Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
January 30, 2013 is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 131st birthday, and what better way to celebrate in a FNY manner than to finally nail down the source, or the southern end, of where the Drive begins — at least as far as the Department of Transportation determines it. For me, that’s always been a gray [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
Former Mayor Ed Koch, who is profiled in a new documentary film coming out the first week in February, has, in a rather unusual move, already installed a tombstone at a burial plot he purchased in uptown Trinity Cemetery, Broadway and West 155th Street. Some have articulated some surprise at this, but I don’t think [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries One Shots Tagged with: Manhattan Washington Heights
The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway in the northeast Bronx celebrated its centennial in 2012. When conceived in 1872, it was assumed that it would eventually reach Boston, but instead at its lengthiest, it ran from southern Mott Haven in the Bronx to two terminals in Westchester County, at White Plains and at Port Chester. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Park
Alwyn Court is a massive, French Renaissance-style building at 7th Avenue and West 58th Street constructed in the first decade of the 20th Century, that at first consisted of several huge apartments built for “country folk who live in the city.” It suffered a devastating fire shortly after it opened, and in the 1930s its [...]
There are a number of short streets along the East River from the Financial District northeast to Corlear’s Hook, where the East River turns north, called “slips.” I’ve pored over maps of other cities over the years, and in the United States at least, “slip” seems to be a unique appellation to streets in NYC, [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Walks Tagged with: Financial District Lower East Side Manhattan
On a walk up the Lower East Side in January 2013, I encountered an anachronistic building that I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t noticed before, on Madison Street a few doors away from St. James Place. It’s a tiny two-story dormered building — however, it’s not too small that it doesn’t have two separate doors [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
Lefferts Homestead, a stately structure located near the Willink park entrance at Flatbush and Ocean Avenues, near the Prospect Park B/Q subway station, is one of NYC’s many remaining Dutch homesteads. It was built by the Lefferts family in an area east of the park along the Old Flatbush Road at about where Flatbush Avenue and [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Prospect Park
The 179th Street station (F train) at Hillside Avenue can claim to be the easternmost subway, as in underground, station in the city (though the Far Rockaway station (A/H) is further east, it was originally built for the Long Island Rail Road). 179th Street also can make the claim of being the final station in [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Jamaica Estates Queens
At Jamaica Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard in Richmond Hill, the Jamaica El rises high to clear the lower overpass of the Long Island Rail Road “Montauk Branch”, a spur of the main line that served western Queens locales like Richmond Hill, Glendale, Maspeth, Blissville, and Long Island City. The line currently sees one passenger train [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Queens Richmond Hill
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chinatown Manhattan
This is one of Avenue of the Americas’ dwindling supply of lamppost medallions, installed around 1960 to honor the involvement of the USA in the Organization of American States, which includes most of the countries in North, Central and South America. Though a lamppost replacement initiative around 1992 claimed most of them, they can still [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Mnahattan
One-block long Martin Luther King, Jr. Place, which runs from Marcy to Tompkins Avenues a block south of Flushing Avenue in Bedford-Suyvesant, might seem inconsequential, but it was the first street in NYC named for the famed civil rights titan, who was murdered on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN. It was renamed in 1974. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn
I have been renewing my relationship with alleys during 2012 and into 2013. I photographed most of the Manhattan alleys I knew about at the Dawn of Forgotten New York back in 1998, and didn’t return, thinking my work there had been done. But for me alleys have an attraction that is hard to resist. [...]
Macy’s New York store was founded by former whaler and businessman Rowland Hussey Macy in 1858 at 6th Avenue and West 14th Street. From the start, Macy’s trademark has been a red star: Macy had one tattooed on his hand during his whaling days. On the rear of Macy’s original location on West 13th near [...]
One thing I’ve noticed while walking around Bayonne, Hoboken and Jersey City (I haven’t attempted Newark, Union City, Weehawken etc. yet) is that while you do see modern green and white street signs, in many places the porcelain and metal signs of the 1940s and 1950s have been allowed to remain in place…because they do [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Hoboken New Jersey
Willow Terrace, between Clinton Street, Willow Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets, looks much as it did in 1880 when it was constructed by the Stevens family (of Stevens Institute fame) for laborers working on the nearby institute. Stevens Institute, founded in 1870, is America’s first college of mechanical engineering. It commands a spectacular view of [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Tagged with: Hoboken New Jersey
After doing FNY for 15 years, I’ll admit there aren’t many remaining major ancient painted ads I’m not familiar with in Manhattan at least, but this one, on Clarkson Street west of Hudson, did surprise me. I knew it can’t be older than the 1960s, since the Helvetica font is prominent, but I did think [...]
Categorized in: Ads One Shots Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
Tucked away at the west end of Grand Street where it meets the East River and punctuated by a tall smokestack you’ll find a small oasis that indirectly remembers the founder of Williamsburg, once a city on its own before being absorbed by Brooklyn in 1855. Williamsburg grew out of a ferry service instituted in [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Parks Williamsburg
Consumer activist, author, lecturer and attorney Ralph Nader has run for President for the Green Party and independently in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. In addition, he received one vote at the Democratic convention in 1972, and competed in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire primaries in 1992. In ’08 his running mate was San Francisco [...]
When I was working in the area last winter, I noticed this unusual fire alarm at 7th Avenue and West 19th Street in Chelsea. Most fire alarms are either mounted on their own dedicated stanchions with unique designs, such as the older ones with the torch (that looks like an ice cream cone) at the [...]
On 182nd Street just north of 73rd Avenue you will see what appears to be a weedy, empty lot, with ivy and ancient trees. This, though, is the cemetery of one of the farming families in the area, the Brinckerhoffs; there are 76 plots here dating from between 1736 and 1872. The tombstones have been [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries One Shots Tagged with: Fresh Meadows Queens
Nestled comfortably in Dongan Hills, Staten Island, alongside towering Todt Hill, NYC’s highest point, is one of the oldest buildings in NYC. The landmarked Stillwell-Perine House ar Richmond Road and Cromwell Avenue was originally begun in 1679 and has additions from 1730, 1750 and 1830, making it one of the oldest homes not only in [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Dongan Hills Staten Island
Perhaps my favorite building on Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene is the beige and brown Moderne classic Renken Milk Building at Classon Avenue, more properly known as the M. H. Renken Dairy Company offices: In 1912 Martin Renken of the M.H. Renken Dairy Company bought the whole block, and in 1923, constructed a bank of industrial [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Fort Greene
The Clinton Diner, at 58th Street and Maspeth Avenue in an otherwise godforsaken section of western Queens, is one of a vanishing breed of roadside diners, catering to workers in an industrial area and motorists who are passing through. It stands next to freight tracks of the Long Island Rail Road. The now dismantled Richard [...]
This ad for Norge Appliances, seen from the Myrtle Avenue platform on the Broadway el in Bushwick, has probably been there since the World War II era, and the clock has probably been stopped almost as long. (Norge is what Norwegians call their home country.) The brand has since passed through many hands. The Norge [...]
Ditmars Street runs for one block between Broadway and Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick. It’s unremarkable in every way, except that there is an elevated train at both ends, so it’s probably the only one-block street in NYV for which that claim can be made. Here we are facing the last remnant of the old Myrtle [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
One of Brooklyn’s abiding mysteries (probably for me and no one else) is the presence of Highlawn Avenue, which runs in the northern edge of Gravesend, from Stillwell Avenue east to West 3rd Street. It stands in the place of Avenue R, which begins at Kings Highway and East 5th Street and runs east and [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Gravesend
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Tagged with: Great Neck Nassau County
I have an undying fascination with Parkchester — it’s not just another housing project, but a mini-city plopped in central Bronx, with its own shopping strip and movie theater. Some residents need not ever leave it for days at a stretch. You can get there by taking the #6 train to its namesake station. It [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
Simple bridges are a thing of beauty. This truss bridge takes White Plains Road over the Amtrak/Metro-North tracks just north of East Tremont Avenue, near Parkchester. It has a twin bridge a block away at Unionport Road. As late as about 2000 it still had a pair of Westinghouse incandescent “cuplights” illuminating the pedestrian walkway. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
Desert Island Comic Books, 540 Metropolitan Avenue near Union Avenue in Brooklyn, has participated in a recent trend (that I welcome): maintaining an older classic awning sign of a previous business: in this case, an Italian bakery. Signs were just better before Helvetica and its family of bold and extended took over. “Booklets” is probably [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
These programs are supported by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and NYC Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. Additional support is provided by the membership of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. Most tours are $15 for members of the Greater Astoria Historical Society, and $20 for non-members. Meeting places and further details to come. Saturday, [...]
Categorized in: Tours
