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.
August 2026
September 2026
October 2026
Top Words
- york
- street
- brooklyn
- house
- city
- century
- west
- park
- houses
- gilded
- built
- avenue
All posts (70)
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 Ann Street. You’ll see a historic painted ad that harkens back to the days of...
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 dealers hauled their wares every day and set them out from horse-drawn carts and...
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 neighborhood enlistees, and celebratory statues and arches to honor the dead of the...
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, she was introduced to the emerging style of German Expressionism, in which...
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 Brooklyn Bridge has taken the honor of the city’s most painted and photographed...
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, just might be the oldest tree in Central Park. That’s according to NYC Parks,...
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 owner converted the then-empty structure on the edge of Tomkins Square Park...
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 ordinary: a woman hanging laundry, men drinking in McSorley’s saloon, 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 form the walls of colonial-era houses. It’s built into the cliff, which is part of...
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 span of loveliness, built between the 1860s and the 1890s, is part of the Mott...
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 because of the cute cursive letters, and the earliest newspaper ads I could find...
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 in the middle of Broadway between 96th and 97th Streets? A close look reveals...
Page 5 of 6