In the late 1970s, Barbara Schiller and her husband bought a decaying brownstone in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, then in its early stages of gentrification. The house was structurally ...

Houses are packed with clues about their history. From floor to ceiling, if you look closely at the details, they may reveal when the house was built and how people lived in the space over time.

Editor’s note: An updated version of this post can be viewed here. As Americans, we can feel patriotic when considering tin ceilings. It’s one of the few decorative elements found in the Victorian Age ...

New York’s mot beloved architectural innovation might be among its most overlooked: the humble tin ceiling. Today, people view the geometrically embossed covering with rosy nostalgia. But tin ceilings ...