Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Many people don’t know it but many of the buildings of the original village of Astoria still survive, in a tiny area west of 21st Street and north of Astoria Boulevard, and most are in terrific shape. Walking through the area is like taking a trip back to the mid-1800s, when may of these houses were [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Astoria Queens
Once one of New York’s most notorious slums, Hell’s Kitchen has made a comeback but some of its ancient ads remain. Hell’s Kitchen, the area west of 8th Avenue and between 30th Street and 59th Street, used to be one of the city’s most notorious slums. It was one of the roughest, toughest districts in [...]
Categorized in: Ads Neighborhoods Tagged with: Hell's Kitchen Manhattan Omega Oil Pianos
While poking around the streets of Soho (South of Houston) and Noho (North of Houston) you can find several hidden and not-so-hidden alleyways that contain a few surprises here and there. Extra Place CBGB, the capital of underground NYC rock and roll in the 1970s, was instrumental in introducing bands like Blondie, Talking Heads and the [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Extra Place Freeman Manhattan Noho Shinbone Soho
The Indian trails and cowpaths that made up lower Manhattan from the mid-1600s are still largely there, but instead of the hilly, pastoral scenes that played along their routes in the early days, today these tiny lanes are dwarfed by immense steel and concrete structures. Every so often though, while digging foundations for yet more [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan
What are those railroad tracks doing running between Shell Road and West 6th Street, in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, just south of the Belt Parkway? They’re actually the last remnants of the #50 trolley line that ran down McDonald Avenue until the mid-1950s. According to subway historian Joe Korman, these tracks shared service: both the McDonald Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Trolleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island
In Country Days in New York City, author Divya Summers describes this old commuter line that is now used for another purpose: The Old Putnam Railroad Track, a defunct railroad bad that one Manhattan-based Urban Park Ranger tells me is his favorite walk in the city (“I love being out in the fresh New York air”, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Van Cortlandt Park
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Morris Park Williamsbridge
Greenwich Village has always had a well-developed street layout that made it impossible for city commissioners to impose the street grid plan that was given to the rest of the city in 1811. Though Greenwich Village had been very hilly in the early 1800s, its hills have been leveled over the years. Its narrow, winding [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
Smack in the middle of the East River, near the UN Headquarters, is an artificial island built in the 1890s. U Thant Island was named for the Burmese secretary-general of the United Nations between 1961 and 1971. The island was built by subway pioneer August Belmont, who was completing the Steinway Tunnels under the East [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: islands Manhattan
Every summer/fall, the NYC Transit Museum takes over Schermerhorn Street, outside the Museum, for its annual Bus Festival, in which buses from decades ago, right up to the present, are on display. Below are a few of the buses exhibited at the 1999 Bus Festival. 66 Court Street, the 3rd tallest building in Brooklyn, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn buses
Ten-lane, pedal to the metal Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens … once a country lane dominated by horses and carriages? It’s true. And, the evidence is still there in plain view. Look closely at this 1915 Hammond map of the Middle Village area of Queens, compare it to a present city map, and you will see [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Forest Hills Queens
The rural aspect of Staten Island, so much apparent before the construction of the Verrazano Bridge in 1964, has been gradually stamped out by construction of cookie-cutter housing and suburban sprawl that has only accelerated in recent years. But the seekers of quiet country lanes and out-of the way places still have some retreats they [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: St. George Staten Island
This bridge, on Carroll Street spanning the Gowanus Canal, was built in 1889 by the Brooklyn Department of City Works (when Brooklyn was a city) and is one of two retractile bridges left in New York, and one of four left in the United States (another can be found on Borden Avenue crossing Dutch Kills [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bridges Brooklyn Carroll Gardens
What in the world can a “Hamilton Fish Court” possibly be? What is a “fish court” and why is it named for Hamilton? Actually this apartment building, at 286th East 2nd Street between Avenues C and D, has nothing to do with either fish or Alexander Hamilton. It does, however, refer to Hamilton Fish, a governor of New [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: East Village Manhattan
Take a walk down 11th Avenue, south of the Chelsea Piers, past 14th Street. You’ll see a semicircular tower of rusting metal, seemingly awaiting the wrecking ball, at the remains of Pier 54. What’s so special about it? View of the gate from Pier 54. This gate is the last remnant of a terminal building. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan Titanic
New York City used to have political designations called wards, which were the smallest political units in NYC. Each ward elected an alderman and an assistant alderman to the City Council. According to The Encyclopedia Of New York City (1995, Yale University Press) the system goes all the way back to 1686, when Governor Thomas [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn East New York
Decorative street clocks were often placed on sidewalks to attract business, especially jewelry stores. On this page we’ll take a look at some of the ornamental clocks that grace the sidewalks of New York City. Many of these clocks still work! The Barthman Jewelers store’s embedded sidewalk clock on Broadway and Maiden Lane was first [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: clocks Manhattan Queens
The highest point in Manhattan and second-highest point in New York City (second only to Todt Hill in Staten Island) is on Bennett Avenue in Washington Heights. It’s among the weirdest sites in Manhattan, too, because of the exposed cliffs, made of schist, that occur frequently in this part of the city. They are a [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Inwood Manhattan
What can a piano bar named Marie’s Crisis on Grove Street in Greenwich Village possibly have to do with Thomas Paine, the revolutionary rabble-rousing pamphleteer? Plenty, as it turns out. Marie’s Crisis is named for Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, “The Crisis”, which followed up on the themes of his earlier “Common Sense” which laid out, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
