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LaGuardia Airport, named for the mayor of New York in the mid 1930s is one of America's busiest airports and has undergone great change throughout the years.

Constructed closer to Manhattan than the commercially unsuccessful Floyd Bennett Field, LaGuardia Airport was conceived in the mid-1930s as New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia realized the need for a great airport for one of the world's great cities. Originally known as New York Municipal Airport, the popular airport soon had its name changed to recognize LaGuardia's enormous contribution to the project. At the time of its opening in 1939, it was the largest and most advanced commercial airport in the world with terminals considered art deco masterpieces. Although a very large airport for the era in which it was built, by the late 1940s it was the world's busiest airport and clearly too small for the increasing amount of air traffic. Through the years its runways were lengthened and facilities were improved to handle larger and faster aircraft. Still one of America's busiest airports, LaGuardia has witnessed the steady progress of American commercial aviation, from flying boats to jetliners.

A fascinating history of Otisco Lake Community, documenting this New York State Finger Lake area's beginnings.

With Otisco Lake Community, Roger N. Trendowski chronicles this New York State Finger Lake area's history from the late 1800s to mid-1900s. Gathered from many local archives, private collections, and town historians from Otisco, Marcellus, and Spafford, the unique published and unpublished images show the area's natural beauty. The pictures transport us to the past where some of the same adventurous and entertaining activities still remain today.

Devour this delectable, surprising history of one of America's most beloved confectioners with first-hand accounts and stories.

In 1898, Switzerland's Nestlé Company was searching for a location to build its first milk processing plant in the United States. Upstate New York's bountiful dairy farms sealed the deal for a factory in Fulton. Soon another Swiss company requested space at the factory to produce a confection that had taken Europe by storm: the milk chocolate bar. Over the next century, factory technicians invented classic treats including the Nestlé Crunch Bar, Toll House Morsels and Nestlé Quik. With 1,500 workers churning out 1 million pounds of candy per day, Fulton became known as the city that smelled like chocolate. Author Jim Farfaglia recounts the delectable history of Nestlé in Fulton.

First inhabited by the Mohicans and settled before 1651, Kinderhook, New York, has an intriguing historical past. Today, Kinderhook's celebrated art galleries and restaurants attract visitors and locals alike.

While the town has ties to the American Revolution and was home to America's eighth president, Martin Van Buren, Kinderhook is most known for being the origin of America's first ghost story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The story's main character, Ichabod Crane, was based on Washington Irving's close friend Jesse Merwin, a teacher who moved to Kinderhook in 1808. Due to the story's success and its terrifying icon, the Headless Horseman, Kinderhook and the Hudson Valley have evolved from farmland and sleepy folklore to an area full of cultural interest.

The Delaware & Hudson Canal and the Gravity Railroad tells the story of an American industrial masterpiece.

From the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania at Carbondale to the Hudson River in New York near Kingston, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company and the Gravity Railroad transformed long tracks of wilderness into thriving economic areas. Conceived as an inexpensive way to transport anthracite coal, the canal began hauling loads in 1828 to the Hudson River, where barges to New York City took over. A leader in the technologies of the time, the canal company used the first telegraph system in America, and when Delaware & Hudson engineer Horatio Allen ran the locomotive Stourbridge Lion in Honesdale, he became the first to run a commercial steam locomotive on tracks in the Western Hemisphere. The Delaware & Hudson Canal was privately funded, and when stock was offered for sale in 1825, it soon became the first American company capitalized at $1 million. The Delaware & Hudson Canal and the Gravity Railroad uses fascinating vintage photographs to tell an amazing piece of American history. It shows the mules, the canal boats, the locomotives, and the men who ran this technological wonder, boasting one hundred eight locks over one hundred eight miles, plus four suspension aqueducts built by John A. Roebling of Brooklyn Bridge fame. The Gravity Railroad is shown as well, hauling coal from Carbondale to Honesdale over the Moosic Mountains, a rise of more than one thousand feet.

In April 1775, a small band of men set out from Hartford and traveled swiftly north toward the shore of Lake Champlain, recruiting men to their expedition along the way.

Within only a few days, this loyal group of volunteers arrived in Vermont and, joining forces with Ethan Allen and his legendary Green Mountain Boys, launched a daring attack to capture more than one hundred cannons stored at Fort Ticonderoga. In this comprehensive look at ""America's First Victory,"" Richard Smith traces the Patriots' route from Connecticut, through the towns of western Massachusetts and the Berkshire hills and north to Bennington, Vermont, and Lake Champlain. He chronicles the rival expedition led by Benedict Arnold, his confrontation with Allen and the surprise attack that changed the course of the American Revolution.

  A tiny hamlet on the Hudson River, Garrison has deep roots in our nation's history.

Author George Carroll Whipple III has compiled beautiful images of this tiny hamlet and made efforts toward restoring to its former grandeur the iconic 1881 Castle Rock, the estate of William Henry Osborn, a visibly prominent and renowned landmark for all who reside in or visit Garrison. Many wealthy New Yorkers such as William Henry Osborn, Edwards Pierrepont, and Hamilton Fish built their impressive summer estates here and many of those manors still stand today.

America's Only Shelter Established for Holocaust Refugees

During the height of the second World War, at the order of President Roosevelt, Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York housed 982 refugees, rescued from the horrors of the Holocaust. The community of Oswego answered the call of service and opened its arms to the survivors.

Oswegonian and WWII veteran Joseph Spereno's connection with refugee Jake Sylber helped launch his tailoring business that was a fixture in the city for more than 20 years. Then high school Principal Ralph Faust was among local educators who fought to allow the refugee children into Oswego schools, forging connections with those young people who went on to distinguished careers. Local Boy Scout leader Harold Clark created a troop for refugee children to share in the American experience of scouting.

Author Ann Callaghan Allen presents the harrowing narrative of how Oswego gave shelter to hundreds of Holocaust survivors.

Chronicling the story of New York's beloved Rockaway Beach community and the efforts to recapture the magical success from an earlier era.

The American frontier did not just consist of a prairie--it also included marshes and windswept sand dunes. When the earliest settlers arrived at Rockaway Beach on steamships in the mid-1800s, it was a narrow strip of land packed with ponds and covered with dunes. Within 30 years, the community had grown into a wildly popular resort served by a thriving rail line. Amusement parks, hotels, taverns, and dance halls abounded, as did bungalow courts and open-air tent colonies. In the 1960s, the area was disrupted by urban development efforts and transportation infrastructure had declined.

Today, Rockaway Beach is being rediscovered by a new generation of visitors and entrepreneurs as longtime residents work simultaneously to reinvigorate it.

A fascinating part of the melting pot city, current day Jackson Heights in Queens, New York, the neighborhood formerly known as "Trains Meadow", is shared in images and history of the area from rural farmland to a cultural and economic center in New York.

At the turn of the 20th century, the neighborhood known as Jackson Heights was originally called Trains Meadow, a sprawling area covered by acres of farmland and rolling hills. Its only inhabitants were homesteaders who lived in their ancient wood-framed dwellings with spreads occupied by barns, horse stables, cabbage patches, and beehives. Overgrowing populations in Manhattan and Brooklyn led developers to Queens County to transform that landscape into Jackson Heights. Headed by Edward Archibald MacDougall, the ambitious Queensboro Corporation spent nearly $4 million buying properties, molding roads, and constructing buildings of great architectural merit. Jackson Heights provides an in-depth look at the history of America's first garden apartment community with the use of never-before-seen photographs culled from local archives and private collections. Images featured show the neighborhood's progression from rural farmland to the highly populated economic center it is today with memorable businesses like Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor and the cultural splendor along Thirty-seventh Avenue and Eighty-second Street.

While passing through Newburgh Bay in 1609, explorer Henry Hudson's shipmate noted that the locale would be ideal for a village.

True to his prediction, some 200 years later Newburgh was incorporated as a village and has since become the Queen City of the Hudson. It is a city of historical reputation. Here, Gen. George Washington awarded the first Purple Heart and wrote his famous letter refusing to become a king. The Newburgh site known today as Washington'sHeadquarters is America's first historic preservationbuilding--the 1750 Hasbrouck House. Newburgh provides a glimpse into the city's past, with chapters that tell the story of a city of industry and innovation. Newburgh had telephone service as early as 1879 and was the second city to have a street illumined by an electric light bulb. Its East End contains the largest historic district in the state, covering a total of 445 acres from the Hudson riverfront westward. Within the district are rare examples of Greek Revival, Federal, Italianate, and Second Empire designs..

Through hundreds of scarcely-seen photos and archival materials, the fascinating story of Endicott-Johnson, the company town it built, and the groundbreaking foundations of Square Dealcapitalism come to life.

The Endicott-Johnson Corporation emerged from the modest Lester Brothers Company, manufacturers of boots and shoes, that began in 1854. It was created through the tenacity and vision of great American entrepreneur George F. Johnson. Johnson rose from abject poverty to ownership of one of the largest shoe industries in the world. The village of Endicott was built by Johnson c. 1901, and the Triple Cities of Binghamton, Johnson City, and Endicott made up a classic shoe town USA. At its peak, during the 1920s and 1930s, EJ employed twenty thousand people. The monumental impact of corporate policies on life and the local landscape survived long after company doors closed.

Endicott-Johnson combines nostalgia, insight, stories, and memories from area residents. This volume offers a comprehensive view into the lives of early-twentieth-century factory workers and the men who guided the corporation into the annals of industrial history. The EJ brand of ""welfare capitalism"" resulted in a company town where employee benefits nearly overshadowed the making of shoes and where intense loyalty to the company still exists. Revolutionary labor-relation policies and a benevolent relationship between corporation and community made EJ an example of a ""square deal"" business.