Postcard Thursday: Thomas E. Davis

The stereo view above shows the Pavilion Hotel on Staten Island, which was originally built to be the home of 19th-century real estate developer Thomas E. Davis.

Who?

You're not alone: Davis -- who by some accounts was the third-largest land owner in the city -- has been almost totally passed over by history.

To rectify that, James wrote a piece for CurbedNY that appeared yesterday. Read it at: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/11/the_forgotten_developer_who_transformed_19thcentury_nyc.php.

The only picture James was able to dig up of a Thomas Davis shows this fellow:

Is that our Thomas Davis? Alas, we may never know.

* * *

Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,

you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or

from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.