Ephemeral New York
Ephemeral New York
Esther Crain
Ephemeral New York, founded and edited by native New Yorker Esther Crain, chronicles a constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin. Here we remember forgotten people, places, and relics of the way New Yorkers used to live. We get a big kick out of present-day urban weirdness and idiosyncrasies too.
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John Sloan was a Village resident and something of a voyeur in the early 1900s, discreetly watching from his window or walking nearby streets in search of scenes to commit to canvas. He never lacked material, finding inspiration in the...
You can see it from the Henry Hudson Parkway: the back of an ordinary seven-story tenement built on a primitive stone foundation that’s almost as tall as the tenement itself. The foundation is made from the kind of uneven stones that...
They look like the kind of row houses that make Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side so picturesque—elegant stone facades, rounded archways, pops of stained glass, and cast iron railings on stoops and balconies. But this four-block...
The upside to a constantly changing city is the sudden resurfacing of a faded store sign. Case in point: the outline of the “Cards-U-Like” Hallmark store on First Avenue between 75th and 76th Streets. I’m placing it in the late 1970s...
It’s a piece of street furniture from another era—grimy granite blocks, white brick, and Romanesque faux doorways that give the little structure a connection to Classical architecture. But what exactly is this locked and rundown building...
New York is a city of hooks—Red Hook in Brooklyn, Corlears Hook on the Lower East Side, Tubby Hook in Inwood, for example. Okay, Tubby Hook is a name that hasn’t been widely used for a century. But in the colonial era, Dutch settlers...
There’s a curious pair of limestone row houses on the lower end of peaceful, park-facing Riverside Drive. Each looks similar from afar. They share the same color of stone, and both facades have bow fronts. But on closer look, you’ll...
Ever since the concept of the penthouse became fashionable in the 1920s, New York City rooftops have hosted lots of creative domicile styles. There’s a pink fairybook-like cottage on the top floor of a prewar building on East 52nd Street...
Spaces are still available on tomorrow’s Gilded Age Mansion & Memorials RIverside Drive walking tour. We’ll explore the backstory of this winding, scenic drive and the houses and monuments that marked it as millionaire mile that rivaled...
Fractional house numbers can be found across New York’s older brownstone and townhouse neighborhoods. Usually the half refers to an adjacent carriage house or backhouse, or sometimes even a basement apartment. But as far as I can tell,...
When you think of Gilded Age millionaires, the name Darius Ogden Mills probably draws a blank. Born in 1825 in Westchester, Mills based himself in Buffalo and California and made a fortune in banking and railroads. He got his modest...
Riverside Drive is one of Manhattan’s most beautiful and dramatic avenues. It’s also a place of legend and mystery, especially during the Drive’s early decades as a Gilded Age “millionaire colony” rival to Fifth Avenue. Which mansion...
Conceived as a romantic English landscape garden and enhanced by sloping contours, rock outcroppings, and dramatic river views, Riverside Park began opening in stages in the 1870s. Since then, it’s undergone a lot of changes—and it helps...
Margaret Bechstein Hays (at right) was a well-off 24-year-old residing on a fashionable Upper West Side block and living a life similar to that of other young women of her class in early 20th century New York. In the spring of 1912, that...
I wonder what the proprietor of the Speedway Livery & Boarding Stables would have thought about his handsome brick building transforming from a home for pricey horses to a pricey home for people? This four-story, Romanesque-style stable...