Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
The title card shows what is likely the last Bishop Crook wall bracket lamp in New York City — a genre that I don’t think was all that frequently found even in the olden age of cast iron NYC lampposts, 1900-1950. As a rule, when a wall bracket lamp was needed, the city turned to [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: City Hall Manhattan
In 1958, a new streamlined lamppost — completely different than the ornate cast and wrought iron posts that then lit NYC streets, designed in the Beaux Arts era, 1890-1915 — appeared on Broadway on Murray Street opposite City Hall. It featured a stainless steel shaft with two slots, a curved mastarm, and a new luminaire [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Street Lamps Tagged with: City Hall
I’ve been asked to cover three locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. Through the partnership, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens
James H. Hackett (1800-1871), whom Abraham Lincoln called his favorite actor, reposes at Prospect Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens, under a fallen monument. The Prospect Cemetery Association hopes to restore it soon. Actor Peter Riegert (Animal House, Local Hero, Sopranos) has made a short Kickstarter film about the largely forgotten entertainment figure and the now-reviving cemetery in [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries One Shots Tagged with: Jamaica Queens
I’ve been asked to cover three locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Meadows. statues Queens
Forgotten New York’s first tour of the 2012 season was April 12th in Jamaica, Queens, at Prospect Cemetery (159th Street between Archer and Liberty Avenues) and King Manor (Jamaica Avenue at 153rd Street). The weather was unusually spectacular for a ForgottenTour. Jamaica’s Prospect Cemetery was founded in 1668. After many years of neglect, the cemetery [...]
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 In early April 2012 I walked the route of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway, or the closest possible approximation along the tracks, from the Bronx Park East station all the way northeast to Dyre Avenue. It gave me a chance to traverse the Pelham Gardens and Eastchester sections of [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
This is the regional road map of Greater New York that appeared in the July 1964 National Geographic. Where to begin about this gorgeous map? Well, they include landmarks in Brooklyn like the Schenck-Crooke House (see if you can find it) and the Vanderbilt Mausoleum in Staten Island. They also get Conduit Boulevard’s name right [...]
Categorized in: One Shots
Even though your webmaster was cruelly cast out of my place of business in February and getting freelance here and there, I recently spent a few dozen dollars on the complete National Geographic on disk, 1888-2010. In the July 1964 issue (I used to have a hard copy when my father had a collection) is [...]
…. at 61st Street and Flushing Avenue. Trolley service along Fresh Pond Road began in 1896 and ended in the 1940s; the northernmost section of the line used 61st Street to reach Flushing Avenue, which had been laid out in its present form in 1893. Before that time it was the Brooklyn and Newtown Turnpike.
It’s a fair guess that not one person who passes this building, seemingly untenanted as of 2012, knows it is a former theater. In fact it has greatly outlived its former life as a theater. The Mardi Gras Theatre was built around 1908, apparently just before this photo was taken, on Nostrand Avenue, corner [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn East Flatbush theaters
There’s a New England undercurrent running through the Bronx. The New York Yankees’ rivalry with the Boston Red Sox began when the Sox’ owner Harry Frazee sold his pitching and slugging star, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees before the 1920 season, and the subsequent championship tally, 27 to 2 in favor of the Yanks, has [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Pelham Parkway Unionport
Once I get a critical mass of these, they’ll get their own page. This is an example of mid-20th Century traffic signs– in general, signs pointing to bridges would be arrowhead-shaped, while those referencing tunnels would be circular. They were phased out when the large green traffic signs became prevalent, but some are still in [...]
In 2003 I did a series of photographs for a page on the BMT Chambers Street station, the original southern terminal of what is today the J train that runs from Broad Street to Jamaica via the Williamsburg Bridge. However, what had been an important terminal experienced a change in fortunes when tracks were extended [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains
The last two working versions of New York City’s “Wheelies,” the long-armed stoplights with the auto wheel motif first introduced in the mid-1920s, have been denuded and emasculated. They still stand on East 46th and Park Avenue at Grand Central Terminal, but they now have no practical use. Their function superceded by a modern guy-wired [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Manhattan Park Avenue
I don’t believe I have ever mentioned my college previously on Forgotten New York during the 13 years since 1999 that I have been producing this, your website chronicling the ‘infrastructure of a lost metropolis.’ Between 1975-1980 I attended St. Francis College, which is now pretty much a business school, but in that era was [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
