In 1868, a spirit’s guiding hand led two sisters to New York City, to a home on beautiful Washington Square--an address reserved for the elite of the Gilded Age. Behind its doors lived the richest man in America, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt sized up the ladies, Victoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin, as sophisticated and savvy and, […]
Old photographs have captured many stages of the city’s growth that would otherwise have been lost, and the best images from New York’s past can do more than just highlight what has changed—they can reveal stories about times that were different than our own and the people who lived, worked, and died here. You’ll be […]
Come inside the magnificent structure that is St. John the Divine in Manhattan with Laura Buchner, a Senior Conservator at Building Conservation Associates, Inc., a group which has been part of restoration efforts at St. John the Divine over the past 25 years. Through amazing historic photos of areas of the building no one but a […]
New York’s Fifth Avenue is one of the most remarkable thoroughfares in the world. By the end of the 19th century it had become synonymous with the most fashionable lifestyles and mansions (and all that accompanied them) of the wealthy. Aggressive arrivistes such as Alva Vanderbilt and Marietta Stevens used their "new money" to employ […]
A decade before Agatha Christie entered the scene, another female writer was already queen of the country house murder. Churning out multiple thrillers a year from her Upper West Side apartment home, Carolyn Wells was dubbed “about the biggest thing in mystery novels in the U.S." in the 1920s. Wells' output was a seemingly endless […]
The Great Blizzard of 1888 was among the first photographed natural disasters in the city’s history. Weather historian Rob Frydlewicz of the NYC Weather Archive blog uses some of the most indelible images to take us back to the days of a storm without parallel. A time before subways and snowplows, when 24 million cubic […]
In examining the proposed City of Yes zoning text amendments, the question has been raised about how City of Yes will impact the many Special Purpose Districts across the city. But what is a Special Purpose District and how do they help preserve unique community character? The City Planning Commission has been designating these districts […]
Over the course of history, countless vehicles have moved across our city. But it is the bicycle that has had the longest running claim to New York’s streets: 200 years and counting. This is the story of how that happened. Of how bicycles came and went and came back againPedal back with LW! and history […]
Historian Kevin Baker (a real major leaguer) returns to LW! with a look at America’s national pastime in the country’s largest city. Visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters—both the game and the city had them all. Baker introduces us to the motley/larger-than-life crew of New York hustlers, scalawags, and dreamers who made baseball such a popular and compelling game.
