While one New York tree gets all the glory, we thought we put together a collection of some other archival Christmas Trees.

A city is not just buildings but the people who live there and visit - so we added your history to the map! Tap to read through the stories that we selected as part of our First NYC Memories Initiative Enjoy!

View from the Brooklyn Heights promenade, February 5, 1961. The ships are moored between Piers 2 and 3.

An Expressway and a Promenade: Two 20th-century thoroughfares – the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (1946-1954) and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (1950-1951) – transformed the eastern boundary of what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park. Many parties played a role in their design and construction, including urban planner, visionary, master builder, and “power broker” Robert Moses. Since its opening, the public park that sits atop the roadway, called the Promenade or the Esplanade, has allowed pedestrians to enjoy one of the world’s most spectacular harbor views. Planning the BQE: In the early 1940s, city planners like Moses proposed and built a network of highways meant to bind the city together and connect it to the Long Island suburbs. In one plan that they considered, the future Brooklyn-Queens Expressway would cut across the middle of Brooklyn Heights, replacing brownstone homes, churches, and other local institutions. But in 1943, opposition from community organizations like the Brooklyn Heights Association#, along with growing budget concerns, persuaded Moses and other planners to opt instead for a waterfront route that skirted the Heights along Furman Street. Tearing Down, Making Way: In 1946, work crews began demolishing the 19th-century brick warehouses and other old buildings lining the east side of Furman Street to make way for the cantilevered two-deck highway that would arise over the next eight years. Although the project spared the row houses on the crest of the Heights, it required the destruction of a number of historic residential buildings in the northwest corner of Brooklyn Heights. From Private Backyard to Public Promenade: Above Furman Street, on the bluffs of Brooklyn Heights, many 19th-century homes lay close to the BQE construction. The row houses along Columbia Heights had large backyards facing the East River, which sloped down to the roofs of old Furman Street warehouses, providing families with both “upper” and “lower” gardens. The new expressway took the place of the lower gardens. In 1943, members of the Brooklyn Heights Association who lived on Columbia Heights requested that sections of their private backyards be restored on top of the expressway after it was built. Instead of restoring the yards, Moses and other planners decided that a level public promenade# would be built on top of the new expressway, along the backs of the houses. Against the protests of many property owners, the Promenade was completed eight years later. To this day, the Columbia Heights houses largely retain their original “upper” gardens along the edge of the Promenade, while the Promenade and BQE fill the space once occupied by the sloping “lower” gardens.

The Promenade, a pedestrian walk that cantilevers out from Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights, is known for its views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline. Opened in stages between 1948 and 1951, it had become a documented location for gay male cruising by 1952. In the early 1960s as the Promenade’s reputation grew, gay men from other parts of the city flocked to Brooklyn Heights. In the words of Armand Whitehead, who moved to Brooklyn Heights in 1963, “It was absolutely wild. People did everything there.” In September 1962, the police responded to complaints from straight residents and the Brooklyn Heights Association with a crackdown, which included stationing plainclothes officers on the Promenade. In 1966, the Parks Department imposed a curfew from midnight to 6 AM at the request of the police, who told the Brooklyn Heights Press that they were responding to the many neighborhood residents who “objected to the ‘goings on’ there late at night.” Eventually the police became more accepting, and according to Whitehead, “if they knew you from the neighborhood, \[they] kind of just let it be.” In 1981, the New York Native reported on a still-active cruising scene, with its focus on the south end at Remsen Circle, “where those who cruise in cars can idle or park,” while at the north end, the playground in Squibb Park became at night “the biggest outdoor backroom in the world.” By the late 1980s-early 1990s, as the LGBT community had begun settling in other neighborhoods of Brooklyn, notably Park Slope and Fort Green/Clinton Hill, the Promenade fell out of favor as a cruising grounds. Currently, plans to reconstruct a portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) are threatening the preservation of this public amenity.

April — better known as the month of showers, Frederick Law Olmsted’s birthday, and Earth Day — has also been designated National Landscape Architect month. Aside from Olmsted, however, landscape architects continue to fly largely under the radar. A case in point: Clarke and Rapuano, a firm with enormous impact on New York City’s urban landscape, whose name is hardly known outside the profession.

Two 20th-century thoroughfares – the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (1946-1954) and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (1950-1951) – transformed the eastern boundary of what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park. Many parties played a role in their design and construction, including urban planner, visionary, master builder, and “power broker” Robert Moses

The waterfront of Brooklyn Bridge Park was once the site of warehouses that made Brooklyn a landfall, loading zone, and storage space for countless tons of cargo.

From its earliest days, New York has been a city in a hurry. But luckily, from hot dog carts to taco trucks, there have always been places to grab a bite on the go. This week we combed our archives for photos and history of street food in New York.