Favorites
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45 Years Late to the World’s Fair
Originally published November 25, 2009. By the time I got there, it was gone. The World’s Fair, you ask? Nope. I am referring to something far more unbelievable… That’s right: Queens once had an honest-to-God Parks Department-approved fountain named “Fountain of the Planet of the Apes.” And if that’s not odd enough, an identical fountain…
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Scouting The Remains of Brooklyn’s Incredible Paramount Movie Theatre
In my travels through the city, I’ve driven down the northern end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn roughly eight billion times… …and I have never once given a second thought to the nondescript office building at Dekalb, part of the Long Island University campus. And I don’t think I ever would have if I hadn’t…
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What The Monopoly Properties Look Like In Real Life
Whenever I played Monopoly as a kid, I used to love imagining what the game’s city would look like in real life. I remember thinking of Mediterranean and Baltic as being these short, run-down alleys ala West Side Story, while Pennsylvania Ave and the other greens as Fifth Avenue-style apartment buildings. What I didn’t know…
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How A Beautiful 19th-Century Marble Archway In Manhattan Became An Auto Body Shop
The other day, I was driving up Broadway toward the northern tip of Manhattan when something caught my eye off to one side… Poking up behind the auto body shops and brick storefronts… …was that a crumbling stone archway? Something seemed very out of place about this. I pulled over and looked it up on…