Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
On a drab 15-degree January day in 2010 I made my way up Flatbush Avenue and grabbed the statues that ring Grand Army Plaza, where Flatbush meets the northern end of Prospect Park. We find some usual suspects, and some wild cards as well. Tucked away on Plaza Street East and St. Johns Place, across the street [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Grand Army Plaza
I hadn’t walked a considerable length of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn since 1965. That year I distinctly remember some aspects of a walk my mother and I took down Myrtle, one of the lengthiest avenues in Brooklyn and Queens. In those days, and right on into the 1980s, a walk down Myrtle was a somewhat [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Today’s Myrtle Avenue walk extends from the leftover unused el section from Lewis Avenue east to the Madison Theatre, just past the point where the remaining active section of the Myrtle el turns off on Palmetto Street. Myrtle Avenue was laid out as a tolled plank road from Broadway east to [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
Up until a couple of years ago, Anna Huntington’s Joan of Arc statue on Riverside Drive and West 93rd Street was the only one depicting a historic female personality. And, up until a couple of days ago, I thought it still was*. I was rolling past Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 122nd Street, where they meet St. [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Harlem Harriet Tubman Manhattan
After moving to Little Neck in 2007, I have taken a lot of photos in my new town, but have been saving them for the right time to use them, which would coincide with getting sufficient research. I’ve been frustrated in that — sources are scattered about and have been hard to pull together. I live [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Little Neck Queens
On the second leg of my quick Bensonhurst trip, I wandered down 84th Street into the heart of ancient New Utrecht. Brooklyn, now co-terminous with Kings County, was once just one, albeit the most important, of six towns that made up Kings County, delineated by British rulers in 1683. “KIngs” refers to the Restoration British monarch at the time, King [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bensonhurst Brooklyn New Utrecht
I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn for 35 years, the last time in 1993 when I gravitated to Queens. I now live on the borderline of Queens and Nassau County. I work in Nassau and have many friends in Nassau; yet, since I do not have a drivers’ license, I’ll never be of Nassau, unless that situation changes. [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bensonhurst Brooklyn
Since the mysterious Poe Toaster did not show up this year [Jan. 19, 2010] in Baltimore at Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite as he usually does on Poe’s birthday, I thought it appropriate to pay homage of my own in Forgotten NY. If you’re not familiar with the story, a mysterious figure, or figures (the tradition started [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Poe Cottage
At one time, railroad stations, especially terminals in large cities, were thought of as magnificent gateways or portals to new realms, welcoming travelers from far and wide to places they had only read about in books, or places of inspiration for commuters from far-off locales: though their work may be drudgery, they could aspire to something [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
