Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
EV Grieve has some troubling news this week…Peter’s of Madison Street, which featured a classic, old school painted sign, has closed, apparently for good because the interior has been cleaned out. Admittedly, I have never bought anything in Peter’s but I passed by often and have almost as often snapped this tremendous sign, which really should [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
The interesting thing is, Linden Place begins extraordinarily promisingly — as you begin at Northern Boulevard, you find yourself at several centuries-old landmarks that have somehow, somehow survived in Flushing despite its relentless overurbanization over the decades. The moment you start walking north on Linden Place, though, you quickly find yourself in what can alternately [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens
It seems as if I have an awful lot of Brooklyn photos laying around — I shot extensively in the neighborhoods and subneighborhoods south of Prospect Park beginning in the fall of 2006 and continuing into the spring of 2007, and I haven’t used them yet — mainly because I feared that dumping them on Forgotten [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Kensington Prospect Park South
Snyder Avenue runs from the heart of Flatbush, Flatbush Avenue just south of the Dutch Reformed Church, all the way east to Ralph Avenue. Originally known as Grant Street, it was renamed to honor a prominent Dutch landowning family (as so many of Brooklyn’s streets have been); it wasn’t named for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ cleanup hitter Duke [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Flatbush
Continued From Part 1 Ditmars Boulevard is interrupted for a couple of blocks between 82nd and 86th Streets, partly a consequence of the construction of LaGuardia, né Glenn Curtiss Airport, in the early 1930s. 23rd Avenue (left) skirts the southern boundary of the airport for a couple of blocks and is lit by dwarf [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
The name Ditmars, or Ditmas, appears more than once in the NYC street directory. The Bronx has a Ditmars Street in City Island, there’s a Ditmas Avenue in Kensington, namesake Ditmas Park and Brownsville, Brooklyn; and here in Astoria, Ditmars Boulevard, named in honor of Abram Ditmars, first mayor of Long Island City, NY who [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
While recuperating from heart surgery in June 2009 I was curious about the brand-new South Ferry station at the south end of the IRT #1 train — the first new station to open in NYC since 1989. Traveling downtown to see it I also remembered that I hadn’t seen the changes that had recently been made [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan South Ferry Wall Street
There’s a conclave of sorts in Crown Heights, where St. John’s, St. Charles and St. Francis Places all come together just west of Bedford Avenue. Running from 5th Avenue and Douglass Street east to 8th and Flatbush Avenues, and again from Plaza Street at Grand Army Plaza to East New York Avenue, St. John’s Place and its [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights
Having moved to Flushing in 1993 I have witnessed, to my continuing disgust, the demolition of what was formerly Flushing’s great east-west residential thoroughfare, Sanford Avenue; year by year, more and more of its charming 19th and early 20th Century structures falls victim to overdevelopers’ relentless thirst for multi-family dwellings that, since they’re built on the [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Flushing Queens
The shoreline of Manhattan is almost entirely encircled by parks and bike trails. Likewise, the Brooklyn shoreline is also receiving more park space. In contrast, the decaying industrial shoreline of the College Point peninsula remains largely off-limits to the general public, with few parks on the water’s edge. The peninsula is bounded by the Flushing [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: College Point Queens
Though luxury developers have had their eyes on Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, making inroads here has not been quite as easy here as it was in the rezoned Williamsburg, immediately to the southwest. And so, the Garden Spot of Brooklyn has been mostly successful in holding fast to its mom and pop shops and decidedly Polish [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
McCarren Park, on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, is, geographically speaking, one of Brooklyn’s more unusual parks. It is trisected by three streets, Bedford Avenue, Driggs Avenue, and Lorimer Street (the streets once had trolley lines and so, were not demapped when the park was created in the 1800s) and is thus in four [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
In 2007 I visited Queens Plaza, the gateway to Long Island where the #7 and BMT N trains converge (though both issue from Times Square) and incredibly bad architecture, strip clubs, and formerly formidable buildings that are now down on their luck all come together. Things have changed somewhat — the parking garage determined (and [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Dutch Kills Queens Queens Plaza
