Francis Morrone teaches New York City history at NYU, writes the weekly column “Abroad in New York” for the New York Sun, and is well known as a lecturer and leader of architectural tours all over New York. He has blog cred too, writing at 2blowhards.com and the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America’s Classicist Blog, where he is also a Fellow. If you find endless fascination with New York history, architecture and design then you won’t want to miss his talk next week at Makor about the Amsterdam Houses and surrounding Lincoln Square neighborhood. Here’s more background on his love affair with the city.

Francis Morrone: Historian, journalist, author and teacher

How many years, apartments and what neighborhoods have you lived in NYC?
26 years, six homes, one neighborhood—Park Slope.

What era, day or event in New York’s history would you like to re-live?
Abraham Lincoln’s funeral cortege, April 25, 1865. Or the day in 1875 when, as I surmise may possibly have been true, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Roosevelt, Herman Melville, and Jennie Jerome were all in Madison Square at the same time.

Who do you consider to be the greatest New Yorker of all-time?
Dorothy Day. Nothing better than when an oblivion drinker finds her saintliness, I always say. I would also have loved to have been there when Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy Day had dinner at Angelo’s on Mulberry Street. Waugh asked to see the wine list. The waiter replied: “We have red wine and we have white wine.”

Describe that low, low moment when you thought you just might have to leave NYC for good.
There has never been such a moment. I’ve been here for 26 years and 26 years ago I vowed I’d go down with the ship. Doesn’t mean I don’t like a break now and then. And doesn’t mean Mike Bloomberg doesn’t give me the shivers at least once a week.

What was your best dining experience in NYC?
The first bite of DiFara’s pizza. In an instant, I understood the Baroque.

With a nod to Milton Glaser, how much do you really love New York?
I love New York as only one who has grasped that of all the world’s cities New York is not a material construct but a spirit, and who has therefore devoted his life to studying New York as a material construct.

Of all the movies made about or highly associated with New York, what role would you have liked to be cast in?
I want to be Tippy Walker or Merrie Spaeth in “The World of Henry Orient"--or anyone who ever said something funny to and then kissed Carole Lombard. (The latter added just so people know that my desire to inhabit the person of a teenage girl does not imply that I am not robustly heterosexual.)

What happened the last time you went to L.A.?
I was 14. I went to Knott’s Berry Farm.

If you could change one thing about New York, what would it be?
An end to the decline of basic pedestrian skills.

The End of The World is finally happening. What are you going to do with your last 24 hours in NYC?
In addition to telling all my loved ones how much I love them, and presuming that Dominic DeMarco has remained blissfully ignorant of said End, I suspect I’d eat a DiFara’s pizza--also presuming the line was less than 24 hours long.

[Amsterdam Houses and Public Housing Architecture: 9/26/06]