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Learn the exciting story of the railway that changed the country and the masterminds behind it all.

A full generation has passed since a New York Central emblem dashed across the countryside on a railroad car, but few could ever forget "the greatest railroad in the world." The New York Central System grew from an amalgamation of smaller lines stretching from Albany to Buffalo in the 1830s. Twenty years later, the lines were gathered into a single company. Its phenomenal success did not go unnoticed by Cornelius "the Commodore" Vanderbilt. In his late sixties, when most men retire, he methodically started acquiring railroads in the New York City and Hudson River region. He then acquired the New York Central and merged it with his Hudson River Railroad. The Commodore and his son William, the foremost rail barons of their age, forged ahead with one of the most dynamic future-directed endeavors in the world-a railroad empire that traversed 11 states and 2 Canadian provinces.

In the spotlight with the publication of The Great Gatsby, the North Shore's Gold Coast boasted perhaps the greatest concentration of wealth in the country during the first half of the 20th century.

In its heyday, over 1,200 grand homes lined the shoreline from Eaton's Neck to Great Neck and as far south as Old Westbury. With inspiration from around the globe, as well as the development of many new American styles, an architectural renaissance occurred, bringing together the greatest artisans, architects, landscape architects, and designers to create an exclusive enclave that flourished until World War II. Captains of industry, founding families, and even royalty called Long Island home. Everyone from Morgan, Woolworth, Vanderbilt, Hearst, Field, and Phipps to the Duke of Windsor resided here. Lavish parties celebrated weddings, Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, and other events. Today, approximately one-third of these houses still survive in various states, providing a glimpse of what was the Gold Coast.

Discover the people and places of Brooklyn from a decade of growth and prosperity in the 1920s.

Now home to approximately 2.5 million people, Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs that make up New York City. It was during the 1920s that Brooklyn experienced some monumental changes in the early motorized world of cars, trucks, buses, and trains. In this decade, Brooklyn saw the construction of the world's largest promenade, the Coney Island Boardwalk, as well as the construction of most of the homes that still exist in Brooklyn. The 1920s also brought Brooklyn's sewers and paved roads. Slowly but surely, farms and gardens began to vanish in the name of progress. Brooklyn became a refuge for many. It offered the opportunity for peaceful living in a growing urban society.

Travel back to the beginnings of a diverse community with a rich ethnic heritage and join author Eric Ierardi in this celebration of a unique American city with a fascinating past.Brooklyn in the 1920sis sure to appeal to both residents and newcomers and will serve as a valuable tool in teaching the history of Brooklyn to future generations.

Stunning images reveal the beauty and history of New York's Lake George located in the Adirondack Mountains.

Pioneer photographers Seneca Ray Stoddard and Jesse Sumner Wooley, along with other local professional and amateur photographers, visually recorded life at Lake George around the beginning of the twentieth century. With artistic clarity and astuteness, they created a pictorial diary of this well-known resort area, as our grandparents and great-grandparents would have known it. Many of the nearly two hundred images in Lake George have rarely been seen before and serve as more than a road map through the area's past. They capture life at natural moments. The clothing, the modes of transportation, and the recreation that were once quite common appear in page after page of breathtaking photographs and brilliant narrative. This pictorial history explores the bays and byways of the lake, its year-round residents, and the vacationers who made it their temporary home every summer. Replete with images of moments, hideaways, and people that no longer exist, Lake George is a new experience in an old familiar place.

The story of firefighting in New York City is one of danger, tradition, pride, excitement, and tragedy. It is also the story of man's triumph over destructive forces.

From the gaslight days of horse-drawn steam engines to the World Trade Center tragedy of 2001, the heroic men and women who make up the city's most dynamic public service have risked and often lost their lives in order to protect and serve the people of New York City.New York City Firefighting: 1901-2001 chronicles the proudest fire department in America. The proximity of buildings in the city streets and the construction materials made each fire especially dangerous, but determined firefighters never hesitated to battle the flames and rescue the victims. Later, facing unprecedented heights and unparalleled danger, firefighters in New York City were called upon to battle infernos in the first skyscrapers, often using the most rudimentary equipment and barely protected from the flames. In its most trying moments, the Fire Department of New York responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, dutifully rushing into the towers to save as many lives as possible and ultimately losing hundreds of their own.

Author Gretchen Knapp brings to life the challenges and contributions of daily life in World War II Buffalo.

When President Roosevelt visited Buffalo in November 1940, he found a hardworking city with a large immigrant population manufacturing aircraft for the Allies. Nearby Fort Niagara inducted over 100,000 young men, resulting in an acute labor shortage. American Brass, Bell Aircraft, Chevrolet, Curtiss-Wright, Houde Engineering and Republic Steel reluctantly, then gladly, hired women. More than 300,000 defense workers toiled in hot factories for high wages despite transportation, housing and food shortages. The aircraft plants alone employed 85,000 on forty-eight-hour workweeks. Buffalonians watched the flag raising at Iwo Jima, participated in the Manhattan Project and observed the formal surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay. Author Gretchen Knapp brings to life the challenges and contributions of daily life during wartime.

Did you know a town can vanish? Discover the curious history of five towns nearly lost to history...

This is the story of five towns located in New York's Hudson River Valley that met their demise as quickly as they were established. From the icehouses of Rockland Lake to the Ashokan Reservoir towns to the brick quarries of Roseton, only traces of these once vibrant settlements can now be found. Camp Shanks, one of World War II's most significant military compounds, was erected in 1942 but was quickly abandoned at the war's end. ""Last Stop USA,"" as it was known, played host to over one million soldiers and welcomed patriotic visitors like Frank Sinatra and Shirley Temple. In this collection of images, local authors Wesley and Barbara Gottlock revive the spirits of these bygone communities and celebrate a lost way of life.

Sunnyside Yard was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad as part of its massive New York Extension, the centerpiece of which was Pennsylvania Station in the heart of Manhattan.

Opened in 1910, it is still the world's largest railroad passenger car storage yard. At the height of its operation in the 1930s, there were 79 tracks, with a capacity for 1,100 cars. Hell Gate Bridge was a joint venture of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New Haven Railroad to construct a direct rail route for trains between New York City and the New England states. The main span is 1,017 feet between the towers, and it rises more than 300 feet from the East River to the top of the towers.

Travel back in time through the heyday of the old Erie Canal and see how it unleashed the growth of the United States.

The building of the Erie Canal was spearheaded by the vision of Gov. Dewitt Clinton, New York State to build the engineering marvel that opened the West to settlement and made New York City the center of finance and commerce. Opened in 1825, the canal proved so commercially viable that construction of an enlarged Erie Canal began just 11 years later. The success of the canal spawned the growth of cities, towns, businesses, and industries along its route in upstate New York.

Erie Canal takes you on a journey where you can swim with the Volunteer Life Saving Corps as they sharpen their skills, view images of mule-drawn boats wending their way through scenic countryside, and marvel at the engineering of the bridges, aqueducts, and locks that facilitated the functioning of the canal. In addition, Erie Canal travels a step back in time and illuminates the people whose lives were shaped by the canal.

Travel back to 20th century New York along the historic tracks of the Long Island Railroad through this stunning image collection.

Chartered on April 24, 1834, as a route from Brooklyn to Boston, the Long Island Rail Road commenced in 1836 with service between Brooklyn and Jamaica, New York. The railroad has linked Long Island and New York City through several periods of increasing immigration and population beginning in the 1880s. Farmers and fishermen have depended on the railroad for their livelihood, and every summer thousands of tourists flock to Long Island beaches on the Long Island Rail Road. It is still the nation's largest commuter railroad, transporting an average of over two hundred fifty thousand commuters daily. The Long Island Rail Road: 1925-1975 offers a behind-the-scenes look at freight and passenger activities and the people who worked on the railroad. These one-of-a-kind photographs depict structures no longer in use, such as towers, water tanks, and crossing shanties, as well as electric motive power and other facets of a working railroad.

In the early years of the 20th century, Queens County underwent an enormous transformation. The Queensboro Bridge of 1909 forever changed the landscape of this primarily rural area into the urban metropolis it is today.

Forgotten Queens shows New York's largest borough between the years 1920 and 1950, when it was adorned with some of the finest model housing and planned communities anywhere in the country. Victorian mansions, cookie-cutter row houses, fishing shacks, and beachside bungalows all coexisted next to workplaces and commercial areas. Beckoning with the torch of the new century and a bright promise for those who dared to pioneer its urban wilderness, Queens flourished as a community. Through vintage photographs being seen by the public for the first time, the five wards of Queens are highlighted for their unique character and history.

Join author and illustrator Lisa LaMonica as she recounts the history of this one-of-a-kind city.

Hudson, with its scarlet past, is still intriguing in many ways. It is the new go-to destination being discovered by tourists, chefs, world-famous artists and celebrities, motion pictures, and major magazines. Visitors say there is a palpable vibe of creative energy. Home to the largest number of self-employed people in New York, Hudson is a unique city where one can start their own business and not feel out of place. In vintage photographs, Hudson covers a rich history that includes the story of the Mohicans, whaling, and the multitude of factories in the Industrial Age, as well as the city's modern-day transformation.

Ithaca, New York has often been called ""the Hollywood of the East,"" growing from farms to factories to Cornell University--Ithaca's history is an interesting and broad one.

Nestled in the heart of the Finger Lakes, Ithaca was planned by surveyor Simeon DeWitt and incorporated in 1821 when steamboats signaled Cayuga Lake's heyday of commerce and recreation. Spectacular creeks and waterfalls powered grist, plaster, carding, and other mills. From farms, merchants, and mills, Ithaca's industries grew to include the famous Thomas-Morse Aviation Company and Morse Chain Works. By 1914, Wharton Studios was producing silent films in this ""Hollywood of the East."" Such notable residents as actress Irene Castle, the Tremans, and community leader James L. Gibbs called Ithaca home. Ithacans became known for community involvement early on. St. James AME Zion Church served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and Elizabeth Beebe built a mission for needy Rhiners. Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White realized their ideal of education when Cornell University opened in 1868, followed in 1892 by the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, which became Ithaca College in 1931. Students protested segregation in front of Woolworth's 30 years later, and echoes of this idealism can still be found here today.

Health, history ... and horses! See the Saratoga Springs experience that has been spread out for visitors, year after golden year!

Brilliant afternoons awash in sunshine in Saratoga Springs. Nestled in the foothills of the Adirondacks, it has been the midsummer mecca across two centuries. From the long distant past, the powerful waters from deep in the earth made this place a wellspring of the healing arts. The allure of meeting in the healthy country environment brought society first from the eastern cities and then from all points of the globe. Society itself became an object for summer entertainment, and connecting with living history came to be a recreational pursuit. However, there is more to Saratoga Springs.

While the Spa City opens its arms to all travelers, along with the charms there stands a robust, cheerful, and stalwart core of residents who have over the years transformed a northern wilderness into an oasis of leisure and elegance. Behind the grand hotels of Broadway and America's Monte Carlo are the mansions of Union Avenue and Circular Street, the winter play, and the personalities shaping a place of character, comfort, and culture.Saratoga Springs: A Historical Portraitis their story--the small town at the heart of the City in the Country.

For decades, the vast Adirondack wilderness has beckoned.The Adirondacks: 1931-1990celebrates the years in which the six-million-acre preserve truly became a people's park.

Some, familiar with Adirondack-inspired art and literature, are drawn in by its spectacular beauty; many are lured by its year-round sports and recreational opportunities; others are enticed merely by its natural beauty-the clear air, sparkling waters, and dense woodlands. With some 200 rare images, the book includes photos of the Winter Olympics held at Lake Placid in 1932, attended by thousands from the world over, and pictures of American boys working in the CCC camps in the Adirondacks during the Great Depression. Follow the progression of history as steamboats ply Lake George and the Fulton Chain and other lakes, then as the railroads as they bring in more and more visitors, and trace the rise and fall of the grand hotels and their successors: the cabins, motels, cottages, second homes, and campsites of the motoring public.

The Long Island Motor Parkway was constructed at a pivotal time in American history, and it often considered a precursor to the modern highway system.

A forerunner of the modern highway system, the Long Island Motor Parkway was constructed during the advent of the automobile and at a pivotal time in American history. Following a spectator death during the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup Race, the concept for a privately owned speedway on Long Island was developed by William K. Vanderbilt Jr. and his business associates. It would be the first highway built exclusively for the automobile. Vanderbilt's dream was to build a safe, smooth, police-free road without speed limits where he could conduct his beloved automobile races without spectators running onto the course. Features such as the use of reinforced concrete, bridges to eliminate grade crossings, banked curves, guardrails, and landscaping were all pioneered for the parkway. Reflecting its poor profitability and the availability of free state-built public parkways, the historic 48-mile Long Island Motor Parkway closed on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1938.

Discover the rich history of Yonkers as local Joan Jennings walks through the city's neighborhoods, landmarks, and notable characters who called the city home.

A study in contrasts, Yonkers, a sprawling city 20 miles north of midtown Manhattan, traces its roots to early Dutch settlers. Yonkers has a history of retail, boasting one of the first shopping malls in the United States, but prides itself on its backbone of mom-and-pop businesses. Seabiscuit, the legendary racehorse, once stood in the winner's circle at Yonkers Raceway. The city has 38 distinct neighborhoods, each with its own character and identity. Yonkers was home to some of the 19th century's wealthiest industrialists and inventors whose innovations, such as the Otis safety elevator, Armstrong's FM radio, Harvey's elevated railroad, and Smith's carpet looms, shaped the world we know today. Currently, the city with a rough-and-tumble, blue-collar waterfront is undergoing dramatic revitalization.

Local storyteller Jonathan Kruk shares the mysterious lore of the Hudson Valley, best known among them Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

The story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is one of America's best known fables, but what other stories does the Hudson Valley hold? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River, a white lady haunts Raven Rock, Major Andre's ghost seeks redemption and real headless Hessians search for their severed skulls. These mysterious and spooky tales from the region's past that inspired Irving and continues to captivate the imagination to this day.

David D. Morrison, retired Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) branch line manager and railroad historian, has compiled rare photographs to showcase the shops that power the LIRR, the busiest railroad in North America.

The LIRR provides passenger rail service from Midtown Manhattan to to the far ends of Long Island at Greenport and Montauk. A vast operation such as this requires a huge fleet of locomotives and cars. The reliability of the fleet rests mainly upon the shop maintenance facility. The Morris Park Shops, opened in 1889 and closed in the early 2000s, provided over a century of maintenance and repair service, allowing the LIRR to develop and expand through the years. The complexity of the shop facility, from the days of steam locomotives to multiple-unit electric cars and diesel locomotives, is a fascinating chapter in LIRR history.

Glens Falls presents a photographic essay of a community on the Hudson River, midway between Saratoga Springs and Lake George.

The book spans the years from 1860 to 1925, when Glens Falls was reaching its peak in economic, social, political, and cultural growth. Depicted in stunning images are the city's simple beginnings, the days of dirt roads traveled by horse and buggy, and its cultural emergence with opera houses, exquisite mansions, and public transportation. Clearly portrayed are the educational, religious, business, and recreational opportunities of the time.

Plainview-Old Bethpage presents an intriguing story of two vibrant Long Island communities that share a colorful 300-year-old history.

They were once quaint farming communities that almost overnight found themselves facing seismic cultural changes. In just 10 years, from 1950 to 1960, the combined population of Plainview and Old Bethpage soared from 2,000 to over 33,000. Plainview-Old Bethpage presents a journey back in time to the Native Americans, the settlers who followed, the farmers who worked the land, and the thousands who came to make a better life for their families. Discover why every town surrounding Plainview-Old Bethpage has a railroad station but it does not. Read about the resident who raised a Confederate flag during the Civil War and drew the ire of his neighbors. Ride along with race car drivers as they hurtle along dirt roads at breakneck speed. Learn about the deadly brawl on Election Day in 1890, the infamous Plainview kidnapper who got the electric chair, and a local company's role in molding a national memorial to Vietnam veterans.

Until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, Buffalo was a sleepy town. Access to an abundant supply of fresh water led to a thriving farming industry, provided a means of transportation, and powered mills and factories.

Adding to the hustle and bustle of the city's busy new harbor was Joseph Dart's local invention of the grain elevator. Buffalo's location on Lake Erie, and its growth during the second industrial revolution, helped the city become the eighth largest in America and established it as the Queen City. It has been home to future presidents and inventors who have influenced millions. The city's original radial street design, the layout of its parks, and its majestic architecture make Buffalo fascinating and unique.

With Syracuse, readers can explore the architecture, lifestyles, landscapes, and transportation modes of this city from before the Civil War to the mid-1970s.

As we approach the twenty-first century, many people are seeking to connect with their community's roots in order to better understand their own past and to make thoughtful choices about the future. Within these pages, readers come face-to-face with the nineteenth-century citizens who shaped the city; Syracuse University football and lacrosse legends; and individuals like Colonel Homer Wheaton, who became the first soldier from Syracuse to be struck down in World War I, sacrificing his life to save comrades from an exploding grenade. Other intriguing discoveries include a series of views showcasing the lost mansions of James Street, images of the main line New York Central Railroad tracks that ran though the middle of downtown for one hundred years, and scenes of the former salt manufacturing industry which once defined Syracuse as it is still known today-"The Salt City."

Take a fascinating journey through the history of Ossining, New York with more than 200 vintage photographs and anecdotes from the locals who experienced it.

Ossining commands a position high on the banks of the Hudson River, at the edge of Westchester County, New York. Perhaps best known as the location of Sing Sing Prison, Ossining is rich in history and in personal memories. The history and memories come through clearly in this book of exceptional photographs.

Ossining Remembered focuses on the heart of the town, from Main Street out to the river. Included are images of places that made downtown Ossining the dynamic community it once was--the theater, the cigar store, and the bakery. Also featured are vintage photographs of the riverfront mansions and estates, the numerous educational institutions and churches, and, of course, the famous prison.

Most of the photographs in this collection come from the archives of the Ossining Historical Society Museum. Others have been loaned by local residents. Through these images, members of the society portray the town as they knew it, lived in it, and loved it before much of it was erased by shopping centers and parking lots. A valuable and entertaining source of local history, Ossining Remembered captures the vibrant spirit of the community and celebrates the people and places that helped shape its remarkable past.