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I was walking down Delancey some weeks ago when my eye was caught be this corner restaurant. "I know that sign," I thought to myself. I went in an inquired at Grey Lady, the restaurant in question, and sure enough: it was the classic, double-sided neon sign that hung for more than fifty years over the Famous Oyster Bar at 54th Street and Seventh Avenue, until it went out of business in January 2014. The owners had bought it and salvaged it. I think it actually looks better on the desolate corner of Delancey and Allen. As some of you have doubtless noticed, I haven't posted much lately. I have been busy working on a couple books and a variety of other activities. So, for the time being, I'm going to let Lost City rest as a sort of permanent document of what New York was, and what New York has lost in the past decade. I will occasionally post when the spirit moves me. I've put too much into the site to let it die completely. In the meantime, thanks to everyone and a...

I have been chronicling the history of Cafiero's Restaurant for five years or so now and accumulated quite a cache was previously unseen, private photographs of the once-legendary Brooklyn restaurant by now. Here's a new arrival. I was told it was taken in the 1930s, when the restaurant was relatively fresh to President Street. (It would last until the 1970s when owner "Sharkey" Cafiero retired and closed it down for good, breaking the hearts of many.) However, it looks just like one I have on which the date "1949" is written. Whatever. It's still one of the best photos I've seen. For more, click here . What I still lack is an actual artifact from the place: a napkin, ashtray, menu, advertisement, plate, anything. I know it wasn't the kind of place that printed menus, or advertised, or have dishware with its name on it. But I keep hoping.

I was walking up Avenue A about a month ago when I notice a lot of scaffolded over the building that houses the Gracefully deli—apparently the future home of the New York Sports Club. I peered more closely behind the wood and metal and mesh and noticed that, in their refurbishment of the building, the vandals had taken down the distinctive, vertical, block sign that had for decades announced the address as the former home of Burger Klein. Burger-Klein was a large furniture store owned by Morris Klein and a person named Burger whose first name I can not discover. My guess is they founded their shop well before the Burger King fast food chain came to prominence. Otherwise, they might have paused before naming their business.  I loved that sign. It had been left there so long it was almost a local landmark, and a nice reminder of the Jewish past of the East Village (then called the Lower East Side). But, of course, they had to rip it down. Because it was old. And you rip down things t...

I don't think I've ever posted an item regarding Kew Gardens. Well, that changes today, as a kind reader sent me this photo of a wooden phone booth on view inside Kew Gardens Cinema.

A reader sent to me this photo of a lovely old Delicatessen sign that was uncovered during construction on a storefront at Broadway and 103rd. Can't make out the first word—that is, the name of the place. Lovely font on the sign.

I have to say, Giambelli's must have been some place. I wrote about it's closing , after 50 years on E. 50th Street, five years ago. And the comments and memories keep flowing in. Makes me hurt inside that I never went there.  This one came the other day. It's from "Peniche" in New Zealand (!). Just read and marvel: ...We used to dine at Giambelli regularly in the mid 1970s. One evening we arrived to find the restaurant gutted for renovation. As we turned to leave a diminutive, but immaculate gentleman on the sidewalk introduced himself. 'I am Francesco Giambell...please!' and indicated a stretch Cadillac, sat beside the driver and took us to Mercurios. He asked my name, led us into the restaurant clapping his hands announcing 'Champagne for Senor Peniche and his party,' saw that we were well seated and returned to Giambelli for more customers. I have thereafter been called 'Peniche' by my friends although the name only vaguely resembles my...

A couple years ago, I posted an item about how the television series "Miami Vice," in 1985, was allowed to blow up up an old business on Columbia Street called the Valley Candle Company. I didn't know much about the company when I wrote that post. Since then, however, I've been contacted by a descendent of the company's founder. That was Saverio DellaValle, pictured below. (Hence, the name of the business.) Saverio came to Brooklyn from Naples in 1905. He made religious candles and delivered them to the churches in NYC. An open-minded businessman, he also made candles for the religious Jewish holidays. There were family stories that, while he was making candles, Saverio ran a still running in the factory during Prohibition. There's an enterprising gent! The family sold the business in the '70s.

Looks like I have some globe-trotting readers. A native of Edinburgh, who was recently traveling in San Francisco, snapped this shot from a taxi on mid-Market Street. "The building was having a complete renovation, and this was briefly exposed in the process," wrote the reader. "I’m assuming that it was formerly a pawn broker."

A reader who has been very good about spying old wooden phone booths in the City and sending me shots of them, has done so again! This was taken inside the Harmonie Club at 4 E. 60th Street, a club I did not even know existed. The Harmonie Club was founded in 1852 and has been in its handsome McKim Mead and White designed building on 60th since 1904. "Jacket and Tie are Required. Shorts, sneakers or tennis shoes are not permitted at any time." My kind of place.

Old Kaye's Footwear, which once sold Florsheim Shoes in San Francisco's Chinatown, doesn't exist anymore, but the handsome sign lives on.

An old bit of signage in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. It is currently the home of the Creole Creamery, an ice cream joint. McKenzie's, founded in the 1920s, was a bakery, and a bit of a legend in NOLA.

I've long been intrigued by this small trick building on Fulton Mall, largely because of its unusual, curbed cornice, which appears to be original. I've not been able to find out anything about its past life. Anyone out there known anything?

Hole in the wall, bunker-like hardware store in New Orleans. Hard to believe it's in business. But it obviously is.

This local juke joint in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans shut down some time ago. But you still have to admire the frontage, with it's huge colorful, hand-painted sign advertising Dixie Bottle Beer and 35-cent highballs. At those prices, it must have been painted in the 1950s. In it's original form, Dixie existed from 1907 to 1989.

This is just a laundromat on Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that I like the look of. Guess what it's called? Franklin Street Laundromat. Old painted sign. Old brick building. Old stick-on letter advertising "Prompt Service," "Drop Off Service" and "Self Service." Every kind of service!

Most subway stations make you feel depressed and oppressed. They are dirty, crowded, filled with fetid air and not particularly attractive. A few raise your spirits. I've always liked the 33rd Street Station on the 6 line, and am always surprised by its perhaps unintentional grandiosity whenever I climb down into it. It's a very low-sitting station and you have to descend a great flight of stairs to get to it. Nothing unusual there. Many subway stations lie far below the sidewalk. The difference here is that at 33rd Street you don't end up in a low-ceilinged, claustrophobic box, but in a spacious airy chamber with a great sense of flow and line. The station was built in 1904 as part of the IRT, and is one of the oldest stations in the subway system. It has a lot of decorative and unusual ironwork, including a long, curving, cast-iron fence that separates the "lobby" from the platform, and some handsome pressed tin on the ceiling. That there's an iron fence ins...

An old, small building stuck amid newer, larger buildings always captures my attention. It's screams, "Another Era," "Holdover," "Survivor," "Relic" and like notions. This four-story bit at 229 Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill did the trick with its recessed fourth floor and three stories of windows, indicated it once houses several different businesses. Those modest in proportions, it does stand out as an interesting piece of utilitarian architecture. And it seems to have survived intact. This was until recently the home of Da Ciro Ristorante. It was there an impressive 20 years before closing on March 23 of this year. There were apparently many fans of its homey Italian fare, particularly the pizza, and service. It was run by Ciro Verdi, who was a pizza maker at Fred's in Barney's. The Times reviewed it well in 1995, calling it an "unpretentious little spot." De Ciro may have been the building's classiest tenant. In 192...

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Hardware stores are some the sturdiest businesses in New York. In nearly every neighborhood in New York, you'll find at least one longstanding, family-owned hardware store. They give a guy hope. Vercesi Hardware on E. 23rd Street was one of the oldest in town—and increasingly incongruous on a major thoroughfare that had virtually nothing old about it. Sadly, it finally gave up the ghost last November. Now, it look like the building, and two others next to it, will be torn down and replaces with a 20-story condo tower. Vercesi Hardware actually wasn't a hardware store for all of its 100-year existence. It began in 1912 as a sheet music store. (Tin Pan Alley was nearby.) Then, it was a radio and television store during the 1930s. It only began to sell hardware and housewares beginning in 1960. There's adaptability for you.

Here's a bit of downtown Brooklyn that feels likes its remained unchanged since the 1950s. Actually, the business as we see it today, run by Tariq Khan and Anwar “Sha” Shazad, has been here at Fulton Street and Elm Place since 1982. 32 years—nothing to sneeze at. The reason it looks so old is the owners recently gave the place a makeover that restore some of the signage to the state it was in the 1950s. Hence, the red and white striped awning and huge sign saying "Frankfurters." According to the owners, they have records going back a century of an eatery of some sort existing here. It's a welcome site, as it. Long narrow lunch counters such as this, in which the all-glass exteriors were completely open to street traffic, used to be common sights in New York, especially around Times Square. You go in, grab a dog, pay $1, and you're on your way. Convenience, New York style.

Noticed this gutted liquor store on an oddly shaped plot on Sixth Avenue between Walker and White, in Tribeca. This used to be the Brite Buy Liquor Store. It was a two-story building that stretch from this corner you see to the Tribeca Tavern next door. It wasn't anything to look at. Just a down-scale liquor story. But one of the last vestiges of a non-rarified Tribeca. The owners are turning the site into a restaurant. I guess they'll take the liquor sign down last. Those big neon signs are tough mothers to rip down.