By day, Bob Egan is a mild-man­nered com­mer­cial real estate agent in New York City. By night, and on week­ends, he trans­forms him­self into some­thing of a pop cul­ture detec­tive, search­ing out the loca­tions of famous record album cov­ers and oth­er famous pop images. About a year ago he start­ed a Web site, PopSpot­sNYC, to share his find­ings, and the site has been grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty ever since.

Egan’s fas­ci­na­tion with album cov­er loca­tions began in 1977, when he moved to his first apart­ment in Green­wich Vil­lage and dis­cov­ered he was only a block away from the place on Jones Street where The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan cov­er pho­to­graph was shot in 1963, which showed Dylan walk­ing arm-in-arm with his girl­friend, Suze Roto­lo, on a cold Feb­ru­ary day.

“Liv­ing in Green­wich Vil­lage in the late 70s,” Egan told Open Cul­ture, “I was sur­round­ed by sites I had read about in col­lege: Bleeck­er and Mac­dou­gal, The Bot­tom Line, the Mudd Club, CBG­B’s, etc. I was soak­ing up infor­ma­tion for years lat­er, I guess, because it was­n’t until the mid 90s that I first went into Bleeck­er Bob’s and asked if they knew where the cov­er of Blonde on Blonde was shot. When they did­n’t know, I said, Well why not find out myself?”

The Blonde on Blonde loca­tion remains a mys­tery, but Egan has tracked down a num­ber of oth­er Dylan cov­er loca­tions, includ­ing High­way 61 Revis­it­ed (the front steps of a town house on Gramer­cy Park West), Anoth­er Side of Bob Dylan (the cor­ner of 52nd Street and Broad­way), and the sin­gle “I Want You” (a ware­house dis­trict on Jacob Street that was torn down long ago).

The Jacob Street loca­tion, also the site of a July 30, 1966 Sat­ur­day Evening Post cov­er of Dylan, was one of the hard­est to find. “I searched through every curved street in New York and final­ly found it online in an old pho­to from the library,” Egan said. “The entire street, which was next to the Brook­lyn Bridge, had been demol­ished 50 years ago, but I final­ly clicked on a library image and found myself star­ing straight into the exact spot Dylan was in the pho­to. I let out a whoop!”

Egan has found the exact loca­tions of record albums and oth­er famous images of a num­ber of artists, includ­ing Bruce Spring­steen, Neil Young, The Who, and Simon & Gar­funkel. The choic­es reflect his taste in music. “I grew up dur­ing the clas­sic rock era,” Egan said. “My ‘musi­cal com­fort food’ is Dylan, Van Mor­ri­son, Lou Reed, and The Grate­ful Dead.”

Even though the Grate­ful Dead was a West Coast group, Egan makes use of online tools like Google Street View and Bing Bird’s Eye to explore loca­tions from his New York home. The 1970 album “Work­ing­man’s Dead” is one of Egan’s cur­rent projects. “The Dead pho­to was sup­pos­ed­ly tak­en next to a bus stop in the Mis­sion Dis­trict of San Fran­cis­co,” said Egan. “I bought a vin­tage map of the bus route from 1969 from the San Fran­cis­co tran­sit muse­um and searched all the bus routes through the Mis­sion with Street View, but still haven’t found it.”

When we asked Egan what dri­ves his obses­sion, he said, “I think of it like this: If I went to Eng­land and some­one asked me if I want­ed to see West­min­ster Abbey or Abbey Road, I’d take Abbey Road.”

Below are sev­er­al exam­ples of Egan’s detec­tive work. To see more, and to read the sto­ry behind each loca­tion, vis­it PopSpotsNYC.com.

The album cov­er that start­ed it all for Egan was The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, fea­tur­ing Don Hun­stein’s pho­to of Dylan and his girl­friend Suze Roto­lo walk­ing through snow at the north end of Jones Street, in Green­wich Vil­lage. 

The loca­tion of the cov­er pho­to of Dylan’s 1965 album High­way 61 Revis­it­ed posed a chal­lenge. Egan always assumed that Daniel Kramer’s pho­to of Dylan was tak­en indoors, but he even­tu­al­ly tracked it down to the front steps of a town house on Gramer­cy Park West that was the home of Dylan’s man­ag­er, Albert Gross­man. The per­son stand­ing behind Dylan in the pho­to, hold­ing a cam­era by its strap, is the singer’s friend Bob Neuwirth.

What could be more British than the 1979 cov­er of The Kids Are Alright, by The Who? Actu­al­ly, Art Kane’s pho­to was tak­en in Amer­i­ca, at the lit­tle-known Carl Schurz Mon­u­ment in the Morn­ing­side Heights area of New York City. Egan gives direc­tions on how to find the place at his Web site.

Egan found the pre­cise loca­tion of Hen­ry Park­er’s cov­er pho­to for Simon & Gar­funkel’s 1965 debut album, Wednes­day Mourn­ing 3 A.M.: the low­er sub­way plat­form at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, for the out­bound E and F lines.

Leo Fried­man’s cov­er pho­to­graph from the orig­i­nal 1957 cast record­ing of West Side Sto­ry shows char­ac­ters Maria (Car­ol Lawrence) and Tony (Lar­ry Kent) run­ning through the Hel­l’s Kitchen neigh­bor­hood of New York. The loca­tion was actu­al­ly one of Egan’s eas­i­er dis­cov­er­ies. “How did I find it,” he says on his Web site? “Pret­ty sim­ple. If you look close­ly at the garbage can to the left of Maria–the address is right on it! 418 West 56th Street.” (All images cour­tesy Bob Egan/PopSpotsNYC.com)

The first time I heard Stan Getz, Joao Gilber­to, and Astrud Gilber­to per­form “The Girl from Ipane­ma,” I could­n’t believe it was record­ed all the way back in 1963. That sur­prise owes a great deal to the skill of the record­ing engi­neers enlist­ed for that best­selling album, Getz/Gilberto. But it also has just as much to do with the com­po­si­tion cre­at­ed by Anto­nio Car­los Jobim and poet Vini­cius de Moraes, which pulls off the rare trick of imme­di­ate­ly and rich­ly evok­ing the ear­ly six­ties while remain­ing, in all the impor­tant ways, sim­ple and time­less. (It was as true when Gilber­to and Jobim reunit­ed to per­form the song as it was on the record.) They wrote the song fifty years ago next month, a span of time in which it has become the sec­ond-most cov­ered song of all time, right behind the Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day”.

But why do the prover­bial dance about the archi­tec­ture when you can sim­ply lis­ten? “The Girl from Ipane­ma” — sec­ond only, of course, to “Yes­ter­day” — offers you the plea­sure of count­less thou­sands of inter­pre­ta­tions, per­son­al­iza­tions, and reimag­in­ings. Lis­ten to enough ver­sions, and you’ll feel as if you’ve exam­ined the song from every pos­si­ble angle, reveal­ing its vital essence. You can hear it from Frank Sina­tra, Amy Wine­house, Sam­my Davis Jr. Cher, Herb Alpert, Diana Krall, Don­na Sum­mer, and even Mike Tyson.

The song res­onates all over the world, pro­duc­ing cov­ers from Pizzi­ca­to Five in Japan, Odd-Arne Jacob­sen in Nor­way, Acoustic Cafe in Korea, and KOMPRESSOR in Ger­many. And just when you think it’s been played every pos­si­ble way, anoth­er artist, usu­al­ly one with with their own high­ly dis­tinc­tive trade­mark sound, most recent­ly gui­tarist Pat Methe­ny — finds a way to expand the canon:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­day Ther­a­py: Getz and Gilber­to Per­form “The Girl from Ipane­ma”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.