The quirky, hidden oddities once essential to NYC that most New Yorkers walk right past
New York City has always been a city in motion — forever reinventing itself, tearing down the old to make room for whatever comes next.Over time, the once-ubiquitous elevated trains disappeared underground.Horses gave way to automobiles.
Factories and warehouses became coveted lofts.Neighborhoods changed names, faces and fortunes.But the city that never sleeps, as historians would agree, is terrible at letting go completely.
Look closely and you’ll find the ghosts of its former selves still woven into the cityscape: tiny signs cemented into buildings that once told elevated-train passengers where they were, metal stars quietly holding brick buildings together and a park wall that owes part of its existence to a neighborhood goat.From horse poop-scraping fixtures to a fence that once protected a king, The Post rounded up some of NYC’s strangest, hidden antiques, hiding in plain sight.As the weather changes and the leaves soon start falling, finding these hidden relics across NYC makes for a perfect fall outing.The metal fixtures tucked beside stoops may look like decorative leftovers from a more ornate New York, but they once had a decidedly less glamorous purpose: scraping horse manure off kicks before entering the brownstone.Bootscrapers are a great example of something New Yorkers still walk past without knowing what it is, according to NYC tour guide, writer and historian Nicky Shapiro, 28, who runs his own company, Nicky Tours.Shapiro, who regularly posts on social media about the city’s forgotten architectural oddities for his multigenerational audience, said modern Big Apple residents may think the city is dirty now, but 19th-century Manhattan had a particularly messy transportation problem: horses.“As gross and smelly as we think the city gets today, things were even worse in the nineteenth century, when locals were dependent on horses to get around,” Shapiro told The Post.
And while today’s traffic leaves behind overwhelming exhaust, its fou...