Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
I visited mid-Staten Island in mid-February, a place where the NYC guidebook writers and trend seekers never visit. I was reminded about the limitations of winter photography; though it was reasonably bright, with a high cloud cover, the shadows were dark and plentiful and so I had to do more doctoring than usual, fiddling with [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Grant City New Dorp Staten Island
BY SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten NY contributor The Borough of Queens was once a patchwork collection of villages divided among the major towns of Flushing, Jamaica, Newtown, Far Rockaway, and Long Island City. In 1898, Newtown merged into Greater New York, and was renamed Elmhurst. Its outlying neighborhoods, Winfield and Nassau Heights were absorbed into Elmhurst. In 1915, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Elmhurst Middle Village Queens Rego Park
University Place fills a north-south street slot between Broadway and 5th Avenue from the east side of Washington Square and the west side of Union Square. It could be thought of as a northern extension of Wooster Street (which it originally was), or a Madison Avenue South, but the street has been called University Place since [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Manhattan Union Square
Soho’s Prince Street runs west from the Bowery to 6th Avenue at Macdougal and Charlton Streets. In the pre-Revolutionary era, there were a number of streets named for the British royalty, such as Queen, Duke, etc, and most eventually were renamed– but not Prince, making this street an interesting pre-Revolutionary relic. (King Street is named for [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Manhattan Soho
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Broadway Manhattan
I was lurching about Lower Manhattan on a May 2010 Saturday, completing my FNY self-imposed assignment — to locate every possible overlooked, forgotten-about and uncared-for detail in sight, photograph it, upload into my computer, prepare them for the internet (they’re always too large), research them, and assemble a page about them, which is viewed by [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan
In downtown Brooklyn, there are a pair of streets called Fleet Street and Fleet Place — and even an additional alley on York Street in DUMBO called Fleet’s Alley. I had suspected that they were called Fleet in honor of London, England’s Fleet Street, the former newspaper and press capital there, as well as the street where Sweeney [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
On the outskirts of Chinatown and Little Italy (the two Manhattan neighborhoods bleed into each other), at Centre and Grand Streets, stands one of the oldest examples of the oldest working variety of NYC lamppost, the bishop crook. This particular specimen is classified as a Type 1BC, recognized for several archaic elements that later Crooks dispensed [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 In 1977 a set of R16 cars with #6315 bringing up the rear during the Great Age of Graffiti displays a JJ sign. Note Franklin K. Lane High School at right, and a black on white enamel station sign. Until the Unimark system was adopted for subway signage, there were a hodgepodge of different styles [...]
By the end of June [2010] the V and W trains will be no more. As part of a broad-based budget cutting procedure, the millions-in-arrears MTA, getting little help from the state and federal government, now turns to you, the consumer of its services, and requires payment of higher fares and acceptance of stingier service. This [...]
May 2010: I was stumbling around Fort Greene and Clinton Hill on a recent Saturday, mumbling incoherently, no doubt frightening all the yuppies and richies who had recently moved in, when after passing my old high school, a fortress-like Gothic pile on Atlantic and Washington that was condo-ized years ago, found myself on Pacific and Vanderbilt [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
Despite having both its east and west ends chopped off in various bouts of urban renewal, Duane Street abides nicely. When it was first laid out around 1800, give or take a few years before or after, Duane Street ran from the confluence of New Chambers and Chatham Streets, curving nothwest and then running west [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
