This is Building D on Officers Row along Flushing Avenue in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Barring any further inertia, it will be torn down by NYC soon. The US Navy allowed it to fall apart to the point of no return over the decades.
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Monthly Archives: May 2013
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GIANTS’ LAST STAND
January 30, 2012Other than a plaque in the Polo Grounds Houses commemorating Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard Round the World in 1951, there’s absolutely no indication in Upper Manhattan that the San Francisco Giants once played in NYC from the 19th Century until 1957. Or… is there? As it says in the holy texts ForgottenBook: The New York [...]
Categorized in: One Shots
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Newtown Historical: Corona, Queens
January 29, 2012Winter 2011-2012 has not been one for the frigid blasts and howling tempests that usually accompany the months of December and January as the weather has mostly been in the 40s. As luck would have it, when the Newtown Historical Society announced a march through Corona and tabbed Your Webmaster as the tour guide, the temperature hovered around [...]
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FIVE SQUARES Part 2: Stuyvesant to Tompkins
January 29, 2012CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Since I’m the biggest square in town, I thought it would be appropriate to do a page, or set of pages, on the five major squares in Manhattan south of Central Park: Madison, Union, Stuyvesant, Tompkins, and Washington. (Yes I know I have left out Bryant Park and Greeley and Herald Squares, [...]
Categorized in: Walks
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THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
January 26, 2012JJ’s Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, which had been on the corner of Flushing and Washington Avenues, spent its last few years as a strip club. It is being divided up into a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Subway as we speak. In a few years, all stores will be banks, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, and Subway. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots
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FIVE SQUARES Part 1: Madison to Union
January 22, 2012Since I’m the biggest square in town, I thought it would be appropriate to do a page, or set of pages, on the five major squares in Manhattan south of Central Park: Madison, Union, Stuyvesant, Tompkins, and Washington. (Yes I know I have left out Bryant Park and Greeley and Herald Squares, which I’ll get [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Madison Square Union Square
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NAME THAT CAR
January 20, 2012 -
SIGNING OFF: more ancient signage
January 19, 2012Here’s some more examples of ancient signage found by FNY’s Gary Fonville… As a sign enthusiast, my eye always wandered to this building on Second Avenue near 116th Street in Spanish Harlem, Manhattan. Fischer & Co., who sold pork products, felt it was worth it to spend probably a lot of money for this terra-cotta beauty. [The [...]
Categorized in: Signs
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FADED BRILLIANCE: new batch of fading ads and signs
January 15, 2012BY GARY FONVILLE, Forgotten NY correspondent This entry has been a long time in gestation. Unlike Kevin, your webmaster, who goes out and makes a day trip to do an entry, I take pictures as I travel around to the different parts of our great city. That’s why I ALWAYS keep my Nikon in my bag. In traveling [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: advertising
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CLOCKWISE ON 17th AVENUE
January 12, 2012I was dazedly shambling about in Bensonhurst in August, mad with the unbearable 82-degree heat, and in a momentary spark of lucidity, I noticed a tailor shop across from the 79th Street el station at New Utrecht and 17th Avenues – more specifically, its one-handed clock, of which more later. It wasn’t till months later [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bensonhurst Brooklyn
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NORTH ASTORIA, Queens, Part 2
January 9, 2012CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Steinway Mansion William Steinway’s mansion, on 41st Street, still stands on a high hill that has never been leveled, unlike the surrounding area. 41st Street still looks like a country lane. 41st Street, looking north from 19th Avenue, is totally nondescript — there are a couple of manufacturers and some storage [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
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NORTH ASTORIA, Queens
January 8, 2012After chronicling Columbus Square at the Astoria Boulevard station on the Ditmars Boulevard Astoria el I found myself with a couple of spare hours on a brilliant August afternoon. Actually I had all the time in the world, as I was unemployed at the time. I never fully take advantage of a bad situation; when [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks
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BMT 4th AVE LINE TILING
January 6, 2012The Swingin’ 60s were a fun time to grow up in Brooklyn, especially for kids like me, with a perplexing penchant for noticing changes in lampposts as well as subway signage. One day in 1962, the whole neighborhood’s 1920s-era Corvingtons had been hauled away and slot-shafted, curved neck Donald Deskey posts appeared. Likewise, in 1969 [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains
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X FACTOR
January 4, 2012There are two streets in NYC that begin with X, if you don’t count Brooklyn’s Avenue X. Both are Xenia Streets: in Corona, Queens, and Old Town, Staten Island. Xenia (which I had thought was a flower, but that’s zinnia) is a Greek term meaning ‘strange’ or ‘foreign’; it frequently turns up in combined terms [...]
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OLD KINGSBRIDGE ROAD, Bronx
January 2, 2012At present, the Bronx’ Kingsbridge Road runs from Marble Hill at the Bronx-Manhattan line (it’s called West 225th Street in Marble Hill) east and southeast to Fordham Road, following a meandering path defined at first by an animal trace, then a beaten path used by Native Americans through the woods, then a colonial-era road used [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices
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CONCOURSE TO PARKCHESTER
January 2, 2012In October 2011 I walked through the mid-Bronx from the Grand Concourse to Parkchester, east through Mount Hope, Tremont, Belmont, Bronx Park South and West Farms, pretty much the center of the Bronx, a land sadly not visited by FNY as much as it should be. I consider the borough sort of “interconference”, in football [...]
Categorized in: Walks
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WHERE WAS I?
January 1, 2012This railroad station was taken out of service about 30 years ago. The handsome brick building with the arched windows on the right was built in the 1850s for one of Samuel Lord’s daughters — Lord of Lord & Taylor fame. After being allowed to deteriorate into the worst sort of decrepitude, it was torn [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains