Jeremy Lechtzin
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jeremylechtzin.bsky.social
Jeremy Lechtzin
@jeremylechtzin.bsky.social
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Northern Lights aurora reflected in Madison’s Lake Mendota just now
November 12, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
The Christmas shopping event of the season is over, just like that—but if you missed out, don't worry: The Municipal Archives and Library are rocking all year long.
The NYC Municipal Archive Book Sale Was a Banger
Unfortunately, the sale was too popular—day two is cancelled.
hellgatenyc.com
November 7, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Scenes from this morning’s NYC Municipal Archives book sale inside the gorgeous Surrogate’s Court atrium. Building is a gem, go just for the architecture. (Yes there’s a line to get in!)
November 7, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Congrats to NYC on starting down the road to a unified streets map. Took only 125+ yrs after consolidation 😉

Scanning each borough’s paper maps will be (mostly) easy, actually digitizing all the metadata would be really really hard. Here’s a close-up of what one of these paper maps looks like.
November 5, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
🎂 Happy birthday, #NYCSubway! 121 years ago #OnThisDay in 1904, the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) subway opened with 28 stations along a 9.1-mile line extending from City Hall to 145th Street. This #NYTMCollection silent film, shot just months after the subway opened, shows its early days.
October 27, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
College radio stations are seeing a surge in student interest.

Stations that once struggled to fill airtime are now overflowing with student DJs. 

I spoke to 7 college radio stations across the U.S. to understand what is driving the revival:

emwhitenoise.substack.com/p/gen-zs-col...
October 3, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Lol, the Brooklyn spaceship car has an ancestor

(via Long Island Tercentenary parade down Eastern Parkway in 1936)
September 29, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
AI data scraping is causing major problems for digital archives.

Many publishers of cool historical material (free for the public), like @hagleycenter.bsky.social, are being hit w/ bot swarms akin to denial of service attacks.

Latest in The Lint Trap

linttrapofhistory.substack.com/p/when-ai-da...
September 14, 2025 at 2:53 PM
And hello to these street tree bed tomatoes 🍅
August 24, 2025 at 4:47 PM
You’re not a True New Yorker until you know your building’s BBL
BBL will always be Borough Block and Lot, to me
August 6, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Squibb / Watchtower skybridge in Brooklyn Heights - inside & out
July 10, 2025 at 8:17 PM
WELCOME
July 9, 2025 at 8:25 PM
DUMBO’s borders are fluid…but when it comes to Furman Street below Brooklyn Heights, the people have spoken
July 8, 2025 at 7:19 PM
200 yrs ago OTD: Just some Brooklyn neighbors complaining in the local media about the garbage, summer smells, businesses taking over the sidewalks, potholes and never-ending construction.

City cranks never change 🤷‍♂️
July 7, 2025 at 10:04 PM
More about “Honeymoon Row” in Brooklyn Heights, and why you don’t see many Gothic Revival rowhouses like this – on my blog
July 7, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Great piece below by John Freeman Gill. Mystery solved–why Horace Greeley's name is on the doorplate. Happy to have shared some of my Brooklyn Heights building research!

Fun fact: in 1921 this Clinton Street townhouse sold for $14,000. Today value is probably 25x the inflation-adjusted price.
The Brooklyn Allergist’s Office That Was Once Home to a Spy
An antislavery spy who worked for the British in New York in the 1800s lived in a house that is now home to an allergy doctor descended from Horace Greeley.
www.nytimes.com
July 7, 2025 at 3:55 PM
200 years ago on July 4: Lafayette came to Brooklyn Heights, performed some Masonic rites over a time capsule & picked up 6-year-old Walt Whitman high above the crowd — what a day!
Happy 200th Birthday To The Apprentices’ Library!
July 4, 1825 – Cornerstone Laid For The Building That Launched The Brooklyn Museum The Apprentices’ Library was Brooklyn’s first free library and public reading room. The library association …
oldbrooklynheights.com
July 4, 2025 at 5:53 PM
The city map proposal is a mixed bag. The report treats digitization like a pure tech problem - “just scan all the old maps!” But these maps have a huge amt of cryptic metadata interpretation issues that scanning won’t solve, and lots of the knowledge is off-map in other Topo Office resources. (1/x)
These charter revision questions that will be on the ballot in NYC in November seem like a huge deal for housing and good governance generally www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/n...
N.Y.C. Ballot Measures Would Curb Council Power and Reschedule Elections
www.nytimes.com
July 2, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
Some 725,000 people tuned into the mayoral debate last week, co-hosted by @politico.com, @nbcnewyork.com and @telemundo47.com.
That's *huge* interest - 942,000 people voted in the 2021 primary.
June 11, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Shout-out to the real ones on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn Heights loudly discussing R9A zoning
June 5, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Lechtzin
The true story behind Sherita, a brutal tale of old Brooklyn and a predatory real estate spree. Debbie Nathan and I dug deep to expose the brothers behind it, who hid behind phony last names.
The Terrible Truth About Sherita, Brooklyn’s Beloved Billboard Dinosaur
The vanished icon of Atlantic Ave. was the relic of a secretive family who grabbed buildings from immigrant owners across the booming borough.
www.thecity.nyc
May 19, 2025 at 11:29 AM
It’s a beautiful system diagram - but some of us like to know where we’re going once we leave the platform 🙄
Say hello to a new subway map! 🗺️

Today, the MTA unveiled a new subway diagram that provides riders with essential travel information in an easily readable, bright, and orderly manner.
April 2, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Best wishes to 1-day-old Baby W and her mom.
DYK that NYC transit babies pre-date the subway?!
125 yrs ago, "B R T Colomba" was born in a Coney Island streetcar. Proud papa proclaimed he'd name her Beatrice Regina Teresa to match her first initials with the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company!
February 13, 2025 at 6:10 PM
New metro dropped

Γεια σου Θεσσαλονίκη!
January 24, 2025 at 1:59 AM
THE WAIT IS OVER, BROOKLYN

L&B Spumoni Gardens on Old Fulton Street now open
December 9, 2024 at 1:50 AM