sign comes back into view in Brooklyn
7. 13 JanA Manhattan train station had a potbelly stove
8. 13 JanThe lavish porte cocheres of Gilded Age New York
9. 13 JanThe skyscraper tree grates at Rockefeller Center
10. 6 JanAn East Side apartment house’s Medieval touches
11. 6 JanA Lower East Side artist who painted the city
12. 6 JanWhat became of the first, short-lived Plaza Hotel

2019 152

December 2019

1. 30 DecHow Edward Hopper sees the Manhattan Bridge
2. 30 DecThe solemn story of Park Avenue’s holiday trees
3. 30 DecA downtown neon candy store sign is falling apart
4. 23 DecHow New York celebrated Christmas in the 1910s
5. 23 DecThe missing 1824 row house on Spring Street
6. 23 DecWas the Brooklyn Bridge really painted green?
7. 16 DecKnitting for soldiers in an upper Manhattan park
8. 16 DecA remnant of the Drama Book Shop from 1962
9. 16 DecPortraits of family bliss in 19th century New York
10. 9 DecThe magical “blue hour” in rainy 1940 New York
11. 9 DecBeauty and humanity in a Third Avenue El film
12. 9 DecA relic of a downtown “apartment for rent” sign
13. 2 DecThe ghost chimney on an East Midtown building
14. 2 DecSix unified mansions still gracing Madison Avenue
15. 2 DecInside a New York Depression-era “relief station”

November 2019

1. 25 NovA moment in McSorley’s by an Impressionist artist
2. 25 NovVeniero’s has the East Village’s best neon sign
3. 25 NovThanksgiving at the new Colored Orphan Asylum
4. 18 NovCrossing paths on 59th Street on a blustery day
5. 18 NovWhat tenement clotheslines said about New York
6. 18 NovDelmonico’s tasty menu on Evacuation Day, 1883
7. 11 NovMadison Square Garden, luminous by moonlight
8. 11 NovThe lasting power of an East Village war memorial
9. 11 NovThe Gilded Age social season began in November
10. 4 NovA painter’s stormy view of the Flatiron Building
11. 4 Nov7 mystery photos of downtown New York in 1968
12. 4 NovAn elegy for New York’s 1990s Gen X rock clubs

October 2019

1. 28 OctWhat would the city be without street peddlers?
2. 28 OctA Gilded Age oddball and his mansion menagerie
3. 21 OctA 1930s artist’s claustrophobic New York Harbor
4. 21 OctFifth Avenue’s elegant 1890 carriage showroom
5. 21 OctThis 1916 Halloween party photo is truly scary
6. 14 OctEast 70th Street’s pinkish neon coffee shop sign
7. 14 OctThe rise and fall of the 1856 “House of Mansions”
8. 14 OctColumbus Circle’s original IRT subway kiosk
9. 7 OctThe melancholy feel of Central Park in autumn
10. 7 OctThe last years in Edgar Allan Poe’s Bronx cottage
11. 7 OctA relic of the 1931 opening of a New York bridge

September 2019

1. 30 SepThe tidy tenements of Williamsburg in the 1940s
2. 30 SepWhere the hangman lived on Washington Square
3. 30 SepWhere you’d go for pierogi and borscht in 1976
4. 23 SepThe fantasy of window shopping in New York City
5. 23 SepThe faded ghost sign for a Ludlow Street grocery
6. 23 SepA postcard view of the last J.P. Morgan mansion
7. 16 SepThe man behind a manhole cover on 78th Street
8. 16 SepThis luxury building had a private dock for yachts
9. 16 SepA last remnant of the Duane Street shoe district
10. 9 SepHow Central Park got its Shakespeare Garden
11. 9 SepThe 9/11 memorial soaring over Third Avenue
12. 2 SepA Village painter’s dynamic 1930s street scene
13. 2 SepThe 57th Street mansion built as a wedding gift
14. 2 SepWhen modern buildings come to old-school blocks

August 2019

1. 26 AugThe cross streets carved into tenement corners
2. 26 Aug2 pre-Civil War homes laying low on the East Side
3. 26 AugThe dazzling beauty of New York autochromes
4. 19 AugThis elegant home is the oldest in the East Village
5. 19 AugTwo magical views of the Brooklyn Bridge at night
6. 12 AugAlienation and isolation near Washington Square
7. 12 AugThe first New York tenement is on Mott Street
8. 12 AugA traveler’s 1971 snapshot below Herald Square
9. 5 AugWhich “East River Park” is in this 1902 painting?
10. 5 AugThe elegant remains of an 1857 church in Queens
11. 5 AugModel tenements named for a forgotten bishop

July 2019

1. 29 JulHow people dressed at Coney Island in 1896
2. 29 JulThe last daughter to live in a 14th Street mansion
3. 29 JulMystery monuments on the “East River Drive”
4. 22 JulWhere is this rough rock wall in Central Park?
5. 22 JulThe gods of good health on a Fifth Avenue facade
6. 22 JulA sweet remnant of a Lenox Hill ice cream shop
7. 15 JulThe delightful Gothic mash-up building in Tribeca
8. 15 JulThe earlier name for Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway
9. 8 JulTaking a sunbath on a Depression-era city roof
10. 8 JulWhat a tourist saw on a trip to New York in 1970
11. 8 JulWhen summer arrived, so did open-air streetcars
12. 1 JulA glorious faded foundry sign in Long Island City
13. 1 JulThe most spectacular mansion on Sutton Place
14. 1 JulThis woman made Macy’s a Gilded Age success

June 2019

1. 24 JunThe Grand Street bus cruising 1970s New York
2. 24 JunThe rural feel of an 1851 Harlem parish house
3. 24 JunA mystery studio building in Washington Heights
4. 17 JunThe Brooklyn beauties at the seashore in 1900
5. 17 JunA tenement in the summer is a “fiery furnace”
6. 10 Jun“Human alienation” on the Manhattan Bridge
7. 10 JunThe pretty country house on a 75th Street estate
8. 10 JunThe ghostly flower shop sign in Carroll Gardens
9. 3 JunWhat a 70th Street coal hole cover has to say
10. 3 JunThe hidden sundial in a Central Park sculpture
11. 3 JunThe tragic story behind Harlem’s St. Clair Place

May 2019

1. 27 MayHot coffee and pie at a Sixth Avenue Automat
2. 27 MayWhen summer meant the Brighton Beach Baths
3. 27 MayWhy everyone went to the 8th Street Bookshop
4. 20 MayThe mystery of an East Village lager beer sign
5. 20 MayAn apartment house rises out of this 1893 school
6. 20 MayThis is how to decode any Manhattan address
7. 13 MayTwo beautiful mystery signs on a Flatiron facade
8. 13 MayA midcentury artist’s New York from her window
9. 13 MayThe 1868 rowhouses built into Bloomingdale’s
10. 6 MayA faded East Village sign for a glazier’s workshop
11. 6 MayA downtown alley’s Belgian block paving stones
12. 6 MayWhat two 19th century church fences tell you

April 2019

1. 29 AprThe red fire alarm relics on New York streets
2. 29 AprSummoning the servants in the Frick mansion
3. 29 AprThe view in the 1820s from a Canal Street home
4. 22 AprAll the ways to get around Brooklyn in 1915
5. 22 AprThe skinniest building in Midtown Manhattan
6. 22 AprThe many lives of an East Houston Street theater
7. 15 AprUrban Harlem surrounds a 19th century mansion
8. 15 AprWhat’s left of a Greenwich Street boarding stable
9. 15 AprWhen “play streets” let New York kids run free
10. 8 AprThe man in a concrete wall in the tenement city
11. 8 AprThe ruins of an 1848 church on East 12th Street
12. 8 AprA mystery phone exchange on an East Village sign
13. 1 AprThe best old-school butcher sign on Ninth Avenue
14. 1 AprA walk down the longest true alley in Manhattan
15. 1 AprA 1910 packing plant subsumed by Hudson Yards

March 2019

1. 25 MarDesolation and isolation on the East River in 1909
2. 25 MarThe mysterious mosaic at 88 University Place
3. 25 MarThe 1877 “palace of trade” opens on Ladies Mile
4. 18 MarA Mulberry Street house is a “lonely reminder”
5. 18 MarThe penthouse dwellers of early 1900s New York
6. 18 MarThe 1905 hotel named for a Gilded Age beauty
7. 11 MarThe smallest pedestrian bridge in Central Park
8. 11 MarA city printmaker of “twilight, shadow, mystery”
9. 11 MarA home for Swiss immigrants on West 67th Street
10. 4 MarThe Dakota almost alone on the Upper West Side
11. 4 MarWhat became of 5 tenements on Elizabeth Street
12. 4 MarThe last Tad’s Steaks is in the Theater District

February 2019

1. 25 FebThe men who worked the Brooklyn docks in 1912
2. 25 FebAn elegy for a Lower East Side public bathhouse
3. 25 FebThe end of the Stanton Street gravestone district
4. 25 FebJoin Ephemeral New York for “Home Sweet Mansion” on March 5!
5. 18 FebA travel writer under the spell of 1820s New York
6. 18 FebA 1940s handbag store sign comes back into view
7. 18 FebThis winter day was “Rent Day” in old New York
8. 11 FebUpper Manhattan once resembled a country town
9. 11 FebThe “bobbed-hair bandit” on the run in Brooklyn
10. 11 FebThe writing on the wall of an East Side tenement
11. 4 FebMagnificence and magic at 1920s Columbus Circle
12. 4 FebA mystery copper-topped building in East Harlem
13. 4 FebBlue and white tiles line the Queensboro Bridge

January 2019

1. 28 JanGilded Age Manhattan aglow in a rainy twilight
2. 28 JanThe haunting outlines of old New York buildings
3. 28 JanA remnant of Avenue A on the Upper East Side
4. 21 JanThe butcher cart comes to the downtown slums
5. 21 JanThis Bowery theater gave performers “the hook”
6. 21 JanThe coral model tenement on an East Side corner
7. 14 JanThe eerie facade of a Yorkville orphanage chapel
8. 14 JanThe striking doorway Medusa on Sutton Place
9. 14 JanWhat remains of 3 old-school corner drugstores
10. 7 JanThe bronze dancing bears just inside Central Park
11. 7 JanA Gilded Age painter’s rainy, wintry New York
12. 7 JanThe Beaux-Arts arch deep beneath 168th Street

2018 157

December 2018

1. 31 DecA swanky New Year’s menu from 1935 New York
2. 31 DecThe mysterious furrier of West 46th Street
3. 31 DecManhole covers that left their mark on New York
4. 24 DecA Christmas card from a defunct Ladies Mile store
5. 24 DecGhost signs of New York’s small business past
6. 24 DecThis is what New York was like at Christmas 1882
7. 17 DecBrooklyn’s secret old-school comic book store
8. 17 DecA 19th century mayor’s fascinating social diary
9. 17 DecThe famous tea water pumps of 1700s New York
10. 10 DecThe last house left on State Street’s mansion row
11. 10 DecThe remains of a defunct downtown subway exit
12. 10 DecThe Bowery roots of a famous uptown gift store
13. 3 DecWaiting for a train at a dazzling subway station
14. 3 DecHow New York did coffee in the 1950s and 1960s
15. 3 DecA lawyer-turned-artist’s moody Greenwich Village

November 2018

1. 26 NovThe well-dressed Christmas shoppers of 1910
2. 26 NovWalking Macombs Dam Bridge in Upper Manhattan
3. 26 NovThe loveliest lamppost in New York is in Harlem
4. 19 Nov“The subway is a microcosm of New York City”
5. 19 NovHamilton Terrace is Harlem’s loveliest street
6. 19 NovThe East Side corner in The Odd Couple credits
7. 12 NovWhat one painter saw on Armistice Night, 1918
8. 12 NovThe many lives of Riverside Drive’s River Mansion
9. 12 NovThe artist and scholar gargoyles on 121st Street
10. 5 NovThe Oldsmobile sign that once lit up in Brooklyn
11. 5 NovA riverside cobblestone cul-de-sac no one knows
12. 5 NovA 23-year-old launches a 1909 labor revolt
13. 2 NovJoin Ephemeral NY for a night of Edgar Allan Poe!

October 2018

1. 29 OctA 1970s yellow store sign hangs on in Midtown
2. 29 OctA hidden city park named for a murdered activist
3. 29 OctThe Spring Street station and a superhero logo
4. 22 OctThe blue glow of the Flatiron Building at twilight
5. 22 OctA Midtown bar that still has a wood phone booth
6. 22 OctWhat remains of an 1881 bank at Mulberry Bend
7. 15 OctA motorized fire engine draws a crowd in 1910
8. 15 OctWhat Halloween looked like in 1970s New York
9. 15 OctA painter who said the subway was his art school
10. 8 OctHow things looked one wet night on the Bowery
11. 8 OctA New York public restroom out of the Gilded Age
12. 8 OctThe sailing ships of the Columbus Circle subway
13. 1 OctWhat remains of an East Harlem pharmacy sign
14. 1 OctAn artist paints the end of rural Upper Manhattan
15. 1 OctThere’s a Marx Brothers Playground in Yorkville

September 2018

1. 24 SepThe Gothic-style Starbucks on Lexington Avenue
2. 24 SepThe little-known history of tiny Catherine Lane
3. 24 SepNew York’s filth inspired this West Side fountain
4. 17 SepAn old house and the “human comedy” around it
5. 17 SepThe faded cornerstone of the old police building
6. 17 SepThe old-school subway signs at Chambers Street
7. 10 SepA “glorious natural scene” along the East River
8. 10 SepThe most beautiful block of row houses in Harlem
9. 10 SepThe sign behind the sign at a Grand Street store
10. 7 SepFor fans of Stanford White’s Gilded Age New York
11. 3 SepWhat remains of Manhattan’s Rose Hill enclave
12. 3 SepA 1906 dust storm beside the Flatiron Building
13. 3 SepLooking down at mosaic store signs in Little Italy

August 2018

1. 27 AugA 12th Street home and school for destitute girls
2. 27 AugThe mortar and pestles of a former city pharmacy
3. 27 AugThe last days of a Victorian mansion in Harlem
4. 20 AugWhy a West Side park is named for an Italian poet
5. 20 AugFood and lonely figures at old Washington Market
6. 20 AugThe sea motifs of the East Side co-op River House
7. 13 AugThe apartment rooftop that hosted Henri Matisse
8. 13 AugThe mystery of a Lower East Side old store sign
9. 13 AugThe four-faced street clock of East 79th Street
10. 6 AugSurf Avenue lit up by electricity and moonlight
11. 6 AugThe ghost signs behind an ex-Bowery flophouse
12. 6 AugThe story of a Gilded Age anti-noise crusade

July 2018

1. 30 JulThe “fear and anxiety” of approaching the city
2. 30 JulLabor and pleasure at the Old Slip banana docks
3. 30 JulA 1935 crime of passion shocks New Yorkers
4. 23 JulIs this the oldest photograph taken in Brooklyn?
5. 23 JulItalian food stores have New York’s best signs
6. 23 JulDreams and illusions on 1930s Chambers Street
7. 16 JulWhen New Yorkers went to roofs to sunbathe
8. 16 JulPeter Stuyvesant’s last descendant died in 1953
9. 16 JulThe hidden tenement angels of East 10th Street
10. 9 JulThe fence post turtles adorning East 49th Street
11. 9 JulThe charming “black and whites” of 72nd Street
12. 9 JulWhy this elephant at the UN is hidden from view
13. 2 JulDreaming on the elevated tracks at 47th Street
14. 2 JulOpening a fire hydrant is a city summer tradition
15. 2 JulA Beekman bath house for the “great unwashed”

June 2018

1. 25 JunExcavating Penn Station by fire and lamp light
2. 25 JunDancing at the Lunatic’s Ball on Blackwell’s Island
3. 25 JunAn 1877 Park Avenue mansion funded by beer
4. 18 JunAll that remains of a now-defunct Bronx hospital
5. 18 JunSummer among the tenement houses in 1879
6. 18 JunA teen swims from Manhattan to Coney Island
7. 11 JunThe graceful beauty of an original subway kiosk
8. 11 JunThe church wall that protected Irish immigrants
9. 11 JunWhat the bronze reliefs on 195 Broadway mean
10. 4 JunLovely houses and lush front yards on 18th Street
11. 4 JunThe relics on tenements at a Lenox Hill corner
12. 4 JunThe doctor’s summer home on West 94th Street

May 2018

1. 28 MayThe poorest New Yorkers lived in these shacks
2. 28 MayThe spider in the web on a 57th street building
3. 28 MayA memorial to the Gilded Age’s favorite architect
4. 21 MayThe glory days of Julian’s 14th Street pool hall
5. 21 MayEveryone ate at Jack Dempsey’s in Times Square
6. 21 MayThe Brooklyn high school pants protest of 1942
7. 14 MaySun, surf, suits, and straw hats at Coney in 1925
8. 14 MayFloating chapels for 19th century sailor souls
9. 14 MayAn East Side sign with an old New York address
10. 7 MayShadows and light under the El in Yorkville, 1947
11. 7 MayThe view from the last shot tower in Manhattan
12. 7 MayThis parking garage was once a silent film studio

April 2018

1. 30 AprPast and present collide on Blackwell’s Island
2. 30 AprThe bishop’s crook lamppost on Beekman Place
3. 23 AprEmptying the ash barrels on a tenement block
4. 23 AprThe lives of a former Chambers Street firehouse
5. 23 AprA mysterious store sign reappears in Flatiron
6. 16 AprFaces in the shadow of the Third Avenue El
7. 16 AprA secret garden behind 12 East Side townhouses
8. 16 AprWhat remains of downtown’s “College Place”
9. 9 AprA ship captain built this 1830 Allen Street house
10. 9 AprThe daisies hidden on a Stanford White building
11. 9 AprAn artist on the Carpathia paints Titanic survivors
12. 2 AprSpring rain and black umbrellas in Union Square
13. 2 AprThe end of a one-screen East Side movie theater
14. 2 AprA last sign of a defunct Italian restaurant in SoHo

March 2018

1. 26 MarGirls’ High School is a Gothic dream in Bed-Stuy
2. 26 MarRushing by the relics of the Union Square subway
3. 26 MarThe lion and unicorn clock above William Street
4. 19 MarThis church was once the 1905 Allen Street baths
5. 19 MarWhat remains of two downtown colonial streets
6. 19 MarThis office tower helped guide Battery tugboats
7. 12 MarA lonely newsstand at an empty subway entrance
8. 12 MarThe twin wood houses time forgot in Turtle Bay
9. 12 MarArt Nouveau flower petals on a Chelsea factory
10. 5 MarAn old Bronx phone number on a wood milk crate
11. 5 MarThe magic of indoor ice skating on the East Side
12. 5 MarA 21st Street building’s former life as a hotel

February 2018

1. 26 FebThe dreams of the pigeon trainer on a city roof
2. 26 FebThe terra cotta beauty of the German Dispensary
3. 26 FebMysterious “Mr. Zero” tends to the East Side poor
4. 19 FebOld New York and the contemporary city collide
5. 19 FebAn epidemic gave rise to a beloved Village church
6. 19 FebThe Bronx is the land of faded old movie houses
7. 12 FebA winter twilight in the snow on 57th Street
8. 12 FebDecayed shells of two lovely Bronx train stations
9. 12 FebThe bizarre 1916 plan to fill in the East River
10. 5 FebIn 1912, everyone was doing the Subway Glide
11. 5 FebThe past lives of a modest 1809 house in Tribeca
12. 5 FebNew York City is a brick and mortar ghost town

January 2018

1. 29 JanWho is the man with the pen on 14th Street?
2. 29 JanThe “Fish House” is the Bronx’s Art Deco jewel
3. 29 JanThe Yorkville home of a children’s book heroine
4. 22 JanMonday used to be laundry day in New York City
5. 22 JanThe meaning behind two Gramercy lampposts
6. 22 JanA lonely Bronx monument to a World War I battle
7. 15 JanThe forgotten men waiting on a Bowery breadline
8. 15 JanPark Avenue’s terra cotta tapestry of grotesques
9. 15 JanThe loveliness of New York’s skinny brownstones
10. 8 JanThis is Lower Manhattan as it looked in 1642
11. 8 JanThe Flatiron Building rises in the rain and fog
12. 8 JanThe mystery behind a Bedford Street stable sign

2017 184

December 2017

1. 31 DecToasting the new year at a dimly lit New York bar
2. 31 DecA boy remembers New Year’s calling in the 1860s
3. 31 DecOld New York’s sleigh carnival began in January
4. 24 DecA Harlem hotel’s holiday gift for New York City
5. 24 DecThe story of the twin houses of Commerce Street
6. 24 DecWhere was the original WPIX yule log filmed?
7. 18 DecSanta’s dashing appearance in an 1868 candy ad
8. 18 DecWeird things done to New York brownstones
9. 18 DecMedieval men on a 1920s Park Avenue building
10. 11 DecWhat did the FA phone exchange stand for?
11. 11 DecChristmas in the tenements in the Gilded Age
12. 11 DecCabins and cottages on top of Manhattan roofs
13. 4 DecThe owls that adorn New York school buildings
14. 4 DecThis 1840 spectacular costume ball started it all
15. 4 DecNew York’s most beautiful subway light fixture

November 2017

1. 27 NovThe best vintage candy store sign in New York
2. 27 NovThe glorious mansions on a lovely Harlem block
3. 27 NovWhat remains of New York’s first Theatre Alley
4. 20 NovGreetings from Thanksgivings past in New York
5. 20 NovA Revolutionary War hanging near the Bowery
6. 13 NovWhose horses boarded at this 10th Street stable?
7. 13 NovA painter drawn to the “Mountains of Manhattan”
8. 6 NovAn old piano ad on 37th Street fading out of view
9. 6 NovThe somber “Angel of Death” in Prospect Park
10. 6 NovThe woman who didn’t want women to vote

October 2017

1. 30 OctA spooky Gothic mansion in Upper Manhattan
2. 30 OctA child’s casket emerges in a Hudson Street park
3. 30 Oct“Chiller Theatre” used to scare a lot of city kids
4. 23 OctAll the ways to get to Columbus Circle in 1910
5. 23 OctEdgar Allan Poe on New York’s “inevitable doom”
6. 23 OctThe pretty peafowl on a Madison Avenue building
7. 16 OctThe gritty appeal of a 14th Street liquors sign
8. 16 OctThe beauty of 10th Street’s English Terrace Row
9. 16 OctOne of the last remnants of the old Penn Station
10. 9 OctA view of New York’s oldest and loveliest bridge
11. 9 OctSkyscrapers are the “Soul of the Soulless City”
12. 9 OctStand here and feel the ghosts of Bowery Village
13. 2 OctThe gritty history of an 18th century Village lane
14. 2 OctGilded Age extravagance at the Hotel Navarre
15. 2 OctThis is the oldest house in Greenwich Village

September 2017

1. 25 SepThe Flatiron Building in all of its glittery glory
2. 25 SepA secret alley behind a street in Hell’s Kitchen
3. 25 SepWhy was this ghost sign in Chelsea covered up?
4. 18 SepThe Ninth Avenue El curving by Morningside Park
5. 18 SepThis alley was once an exclusive New York street
6. 18 SepThe 1984 murder of a Studio 54 “miss party girl”
7. 11 SepThe understated 9/11 memorial few people know
8. 11 SepPainting prewar New York from the outside in
9. 11 SepCentral Park’s sensational 1865 balloon wedding
10. 4 SepA brutal murder on 23rd Street rocks Manhattan
11. 4 SepA short history of short Elk Street near City Hall

August 2017

1. 28 AugYour ticket to cross the new Williamsburg Bridge
2. 28 AugThe Brooklyn tree that belongs in a fairy tale
3. 28 AugHarrison Street’s stunning 1820s row houses
4. 21 AugThe nautical loveliness of a Jane Street hotel
5. 21 AugWhat a subway payphone looked like in 1932
6. 21 AugAn Impressionist paints New York’s sand and surf
7. 19 AugSeeing an eclipse from the Empire State Building
8. 19 AugTwo Prince Street relics on a pre-SoHo building
9. 19 AugThere is no beach anywhere near Beach Street
10. 14 AugIdentifying an eerie drugstore in a 1927 painting
11. 14 AugEveryone loved Central Park’s mineral water spa
12. 14 AugThe street names carved into Brooklyn corners
13. 7 AugRevisiting 10 shops from 1979 Greenwich Village
14. 7 AugNew York’s hustle and bustle down at Park Row

July 2017

1. 31 JulSeventh Avenue as a dark, mysterious canyon
2. 31 JulThe street where the rich parked their carriages
3. 31 JulHudson River vs. North River: which is right?
4. 24 JulThe Gramercy mansion in a John Sloan painting
5. 24 JulGrotesque faces staring at you at Hunter College
6. 24 JulThe tenement between two elevated train lines
7. 17 JulA magical garden nobody knows in Central Park
8. 17 JulHow New York’s horses handled heat waves
9. 17 JulBuffalo Bill’s wild west show thrills 1894 Brooklyn
10. 15 JulAll the reasons to love this Mott Street school
11. 15 JulRiding an elephant at Coney Island’s Luna Park
12. 15 JulWhat remains of a Gansevoort Street restaurant
13. 10 JulManhattan’s new skyscrapers flicker in the night
14. 10 JulGoing back in time at the Village’s Corner Bistro
15. 10 JulA Little Italy sign reveals an old phone exchange
16. 7 JulDo you recognize this 1920s corner speakeasy?
17. 7 JulThe roof sunbathers of New York’s tar beaches
18. 7 JulThe woman in Edward Hopper’s “Summertime”
19. 3 JulA Dutch sailor’s photos of the New York of 1979
20. 3 JulA happy Fourth of July card, 1911 style
21. 3 JulTurtle soup: the hottest dish on New York menus

June 2017

1. 26 JunAll that’s left of a Pearl Street Chinese restaurant
2. 26 JunThis rundown building was once a posh mansion
3. 26 JunDandy Point: the 1820s city’s popular swim spot
4. 19 JunAn Upper West Side Art Nouveau–like subway sign
5. 19 JunHow a “Ladies Pavilion” ended up in Central Park
6. 19 JunSo proud of the Lincoln Tunnel, it’s on a postcard
7. 12 JunThe most beautiful old warehouse is in Tribeca
8. 12 JunHunting ghosts of the West 91st Street subway
9. 12 JunA West Side statue for firemen—and their horses
10. 5 JunA faded memorial marks a horrific 1904 tragedy
11. 5 JunWhat one painter saw on a visit to Ellis Island
12. 5 JunThe “Big Store” blows away 1890s New York

May 2017

1. 29 MayThe Art Deco WWII memorial on an 1830s church
2. 29 MayNew York’s old public bath buildings still inspire
3. 29 MayDining “among the rooftops” of New York in 1905
4. 25 MayWise men once fished at the Gotham Book Mart
5. 25 MaySaluting the last veteran of the War of 1812
6. 25 MayStan’s sprawling sports empire at Yankee Stadium
7. 22 MayA sugar barrel, a pastry shop, and a body in 1903
8. 22 MayWould you do laundry in the Central Park lake?
9. 22 MayThe 1960s heyday of Village bar the Lion’s Head
10. 15 MayA lovely day to relax in Green-Wood Cemetery
11. 15 MayThe many lives of an 1834 wooden Village house
12. 15 MayIs this the last OTB parlor in New York City?
13. 8 MayThe loneliness of a New York all-night cafe
14. 8 MayThe haunting beauty of a brick Bronx factory
15. 1 MayReading a tenement on the Lower East Side
16. 1 MayThe past lives of the “bunker” on the Bowery
17. 1 MayThis skyscraper lobby will take your breath away

April 2017

1. 24 AprA faded Greenwich Village sign goes back in time
2. 24 AprA songwriter’s desperate end in a Bowery hotel
3. 24 AprWhat remains of the other end of the High Line
4. 21 AprGowanus Bay like you’ve never seen it before
5. 21 AprTwo forgotten Broadways nobody knows about
6. 21 AprWhat happened to the sheep of Central Park?
7. 17 AprHow New York kids played baseball in the 1940s
8. 17 AprA streetcar, a drunk, a fight, and murder in 1871
9. 17 AprWhat if this actually happened to Trinity Church?
10. 14 AprAll the ladies on the Central Park Mall in 1901
11. 14 AprThe lost ritual of the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade
12. 14 AprThis is the coolest coffee sign in New York City
13. 10 AprThe most spectacular roofs are in Union Square
14. 10 AprTiny Jewish cemeteries hidden in busy Manhattan
15. 10 AprOld subway signage of a less complicated city
16. 6 AprA final elevated train shines on Ninth Avenue
17. 6 AprThe World War I doughboys of New York City
18. 6 AprVintage matchbooks of defunct city restaurants
19. 3 AprThe crowds inside a 14th Street subway station
20. 3 AprThe many lives of two Chelsea carriage houses
21. 3 AprA piece of pizza history inside a Nolita restaurant

March 2017

1. 27 MarThis Canal Street sign might be older than SoHo
2. 27 MarA glorious 1914 tower symbolizes the united city
3. 27 MarSpring flowers arrive on a rainy Village sidewalk
4. 20 MarA Tribeca spaghetti sauce ad returns to view
5. 20 MarA New York artist paints the 20th century city
6. 13 MarA Brooklyn Starbucks’ long movie theater past
7. 13 MarA March blizzard pummels New York by surprise
8. 13 Mar13 stories of Art Nouveau beauty in Manhattan
9. 6 MarElizabeth Street’s old-school meat market signs
10. 6 MarCreative ways to use a tenement fire escape
11. 6 MarThe colossal failure of a 1905 Bleecker Street bar

February 2017

1. 27 FebThe mystery man in a rowboat on the East River
2. 27 FebThe wild history of Central Park’s Ramble Cave
3. 27 FebThis mosaic in the Waldorf Astoria will be missed
4. 20 FebNew York is a city of rooftop wooden water tanks
5. 20 FebA rich bachelor’s ball ignites a Gilded Age scandal
6. 20 FebA Revolutionary War sword turns up in Tudor City
7. 17 FebThese city boys tried to rent out their snow fort
8. 17 FebA Village hotel, a suicide, and a haunting painting
9. 17 FebA downtown restaurant with pillars from Pompeii
10. 13 FebA mystery valentine sent to a Brooklyn address
11. 13 FebA Bowery tinsmith paints his city of memory
12. 13 FebA lurid best-seller shocks 1850s New York
13. 6 FebOld men, a folded chessboard, and Central Park
14. 6 FebThe $20 million jewel in Grand Central Terminal
15. 6 FebHoldout buildings that escaped the wrecking ball

January 2017

1. 30 JanWhat Economy Candy looked like in the 1980s
2. 30 JanFinding beauty and poetry in a cold, snowy city
3. 30 JanThe most magical place in the eyes of city kids
4. 27 JanSilence and stillness of the 1930s East River
5. 27 JanThe bloody gang history of two Bowery houses
6. 23 JanGilded Age New York City’s “Beggars’ Paradise”
7. 23 JanA 1940s poem’s dark and ominous Varick Street
8. 23 JanThe unusual art in the Old Chelsea post office
9. 16 JanA 1960s downtown rock club with an 1860s name
10. 16 JanThe brick and mortar ghosts all over Manhattan
11. 16 JanOne girl’s 1899 travel diary of New York City
12. 12 JanThe brilliant future of Broadway at 179th Street
13. 12 JanAll that remains of the Flatiron Novelty District
14. 9 JanCornelia Street has barely changed in a century
15. 9 JanA walk down Manhattan’s first “block beautiful”
16. 9 JanThe curious 1870s cat hospital on Division Street
17. 5 JanNow this is a subway station worth celebrating
18. 5 JanEveryone in 19th century New York loved oysters
19. 5 JanThe beauty and magic of New York City on skates
20. 2 JanBare trees and orange-brown hills in Central Park
21. 2 JanWho passed through Ellis Island a century ago
22. 2 JanWhat Tudor City tells us about an older East Side