Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Your webmaster will admit it. When I lived in Brooklyn (1957-1993) I really never had all that much to do with Ocean Avenue, and it’s still by and large an avenue of mystery to me. Much of my locomotion on the borough of churches was by bicycle, and when I wanted to head south toward Coney [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Prospect Park
Who was “Great Scott,” anyway? Which Scott was it? Most pundits have come to the conclusion that it was none other than General Winfield Scott of the Mexican and Civil Wars, and it so happens that there’s an old neighborhood in Queens. part of Woodside, named for him. The phrase “Great Scott” was commonly found in superherocomic [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn East Williamsburg
When “Charlotte Street” is mentioned, anyone in NYC over age 40 can remember the two words with dread, remembering the dead landscape full of burned, crumbling buildings visited by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980. Arson (some of it perpetrated by landlords and owners), crime, drugs and [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Queens Ridgewood
BY GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent The New York City subway system was planned with a lot of standardization. Standardization was very practical for subway planners and financial backers: if each station was custom designed, costs would have risen exponentially. As a result, wall tiles, entrances, support columns, construction techniques, lighting techniques and kiosks (for the [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan mosaics Prospect Park Queens
While it seems at times that Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens are dominated by unimaginative street names… numbers, letters… in actuality vast swaths in all 4 boroughs are still dominated by streets named for real people. I had always been under the impression that Stockholm Street in Bushwick and Ridgewood was so named in honor of a [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Landmarks Queens Ridgewood
It all began with a strange (to me) map notation on a Geographia Hudson County atlas, specifically, in Jersey City at Wayne and Monmouth Streets just west of downtown. “Dixon Crucible” it read, and I was drawn there just to see what this was all about. A crucible is a vessel made of a refractory substance such [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Jersey City New Jersey
Al Deppe’s, the former Staten Island hot-dog slinger, wasn’t exactly a Tail O’ The Pup, the world-famous wiener-shaped West Hollywood, CA hot-doggery (that sadly was forced to shut down in 2005 when its lease wasn’t renewed) but it was a Staten Island touchstone for decades. Restaurateur Deppe (the Graniteville thoroughfare Deppe Place may or may not be named [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Eltingville Greenridge Staten Island
ForgottenFans at Lady Moody House, Gravesend Neck Road, Gravesend, Brooklyn April 20, 2008: With a turnout that rivalled FNY’s most-attended tour, Brooklyn Between the Bridges in October 2003, over 50 ForgottenFans turned out on an overcast day with drizzle expected (after an extraordinary run of good weather for early ForgottenTours, clouds and rain have become an inevitability the [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Gravesend
4/12/08: a couple of weeks ago FNY walked East 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets in the East Village, and your webmaster had promised a look at East 6th and 7th Streets, which I had also photographed that day. Circumstances intervened, though, and I convened an emergency session of ForgottenFans to descend on the Cheyenne Diner [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 6th Street 7th Street East Village Manhattan
It was 20 years ago (as I write in 2008) that the Williamsburg Bridge was shut down briefly as the then-85 year old bridge was discovered to have serious structural damage, corrosion in the cables and steel supports, more or less the result of deferred maintenance over the decades. A 15-year rehabilitation began in 1991 that [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
Both the MTA and the weathermen blew it on Saturday, April 5th, 2008–the MTA because it usually does, cancelling LIRR trains for trackwork from Shea Stadium to Woodside, and the weathermen, by forecasting rain and drizzle. The sun shone all day long, and there was your webmaster confined to Queens. And found… …a new set [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Douglaston Queens
I’m not sure when I first visited the Cheyenne Diner — it must have been before ForgottenTour 12 in Hell’s Kitchen gathered there (left) in May 2003; it must have been while I worked at the World’s Biggest Store between April 2000 and October 2004. The Cheyenne is closing, at least in its present [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: diners Manhattan Penn Station
Holy Hoya! I was walking through gorgeous Georgetown, DC in December 2007 when I stumbled on an extant streatch of trolley tracks, complete with bricked pavement, on O Street…and again, a block north on P Street. A revelation to your webmaster…in New York City, most traces of our trolley legacy are routinely covered by asphalt or [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Washington DC
