Tea, a New York drink
Okay, coffee is more popular, be it a regular deli cup (hot, light, and sweet) or a compostable cup of slow-drip, cold-brewed, artisanal bean. With your alluring caffeinated goodness and … Continue reading
Affordable New York: Phipps Houses
The names of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick are well known in New York City and beyond for Carnegie Hall and for the Frick Collection. Though the institutions built … Continue reading
Affordable New York: Queensbridge Houses
At the beginning of 1934, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia founded the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). It was a moment of great need in the city, as its poorer residents … Continue reading
Speedway Concourse and Transverse Road, AKA the Grand Concourse
In 1874 the disparate villages of Westchester County (Morrisania, Kingsbridge, et al.) were annexed to New York City and formed what we now know as the Bronx. At the time, … Continue reading
Affordable New York: Amalgamated Housing Cooperative
In 1926, when the tenements of the Lower East Side were overflowing and there was wide recognition of the unhealthy conditions created by such dense living, New York state enacted … Continue reading
Street clocks – how New Yorkers kept time on the go.
Street clocks once dominated the sidewalks of New York City. First introduced in the 1860s, the clocks quickly became popular with businesses looking for novel ways to advertise and with … Continue reading
What skating rink is that? Who lived in that house? Solving mysteries in the collection.
From time to time, the Collections Department receives inquiries from the public about the information associated with images we’ve cataloged online. The data in the catalog records is pulled from … Continue reading
The Central Park Casino
It’s 1929 in an Art Deco ballroom. Dancers glide around, dimly reflected in the black glass ceiling while outside on the terrace, the sound of champagne corks popping intersperses with … Continue reading
The Apartment That Wasn’t
John Williams Campbell was born in Brooklyn in 1880 into a well-to-do family. His father was treasurer of the Credit Clearing House, a credit bureau for merchandise wholesalers. At the … Continue reading
Mott Haven Historic District
The neighborhood of Mott Haven is located in the South Bronx, and is situated on a portion of land historically referred to as Morrisania, named after the powerful Morris family … Continue reading
New York Streetside
New York has seen its share of interesting, humorous, or just plain odd signs. In addition to being entertaining, the signs tell us a lot about how the city has … Continue reading
Christmas in New York City
New York has been the setting for many Christmas stories, fables, and traditions. In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia Hanson of 115 West 95th Street wrote to the editor of The Sun, … Continue reading
