Tag: history

Sometimes history is so close to the surface, all you have to do is remove a few bricks to find it. Pioneer supermarket on Columbus Avenue between 73rd and 74th streets peeled away some of its facade because the city Buildings Department was checking out the store's structure. For a ...

By Marjorie Cohen The members of a local history group think that the name of the area from 96th street to 110th, from the river to the park, should be known as Bloomingdale. They want to differentiate this piece of the island from the rest of the Upper West Side, ...

By Marjorie Cohen Of all of the extraordinary material that has been collected for the New York Historical Society's new exhibit, WWII & NYC (October 5-May 27) what I found most striking is the 22-minute film

The city released a set of more than 800,000 photos from the municipal archives earlier this year in a searchable Internet database. The archive is frankly pretty incredible -- there are photos from the NYPD, the parks department, the mayor's office, and many more agencies, as well as shots taken ...

Each month we choose an object from the N-Y Historical Society Library's collection that relates to the history of the Upper West Side and use it as the focus of an article.  The topic for this month's column, the Lion Brewery, dovetails with the Society's latest exhibit, Beer Here: Brewing ...

The 69th Street Transfer Bridge is a glorious post-industrial wreck. Built in 1911 by the New York Central Railroad, it transported freight cars to and from barges on the Hudson River that traveled to New Jersey. As rail transport disappeared, the bridge was abandoned around the late 1960's. About a ...

Stories in Sterling, Four Centuries of Silver in New York, a new exhibit at the NY Historical Society opens to the public on Friday May 4th. This exhibit does what the

The NYPD sent us the above sketch of a man accused of robbing the Apple Bank at 73rd Street and Broadway. Police are looking for the public's help in catching him. First of all, if you've seen this guy, let the police know. The number's at the bottom. For the ...

By Tracy Kaler Thousands of restaurants have come and gone on the Upper West Side in the past fifty years since Big Nick's first opened its doors. But few have won their way into the hearts of locals like the little greasy spoon on Broadway and 76th Street. This past ...

West Side Rag columnist Maria Gorshin directed our attention to this delightful home movie made in 1971 by Nicholas West and posted on YouTube. The sleek cars, the vintage buses, the men in stylish hats, the ladies perched on benches in the median, the faded graffiti peace sign, the glimpse ...

Let's take a look back to the Upper West Side of the 1930's and a building constructed just as the Great Depression began. For decades, it was part of a delightful and innovative business experiment, and on one day in the middle of the summer of 1933 it was the ...

This just in from Landmark West:

Edgar's Cafe, at 255 West 84th Street, paid homage to Edgar Allan Poe, who lived in a farmhouse on West 84th Street in the 1840's. Poe wrote The Raven in that house in 1844. The Mediterranean restaurant had a large portrait of the famous author in the dining room. It ...

By Laura Weiss Tired of sawing through onions and watching your garlic hop around the counter? All it takes is $15 for the itinerant knife grinder, Mike Palotta, to sharpen three of your very dullest chef's knives. Mike's been helping Upper West Side home cooks keep their blades in proper ...

By Maria Gorshin What if you learned that two townhouses on West 74th Street were slated for demolition? What if you knew that a 35-story hotel would soon rise in their place to loom over Broadway and tower over Fairway? No need to start a petition or book a suite ...

Editor's Note: This is the first in a monthly West Side Rag series by Marjorie Cohen. Each month, Marjorie will choose an object or document from the archives of the New-York Historical Society that references the Upper West Side and use it as a jumping off point for an article. ...

Just a little over a year go, a debate over whether to bestow landmark status upon West-Park Presbyterian Church devolved into name-calling and angry graffiti. The outside of the church on 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue was serving as an inadequate shelter for homeless people, and the congregation was holding ...

By Emily Baer The New York Historical Society recently spent $70 million trying to make the space more inviting -- but one woman who recently went there to do research is feeling snubbed. When writer and tour guide Maria Dering arrived at the coat check for the library in the ...

November 17, 2011 Weather: Showers, High of 48 Degrees.

By Marjorie Cohen Get ready for some wonderful surprises when you enter the new and vastly improved New York Historical Society on 77th Street and Central Park West. After three years and $70 million dollars worth of renovations both inside and out, this venerable institution has let in the light ...