Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
above: West 4 Street near 7th, Greenwich Village Maniacally busy schedule this weekend. Finishing a chapter for another book, helping a friend pack for a move, leading a ForgottenTour. Too much for your rapidly aging webmaster. Time to relax and put together a page of mindless drivel. “What’s the difference from any other week?” you ask. I am [...]
In February 2005 I spent seven days in Staten Island. While many Manhattanites would consider that tantamount to a sentence to life without BlackBerries or having the Republicans in Madison Square Garden for a week again, I enjoyed the sojourn. I was there to obtain photos for the ForgottenBook, which came out in September 2006. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Rosebank Staten Island
CONTINUED FROM JACKSON HEIGHTS/EAST ELMHURST PART 1 Name That Plane Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology, between Ditmars Blvd., 23rd Avenue and 90th Street, has quite the little collection of planes parked in the back. There have to be some Forgotten Fans that can identify one or two. If you’re in the area, wander over [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: East Elmhurst Jackson Heights Queens
In a borough largely ignored by NYC’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the magnificent garden apartments of Jackson Heights are a happy exception. Today’s Jackson Heights is a neighborhood of handsome six-story co-operative apartments, most of which surround a central garden. They appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, beginning in 1914 when the entire area was not much more [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: East Elmhurst Jackson Heights Queens
Forgotten Fans wave with Minerva In what was undoubtedly the best weather ever for a ForgottenTour (sunny and 68) forty Forgotten fans (and one heckler!) converged on Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery, a peaceful respite since 1838 as one of the first ‘rural cemteries’ or burial parks in America. Previously burials had been done in churches or in [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Green-Wood Green-Wood Cemetery
Before modern efficiencies, milk and milk products were done on a local scale. Eventually due to New York City’s swelling population, larger facilities were needed. There were many private companies filling that demand, but by 1930 three dairy companies dominated the dairy scene. They were the United States Dairy Products Corp., Borden’s and Sheffield Farms. Most [...]
When I first started researching NYC history I assumed that Sheepshead Bay was named for its one-time resemblance, in outline, to a sheep’s head. After all, that’s how a peninsula on the North Shore in Nassau County, Cow Neck, was named. Only later did I discover that it was named for a fish that can no longer [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
CONTINUED FROM SHEEPSHEAD BAY, PART 2 We’ve run out of letters The town of Flatbush, absorbed into Brooklyn in the 1890s, had its own tidy street naming system: East and West numbered streets, which run north and south, separated by Gravesend (now McDonald) Avenue, with east-west streets named for letters of the alphabet, A to Z. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
CONTINUED FROM SHEEPSHEAD BAY, PART 1 Up in the old hotels Brian Merlis, in the title of his Sheepshead Bay book, calls Sheepshead Bay “Brooklyn’s Gold Coast.” After Austin Corbin built the magnificent Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels in the 1870s and 1880s, enterpreneurs filled the gap for people who couldn’t afford anything quite so lavish [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
