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Author / Luke J Spencer

Found: A German Soldier’s WWII Scrapbook

There’s something enchanting about coming across an old scrapbook; more than just a photo album, a lovingly put together book of ephemera can be a unique window into a life lived elsewhere. We previously found a marvellous one once at the Brooklyn Flea Market, made by an aspiring young actress in the 1930s making her…

The Ruin and Revival of the City that Built America

Some American companies are such a part of our everyday lives, they’re taken for granted, the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google for example. But there is another company that although it can be seen everywhere, no-one notices. Even more mysteriously, the company no longer exists. But walk through any American city, or picture its greatest…

New York’s Forgotten Radio Island

As far as islands go, Manhattan is one of the most famous and instantly recognisable. But if you were to charter a boat and sail around its coastline and through New York’s natural harbour you’d come across many more islands so small that hardly anyone knows are there. There are around thirty or so of…

A Brief Guide to Cocktail Hour in Cuba

Picture the scene back in 1937, during the heyday of American jaunts down to Cuba, when the first Pan Am seaplanes regularly took pleasure seekers from Key West to Havana: a group of hard drinking, ex-pat newspapermen are ensconced in the bar of Havana’s grandest hotel, the Nacional, discussing the finer point of sports and…

The Wholesome Lost World of Competitive Barrel Jumping

Whilst exploring the abandoned Grossinger’s holiday resort in New York’s Catskill mountains one last time before it was torn down, something caught our eye in the crumbling ruins of what had once been the ice skate house. Propped up against the wall was a large wooden sign that had been left behind. Dusty like a…

Following in the Footsteps of New York’s First Urban Explorer

We are exploring New York City with an old hand drawn map that bears the mysterious legend, ‘Where Silence Reigns.’ Roughly sketched out over a hundred and twenty years ago, it shows just four streets. Like a pirate’s map of old, it has an ‘X’ marked on it, but this map marks the spot of…

How to Explore Sleepy Hollow, the Real-Life Halloween Legend

One of things that surprises most people about Sleepy Hollow, is finding out that it is a real place. For a name so shrouded in folklore and tales of headless horsemen told around firesides, it may seem like the creation of a gothic writer’s imagination, but Sleepy Hollow is in fact a small quaint village to…

At Home and in the Office with America’s First Black Millionairess

There are so many grand Gilded Age homes in New York’s Hudson River Valley, it led one 19th century wit to comment that ‘one couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a millionaire’s mansion’. Walk along the always fascinating Croton Aqueduct Trail and you can catch glimpses of these luxurious mansions that were once homes to…

The New York Cocktail Trail

Trying to determine the exact moment a cocktail was invented is an elusive task, like trying to pin a particularly slippery olive at the bottom of your Martini glass with a cocktail stick. In much the same way you can visit virtually every old inn or hotel on the American East coast to be met…

How America Became Enamoured with Octagon Houses

Explore America’s small towns, and you might be lucky to stumble across a peculiarly shaped house that stands out from its surrounding neighbours by virtue of having eight facades. Back in the middle of the 19th century, there were once thousands of these ‘octagonal’ houses all over America when they were the height of fashion,…
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