Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Bayside Avenue in Queens is nowhere near Bayside, the neighborhood. Instead it runs between Union Street and the intersection of 154th Street and 29th Avenue in Flushing. In what is something of a feature in NYC nomenclature, the road is named for the neighborhood or town toward which it points (cf. Flushing Avenue, which isn’t [...]
What do an obscure alley on the west end of Greenwich Village and a century-old subway mosaic have in common? Plenty, as it turns out. I wouldn’t bring it up otherwise… (Click on either image above for a larger view) When the IRT and BMT engineers built subways between 1904 and 1928, under the guiding [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
Not much is known now about Hagstrom Maps (by me at least) except that it was founded by Andrew Hagstrom in 1916. A Google search reveals today more listings for Hagstrom guitars than for Hagstrom maps. I wish the company would reveal more about its rich history. I interviewed for work there twice (1981, 1992) [...]
Furman Street runs along the East River in Brooklyn from Atlantic Avenue north to (Old) Fulton, and since the 1950s, has mostly been accompanied by the stolid overhang of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. On its river side, it was formerly lined with busy docks handling goods brought in from the world over, shuttled along to distant [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Forest Hills Gardens, a ritzy community on the south side of the LIRR main line tracks roughly between Continental Avenue, Union Turnpike, the LIRR and Greenway South, was one of America’s first planned developments. It was begun in 1908 and its English green style setting is the work of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the son [...]
This is an early version of the Type F reverse-scroll NYC streetlamp at Elm and Pearl Streets in, I’d say, 1910 or so. The Type F was used on side streets in a smaller version with less ornamentation, and could sometimes be used on north-south avenues like 7th (though it was replaced by Twinlamps fairly [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Street Lamps Tagged with: Civic Center Manhattan
Theodore Roszak’s abstract sculpture ‘Sentinel’ stands on 1st Avenue opposite Bellevue Hospital, next to the Public Health Laboratories. Theodore Roszak (May 1, 1907 – September 2, 1981) was an American sculptor and painter. He was born in Posen, Prussia (German Empire), now Poznań, Poland, as a son of Polish parents, and emigrated to the United States at the age of two. From 1925 to 1926 he [...]
Boston does a great job marking war heroes and local luminaries on hundreds of street corners with these embossed black and gold signs, like this one in the West End. Max Hirshovitz was a corporal who was killed during World War I. For all I know, that gold star is also significant. Can anyone link [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Boston North End
After my Park Slope, Brooklyn 9th Street exploration in August 2012 I turned north on 7th Avenue and discovered why one of Brooklyn’ old nicknames was the City of Churches, later the Borough of Churches. (I call the Bronx the Borough of Apartment Houses.) There seems to be a classic 19th Century church every other [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope
I had been unaware of it, but NYC’s Department of Transportation officially refers to these type of street signs as “camelback” signs, instead of my own appellation, “humpback” signs. I suppose it’s classier that way. This sign adorns a gate at Washington and West 10th; when in use in the early to mid-20th Century, it [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
I went to high school in Clinton Hill in the Super Seventies, but rarely ventured around the neighborhood — it was tougher than tough then. Today, 40 years later, it’s the toniest of tony enclaves, with the brownstones, Queen Annes, clapboard houses and everything else that were drug dens and hooker havens converted by gentrification [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Clinton Hill
This handsome painted red, black and white sign for a marine repairs firm has hung in there on Christopher Street near Washington almost 3 decades after the demise of its parent. It faces 2 sides with an identical sign on each side. The Landmarks Prevervation Commission report for its Weehawken Street district says Meier & [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
The H train has made a return to the Rockaway peninsula, though hardly a triumphant one. In October 2012, when “Superstorm” Sandy effectively trashed the bridge that connects the A train to the Rockaway peninsula, service on the A line into the peninsula was curtailed south of Howard Beach, and the peninsula’s thousands of residents [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Arverne Far Rockaway Hammels Queens
The Sonn Brothers, Henry and Hyman, first went into business in the 1870s as grocers, but by the 1890s they were liquor dealers and operated from many downtown locations. Their offices were at 440 Washington/31 Desbrosses from 1901 to 1912, and this faded sign advertises that location. Surprisingly, Walter Grutchfield has gleaned quite a bit [...]
I remember 1973 somewhat, but not well. I was fifteen and still in high school. Most of my life revolved around schoolwork and following the Knicks, who had just won their last championship to date, and the Mets, who went to their second World Series and dropped a 7-game tilt to Oakland. I was just [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Noho
Four auto traffic bridges connect Staten Island to the outside world. In order of construction, they are the Outerbridge Crossing (named for its engineer, not because it is in the outer reaches of NYC) the Goethals Bridge (opened the same day as the Outerbridge, 6/29/28), the Bayonne Bridge (11/15/31), and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (11/21/64). Though [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Walks Tagged with: Bayonne New Jersey Port Richmond Staten Island
Rex Cole (1887-1967) was originally a lamp manufacturer, then became associated with General Electric in the 1920s and designed white enamel Monitor Top refrigerators. Famed architect Raymond Hood designed a series of buildings in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the Grand Concourse, and Northern Blvd. in Flushing for Cole’s showrooms that either looked like refrigerators or featured [...]
Despite the protests of congregants, preservationists and neighbors, the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, popularly known as the Green Church, was razed in 2008. From my Ovington Avenue page: The “Green Church” was built in 1899 by George Kramer. It is one of the last relics, along with the Episcopal Christ Church at Ridge Boulevard and 73rd Street, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
Some of New York’s street fire alarms date back to 1912, which is when this design first appeared. Variations on this theme have been carried down over the years, before more streamlined versions began appearing in the late 1950s. Since the 19-teens, lampposts, stoplights, and various sign stanchions have changed fashion every few years, yet [...]
Categorized in: One Shots
When NYC was still subject to the British Crown there were a number of streets downtown named Queen, Duke, and other royal titles. Pretty much all of them were wiped off the map after the USA won independence for good and all in 1783 and the British evacuated the country and NYC in particular. Queen [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan
There had indeed been a Lexington Avenue Line in Brooklyn — an el that shrouded the entire length of the Bedford-Stuyvesant avenue that runs from Grand Avenue east to Broadway. Seen on this 1920s map, the Lexington el split from the Myrtle Avenue El at Grand Avenue and then ran south and east, over Grand [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn
The beetling, discomfiting and windowless AT&T Long Lines Building looms over tiny Trimble Place looking north. The building is a telephone exchange or wire center building which contains three major 4ESS switches used for interexchange (long distance) telephony, two owned by AT&Tand one owned by Verizon. The building is said to have the largest blank wall in America, and is also thought to be able [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
11/7/12: I am slowly getting back into posting after Hurricane Sandy (and today’s freak snowstorm)… Today, I’ll take a look at NYC’s rarest castiron post revival. The city has brought back many classic forms over the past 30 years, from the longarmed “Corvingtons”, Bishop Crooks, Type Fs and Twins, and even new versions of the [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps
As you know, Hurricane Sandy has devastated the metropolitan area, especially shoreline areas in Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the New Jersey shore. Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City Office of Emergency Management AllMedia New York page on blood donations, volunteering, and donations NYC Service Crowdrise New York State Red Cross Catholic [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Hurricane Sandy
