History, Natural History & the Arts
Back on May 28, 2026 the New York State Legislature passed the Solar Up Now New York (SUNNY) Act (A.9111C/S.8512C), which would remove red tape and legalize “balcony solar,” the small, plug-in solar panels that everyday families can use to lower their energy bills and generate renewable energy.
After two months, the bill is still awaiting Governor Kathy Hochul‘s signature. [Read more…] about Balcony Solar Plug-in Power Awaits NY Governor Hochul’s Signature
The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has announced recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 19 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include a nineteenth-century church in Jefferson County that developed and promoted Universalism in Upstate New York, a pre-Revolutionary War house owned by seven generations of the Hulse family on Long Island’s North Shore, and additional documentation for New York City’s Hotel Chelsea recognizing its significance as a center of LGBTQ cultural and creative life. [Read more…] about 19 NY Places Recommended for State and National Registers
On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the “Killing Fields.”
In the six months after Julia Parker’s death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. [Read more…] about The Killing Fields of East New York
$20,000 in 1968 is estimated to be worth about $190,000 today. Would you pass that up if it were offered to you and it were legitimately yours? Clint Wescott would — and did.
Missing from his hometown of Burnt Hills, NY, for 15 years, when he was finally found and told of his windfall, he was dressed in rags and had 44 cents in his pocket. [Read more…] about Clint Wescott: ‘Bum with a Bank Account’
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) have announced recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 25 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include an intact 1905 metal casting foundry complex in Hudson, an 1873 house that reflects Syracuse’s layered history of immigration, urban renewal, and grassroots historic preservation, a cohesive group of Colonial Revival apartment buildings in Kenmore built during the 1920s and 1930s suburban housing boom, and an amendment to the 1971 nomination for Revolutionary-era Senate House in Kingston to include its 1920s commemorative museum annex. [Read more…] about 25 Properties Recommended to State, National Registers
Governor Kathy Hochul has unveiled the Downtown Albany Strategy, a revitalization plan that is part of the $400 million Championing Albany’s Potential (CAP) Initiative.
The strategy is backed by $200 million in public investments from New York State to guide coordinated action that is hoped to “spur housing growth to attract new residents, create jobs, promote long-term redevelopment, enliven commercial corridors, and energize the public realm.” [Read more…] about Historic $200 Million Downtown Albany Strategy Released
J.N. Cheney, an independent historian focusing on the labor movement, radical politics, and community action where he lives in the Mohawk Valley has published Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 (Algora Publishing, 2025).
This is the first non-fiction book to provide a comprehensive recounting and analysis of the largely forgotten Little Falls Textile Strike, one of the most important events in New York State’s labor history and one with national significance. [Read more…] about The Little Falls Textile Strike: New Scholarship Brings A New Book
There are few things considered more critical to New York City’s economy than the creative sector, the mix of industries that range from performing and visual arts to ad agencies and design firms.
But a new Creative New York report by The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) shows that the city’s creative sector is facing serious new threats, in large part due to an affordability crisis that is hitting artists and creative workers especially hard. [Read more…] about New Report: Affordability Threatens NYC’s Creative Sector
A pair of property owners in Old Forge and Essex, NY have agreed to turn their short-term rentals (STRs) into long-term housing, becoming the first participants in a pilot project meant to help alleviate the region’s persistent housing shortage.
As part of the program, three non-profit groups — Adirondack Roots, AdkAction and LivingADK — provide property owners up to $5,000 to help defray the costs of making the switch, such as legal fees and furniture storage. [Read more…] about Program Helps Adk Property Owners Convert Short-Term Rentals to Long-Term Housing
The Preservation League of New York State‘s annual Excellence in Historic Preservation Awards program shines a light on the people who are using historic preservation to create positive change — through exemplary restoration projects, indispensable publications, individual action, and organizational distinction.
Recipients of the Excellence Award represent the very best of what the League stands for and supports in historic preservation. [Read more…] about Preservation League Announces Award Winners
We are a nation of immigrants. Whether our ancestors arrived on exploring vessels, slave ships, crowded steamboats from Europe and Asia or in other ways, most came seeking the American Dream. But while they searched for it, many endured racism, discrimination, and exploitation in schools, the workplace and housing.
When they walked off their ships, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children stayed in New York City and had to live in apartments — that were cramped, dark and impossibly small — in buildings that were decaying firetraps, with substandard or broken plumbing and conditions not fit for a human being. [Read more…] about Early Tenements of New York — Dark, Dank and Dangerous
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf.
Whatever form this strategy takes — tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects — its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. [Read more…] about The Menace of Prosperity: NYC’s Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981
The Queens-bound F train platform of Delancey and Essex Street Station features three cherry tree murals as well as several smaller cherry mosaics. Created in 2004 by the Shanghai-born and New York City-based sculptor Ming Fay, “Delancey Orchard” glass mosaic is an allusion to the farm land that once belonged to a Loyalist family.
Étienne De Lancy was a French Huguenot refugee from Caen; his wife Anne descended from the prominent Dutch-American Van Cortlandt family. In the course of his career their eldest son James De Lancey (born in 1703) served as Chief Justice, Lieutenant Governor and acting Colonial Governor of the Province of New York. [Read more…] about Cherries in America & The Rise and Fall of Cherry Street, Manhattan
J-1 Exchange Visitor visa holders, the foreign students who comprise roughly half of Lake George’s seasonal workforce, will arrive this month. If, that is, they arrive at all.
“We’ve heard that some people are getting blocked at consulates, but we won’t know how many until later this month,” said Vinnie Crocitto, the Lake George Town Supervisor and an owner of the Holiday Inn resort. “Some applicants may be unaware of their status until they’re well along in the process.” [Read more…] about In Lake George, Foreign Summer Workforce at Risk
Lawrence R. Samuel’s Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth (SUNY Press, 2025) charts the history of residential development of the New York City borough from the 1920s to today. The work focuses on the borough’s most remarkable aspect: its profound diversity as a multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious place.
The narrative traces the evolution of Queens from a quasi-suburb of Manhattan for the white middle class into the most diverse county in the United States and, many contend, the most diverse place on the planet. Following this trajectory adds much to our understanding of the borough, the city, the country, and even the world. [Read more…] about Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters last week that she opposed Amtrak’s plan to destroy the block south of Penn Station to build a $16-$17 billion underground terminal for New Jersey Transit.
“I’m not going to destroy this neighborhood,” Hochul said. “We can do the station itself… make it something we’re proud of… without destroying a neighborhood in the process.” [Read more…] about Governor Hochul Vows to Save Penn Station Neighborhood
In 2024, 61 brownfields were certified as cleaned-up sites by the New York State’s Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP).
Thirty-five of the 61 are planned for the creation of thousands of affordable housing units across New York City and the state, an announcement from DEC said. [Read more…] about State Brownfield Cleanups Aid Housing, Preservation
John Sloan (1871-1951) had a unique talent for captivating the spirit of Manhattan’s daily life and his paintings have kept a contemporary quality, if only for their inspiring compassion.
Ever since arriving from his native Philadelphia in Greenwich Village, he used his studio on the eleventh floor of a building at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street as an observation post from where he could watch the city’s “social theater.” [Read more…] about Tenement Tales: Immigration & The Diversity of Ideas
Historic Districts continue to be “punching bags,” blamed for New York City’s lack of affordable housing and denounced as “elite.” Unfortunately, a New York Times piece repeated the same old, outdated arguments.
The Times published a “Critic’s Notebook” in Monday’s print edition that raised interesting questions about how to preserve things like “a beloved bodega, or corner bookstore…” noting that official New York City landmark designation preserves the exterior of a building, but not the use within. The piece explored “intangible heritage.”
However, the piece also took unfortunate swipes at historic preservation. [Read more…] about In Affordable Housing Crises, Historic Districts Aren’t the Problem
Three towns in Warren County – Lake George, Bolton and Horicon – are among those with hamlets where median home sale prices range from $600,000 to $900,000 – among the highest in Upstate New York.
But drive a few miles inland and the picture is a very different one. The safety net is fraying. [Read more…] about Fighting Food Insecurity in the Lake George Region
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