The nine villages and several unincorporated communities that make up the city of Great Neck are steeped in history. F. Scott Fitzgerald chose Great Neck as the setting for his famous novel, The Great Gatsby, and even though the area …
Of the over 2 million people who inhabit the borough of Queens, there are probably at least one or two members of actual royalty. They might be from countries few have ever heard of, or from places so remote they don’t often show…
Historical district. Garden sanctuary. Street food paradise. Jackson Heights Queens is all of these things. From its humble beginnings as dirt-paved farmland to its construction renaissance in the 1940s and 50’s, Jackson Heights is re-…
What do Alexander Hamilton, Billie Holliday, Bill Clinton, Langston Hughes, and WEB Dubois all have in common? They have all had a presence in Harlem. Harlem is one of the richest, most culturally vibrant neighborhoods in New Yo…
Meandering cobblestone streets lined with 19th century brownstones. Tiny parks and postage-stamp sized courtyards tucked away in odd corners. Cafes and shops where hipsters, yuppies, and urban archetypes of all kinds rub shoulders in pe…
In 1932, when Josephine Baldizzi was six, her mother Rosaria, used to bathe her in the kitchen’s slop sink in their five-story walkup tenement building at 97 Orchard Street. On her walk to school, she wore her father Adolfo’s size 9 sh…
If you want to tour some of Manhattan’s most impressive apartment house architechture, a trip to the Upper West side is a no-brainer. There, you can view such buildings as The Osborne, the Beresford and the Van Corlear, all known for t…
You know you’re living in a hot neighborhood when people from Manhattan visit the area to sample the restaurants and shopping. That’s exactly the status enjoyed by Park Slope, Brooklyn, the area under the south side of Prospect Park tha…
It’s an oft-repeated fact that if the borough of Brooklyn were still independent, it would be one of the biggest cities in the nation. According to the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, in 2000, the U.S. decennial census count…
As part of a New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) project, Maple Plaza in East Harlem was constructed in the late 1990s in hopes that the building would help anchor redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood. The eight-story, …