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
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,...
Some New York City buildings become more than buildings—they transform into symbols. Christodora House, a 16-story fortress completed in 1928 on Avenue B in the East Village, become a symbol of gentrification in the late 1980s—when a new...
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...