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.
Latest Posts
You’re forgiven if you assumed 58 Joralemon Street was just another beautifully restored Greek Revival row house in Brooklyn Heights. Built in 1847, it resembles many of the elegant single-family houses on the block, with its red brick...
The Brooklyn Bridge most New Yorkers know is a slender wonder of steel wires, stone towers, and sweeping views. But there’s a less visible part of the bridge at ground level. These are the anchorages—the masonry structures on both the...
Getting around the western Bronx by foot means encountering hilly streets, lots of hilly streets. The pitched terrain comes from ridges of bedrock formed millions of years ago extending into Northern Manhattan. Back in the early 1900s...
When Fidelia Bridges moved to 93 First Place in Brooklyn in 1854, her neighborhood was an enclave of recently built brownstones set back from the street with roomy front gardens. Years later, in 1867, something compelled her to paint...
Otto C. Dreschmeyer lived what appears to be a small, provincial kind of life. Born in New York in 1896 to German immigrant parents, he attended P.S. 81 on Cypress Avenue near the Brooklyn-Queens border. His father served as president of...
You can see it peeking out from the Harlem River Drive or through the chain-link fence of the Third Avenue Bridge: a five-story red brick building almost buried behind glass and steel apartment towers. The towers are newish luxury rental...
At the foot of East 58th Street is Sutton Square—a jewel box of a cul-de-sac overlooking the East River and flanked by luxurious townhouses. All of the townhouses—they share a private garden with another group of homes on Sutton Place,...
Say what you want about Robert Moses. But as Parks Commissioner in the 1930s, he opened 11 new public municipal pools across the five boroughs—helping residents keep cool and resist the lure of swimming in the East or Hudson River, which...
New York in the 1820s was an energetic, optimistic city. The opening of the Erie Canal made Gotham richer, elite families were relocating as far north as Bond Street, and the population surged past 100,000 residents. All of these changes...
Ann Street is one of New York’s oldest streets. On a recent Saturday, this three-block stretch of the Financial District resembled a slender ghost town of turn of the century commercial buildings. But look up on the western wall of 42...
Looking to buy fresh flowers, plants, or other greenery in the New York City of 1880? Various flower markets existed across the city, and one small market sat at the foot of Canal Street and the Hudson River. Here, flower and plant...
New York is a city that tries hard not to forget its fallen soldiers, especially those who died in global wars with many casualties. All over Gotham are Great War doughboys in bronze, solemn World War II-era plaques with the names of...
Lisette Model, born into an upper-class Jewish-Catholic family in Vienna in 1901, didn’t set out to be a photographer. As a young woman she moved to Paris and studied music with Modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg. Through Schoenberg,...
The Brooklyn Bridge is celebrating its 143rd birthday on May 24, the day Gilded Age New Yorkers could finally walk across this wondrous span and celebrate the uniting of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Over close to a century and a half, the...
It’s an immense beauty rooted under grass and gravel that spreads its canopy of leaves across the northeastern end of the Central Park reservoir. And this London Plane tree, mostly minding its business in this popular neck of the park,...