to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan's oldest surviving house, which was indeed George Washington's headquarters for a few weeks in the fall of 1776 during the Revolutionary War.

I was headed somewhere in the East Village when I happened upon this tribute to trash pickup day painted on the roll-down gates of Best Hou ekeeping.

Tucked in between rows of houses and a freight rail line is the Metropolitan Oval, established by German- and Hungarian-Americans in 1925. The Oval, which has long been "the epicenter of immigrant soccer in New York City", existed for much of its history as a grassless, dusty expanse in "various states of disrepair", but it has been looking pretty sharp since a thorough refurbishment was completed in 2001.

(The inconspicuous entrance to the Oval is located at 60th Court and 60th Street, one of the ten intersections in Maspeth where 60th meets 60th.)

The infamous street-numbering system of Queens most fully realizes its tremendous potential for ridiculousness here in Maspeth, where ten different 60th-and-60th intersections can be found (map). The complete list is as follows:

60th Street and 60th Avenue
60th Street and 60th Road
60th Street and 60th Drive
60th Street and 60th Court
60th Place and 60th Avenue
60th Place and 60th Drive
60th Place and 60th Court
60th Lane and 60th Avenue
60th Lane and 60th Road
60th Lane and 60th Drive

From The Catcher in the Rye:

But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally--what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it.

. . .

I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.

. . .

I was the only one left in the [Egyptian] tomb [at the Metropolitan Museum of Art] then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another "Fuck you." It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

This is an odd spot on the NYC street map. The Lower Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, in the foreground, passes over the through lanes of Flushing Avenue, at bottom, while the local lanes of Flushing Avenue, on the upper level, terminate on either side of the Lower Montauk tracks. If you're not following my unintelligible description of what's going on here, this aerial view should prove much more elucidating.

Corporal Rodriguez, a Marine, was the first serviceman from New York City to die in the Iraq War.

Colocasia

This Polish Legion of American Veterans post is named for Frank Kowalinski, "the first U.S. Army soldier of Polish descent to be killed in combat during World War I".

From 1895 until about 1914, this building was a firehouse, home to Maspeth Engine Company No. 4. You can see a couple of old photos of the firehouse here and here.

UPDATE: On Veterans Day of 2015, a couple of months after I passed by, this block of Maspeth Avenue was co-named Frank Kowalinski Way.