Ephemeral New York
The darkness at the center of an Impressionist’s snowy New York dreamscape
The most difficult to find Revolutionary War memorial hides in the woods of Upper Manhattan
An oil tycoon sees the future of Riverside Drive—and builds his family two dazzling neighboring mansions
The silk ribbon mill is long gone, but the company’s 120-year-old faded ad remains on the building
A row of harmonious uptown houses built with mirrored boudoirs for Gilded Age women
The little stories of humanity playing out on a sweltering East River pier
The story of Harlem’s last remaining wood clapboard house, built at the dawn of the Gilded Age
Subtle reminders of the Covid pandemic on an Upper East Side subway platform
What’s on the menu at the Waldorf-Astoria birthday ball to honor the U.S. President in 1939?
Inside Harlem’s “replica” Gilded Age rail station, tucked beneath the tracks over Park Avenue
An invitation to the opulent 19th century Bachelors’ Ball, held every year on Valentine’s Day
Peek into the diary of a Manhattan schoolboy growing up in the booming city of the 1870s
This prefabricated steel diner on Pearl Street is one of the last of its kind in Manhattan
The sacred stone box of a church beneath a finance company’s 1970s Midtown skyscraper
Tracing the life and legacy of an ironworker through a coal chute cover in Brooklyn Heights
How long has this faded 7Up sign been hanging on a West Side corner tenement?
The army of unemployed men who lined up to do the work of removing snow from city streets
A midcentury snow scene reveals the magic and wonder of Madison Square in winter
The hucksters, housewives, and pageant of humanity once on display at Paddy’s Market in Hell’s Kitchen
The “entirely feasible” 1911 plan to extend Manhattan four miles into New York Harbor
One of Manhattan’s last wood houses has stood on this Yorkville street since before the Civil War
This dollhouse-like holdout built in 1899 is a lonely and curious Bronx anachronism
How New Yorkers paid for a subway ride when the system first opened in 1904
What a panoramic winter landscape from the 1860s says about Central Park’s early years
The story behind a haunting 1974 photo of a bar and cocktail lounge that once existed in the West Village
Chronicling the feasting and frolicking on New Year’s Day over two centuries in New York City
The huddles of humanity on an anonymous Manhattan cross street during a wintry day in 1899
This spooky holdout built in 1896 was once a “distinctly idiosyncratic” family home in a more rural Bronx
What happened to the canal that gave Canal Street its name?
This forgotten stretch of Central Park was originally intended to be a road that celebrated winter
This tucked-away holdout house in East Midtown was built 3 years afer the end of the Civil War
A decades-old subway relic hangs from the ceiling in Brooklyn’s neglected Court Street station
Searching for the East Side store in the opening scene of 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street”
What a remarkable candid photo of a “soap fat man” in Prospect Park says about Brooklyn in 1878
The enduring appeal of New York City’s lovely vintage letter boxes and mail chutes
The mysterious origins of Mitchell Place, possibly Manhattan’s most obscure one-block street
This building is one of the last cast-iron structures in the Financial District, and it hides an unusual backstory
The Lincoln Tunnel’s 88th birthday is almost here—and it’s time to celebrate this engineering wonder
The sweet story of the 1930s “Hansel and Gretel cottage” tucked beside the Queensboro Bridge
Reading the sides of old factory buildings from the platform of a Brooklyn elevated train
The Art Deco beauty of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street streamlined and stylized elevators
A luminous wartime scene of France’s fearless Blue Devils marching on Fifth Avenue
Inside the eerie, unfinished 1930s subway station under a South Williamsburg street
The geometry of 1940s New York City under the Third Avenue El
Drama and heartbreak in the “lost children’s room” at the Mulberry Street police headquarters
Tracing the colonial-era origins of an obscure Belgian block alley deep in the Financial District
A brick facade is all that remains of a counting house that held out on Pearl Street for nearly 200 years
The beauty of Bleecker Street’s pushcarts, captured by an artist who preferred the city’s gritty side
Going on a “midnight ramble” with Teddy Roosevelt in his quest to reform the city’s corrupt police force
The Halloween trick mischief-making city kids at the turn of the century played on hapless adults
Why the glorious doors of Riverside Church depict angels, saints, kings—and Albert Einstein
The Upper East Side tailor who took poetic street scene photos over six decades from his shop window
The eccentric Hungarian princess who moved into the Plaza Hotel with 12 servants and a lion cub
The tenement is a menace to all, according to a dark and blunt illustration from 1901
Unhappily married to a UK royal, this Gilded Age dollar princess became the great-grandmother of Princess Diana
A ghostly old house on the edge of the Hudson River, and the boxer who lived there with his family
The oldest street sign still functioning in New York City might be this one in Murray Hill
What a 1912 painting might be saying about the changing social rules of New York’s public spaces
A Gilded Age sugar baron and his wife build a Fifth Avenue “house of fantasy” for their family and art collection
The enchanting stained glass luring drinkers into one of Midtown’s dwindling workingman’s taverns
Inside the Gilded Age childhoods of six clever siblings raised in “zany confusion” on Riverside Drive
The solemn 9/11 memorial hidden behind the corporate office towers of Sixth Avenue in Midtown
Tracking the 19th century granite milestones that marked the distance from City Hall to Upper Manhattan
A two-letter Manhattan phone exchange spotted in Midtown: what does it stand for?
A disappointment to his family, this Gilded Age Vanderbilt heir ended his life in a Broadway hotel