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 recently took advantage of an amazing coincidence – a day off combined with pleasant weather – to walk 14th Street from west to east and then enter Stuyvesant Town to plunder — photographically –its cache of Type G lampposts. The Type G, seen here in a 1936 city catalogue of lampposts, closely resembled the Type 24M Corvington [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Manhattan Stuyvesant Town
The confluence of decent weather and a ForgottenTour has been rare indeed. There was one string of about 9 or 10 Tours over a couple of years that featured uniformly overcast weather if not showers as well. All that changed for Tour 36 in Prospect Park on October 26, 2008. October usually features my favorite weather [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Prospect Park
Having heard that Columbia Street, a lengthy stretch that runs along the Brooklyn waterfront for much of its route, was finally free of construction after three years of rough driving, bus reroutes and general chaos [as of 2008], I decided to take a look. Freebird Books, seen above, at Columbia and Kane Streets, was the site [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Cobble Hill Red Hook
In mid-September 2008 I embarked on my first Forgotten mission after a brief, but horrendous battle with a stomach flu of some kind that struck on September 11th, of all dates, a couple of hours after a meal of baked chicken and boiled frozen vegetables. (Even now, in mid-October, your webmaster hasn’t returned to frozen [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Flatiron Manhattan
Hidden deep in Staten Island’s Rosebank neighborhood is the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto, a 30-foot high shrine made of concrete spangled with smooth round stones, glass marbles, shells, plastic flowers. Some of the shrine is decorated with religious icons of saints, some behind glass, some not. You arrive at the shrine by walking down a hidden, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Rosebank Staten Island
I was in Rosebank, Staten Island in October 2008 to photograph the mighty Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (which I did, but it deserves its own Forgotten New York page that will appear presently) and, having a couple of hours to kill before meeting a friend atKillmeyer’s in Kreischerville, decided to hike around [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Rosebank Staten Island
I know what you’re thinking…Shea Stadium…Radio City Music Hall? Is he running out of Forgotten places to root around in? Not even close. The modus operandi of FNY, besides finding places in New York where the buses don’t run and that the guidebooks don’t list is also to provide Forgotten aspects to eminently familiar NYC [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Manhattan Radio City
In New York we’ve just finished the 6th annual Open House New York, run by the organization of the same name each first weekend in October. OHNY celebrates NYC’s built environment, and mostly succeeds in getting some property owners to open doors that ordinarily wouldn’t open to the likes of your webmaster. The event is getting increasingly popular [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices
Everyone at Shea Stadium on September 28, 2008, except members of the Florida Marlins — over 55,000 people — were hoping that the date would not mark the final game at Shea Stadium of Flushing Meadows, Queens. The Marlins, however, prevailed 4-2, ending hopes for any more post-season baseball at the 45-year old bucket of [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens stadiums
Coffey Street in Red Hook and your webmaster have never been close associates, but have been, shall we say, acquaintances over the years. I first laid eyes on it sometime in the Super 70s, in high school, when the van transporting us kids made a pit stop there to pick up a classmate, Ed Burkard. Remember [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Red Hook
Your webmaster has never met a Denise, or a Denyse, for that matter, who was unattractive. At the same time, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn’s Denyse Wharf, or its remains, are not much to look at. The wharf, however, is a lost treasure of the colonial past and a Revolutionary War remnant. To arrive at the wharf, the only [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
Your webmaster spent the dying summer embers of 2008 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a neighborhood I had not been in in about three years (since 2005). The reason being… I was holding out and waiting for the latest round of sweeping changes that have taken hold here to be completed: more than any other Brooklyn [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Red Hook
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent FNY’s cameras are always busy picking out things that exemplify NYC’s past. Some things that our cameras find are many decades old, but some may be barely a few years old… TITLE CARD: S.M. Rose was a vibrant Chevrolet dealership until sometimes in the 1970′s. Now the building houses a carpet emporium. [...]
