Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
US Representative Paul Fino (1913-2009) was elected to the State Senate from 1946-1950 and elected to Congress in 1952, where he served 8 terms, and then the State Supreme Court in 1968. A usually conservative though sometimes moderate Republican, Mr. Fino had a hard time swallowing what he considered the Manhattan-style elitism of [John V.] Lindsay, [...]
Categorized in: Ads One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Morris Park
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Manhattan Penn Station
This faces the Holland Tunnel ramps on Broome east of Varick. The painted sign has held up fairly well over the decades. The company supplied power plant equipment such as boilers and pumping systems to the ships in the now-vanished Hudson River port in Manhattan, and also serviced pumps and other equipment. There were branches [...]
This Beekman Paper ad is familiar to motorists, at least those paying attention, traveling south on Varick Street on the way to the Holland Tunnel. The company was founded by Max and Ida Greenbaum on Beekman Street in 1907, moving to Varick Street in 1926. The Indispensable Walter Grutchfield has a photo of the ad [...]
Despite the rigors of over a century’s worth of wind, rain and storms, the painted sign identifying Middendorf & Rohrs Grocers is still identifiable at #1 Little West 12th Street. The building has an oddly slanted shape as it fronts on both Gansevoort and Little West 12th, which intersect here. There also seems to be [...]
Categorized in: Ads One Shots Tagged with: Manhattan Meatpacking
Here is that magnificent old Ford ad I was talking about on the south side of Northern Boulevard east of 31st Street. You can see it out the window of a northbound N or Q. This photo is from the flickr page of rabbit571. ForgottenFan Joseph Colella: The building is the original Universal Ford dealer. The [...]
Categorized in: Ads One Shots Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens Queens Plaza
According to Eating in Translation, Thurston & Braidich, whose faded ad can be seen at 286 Spring Street near Greenwich next to what is now the Fire Department of New York Museum, was an importer of coffee beans and gum plants from Mexico and Middle Eastern countries. The main office was at the still-standing 27 [...]
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 [...]
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
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 [...]
A sttroll through the old Garment District (6th and 7th Avenues and side streets between 24th and 40th Streets) will reveal hundreds of painted ads on side streets advertising clothing wholesalers, 95% of which have utterly vanished or have long been bought by other companies. More and more of them fade away each year, or [...]
In 2005 I found these vintage wall poster ads for Hersh’s kosher wine, the candidacy of Assemblyman Louis DeSalvio, a rally for Mayor Vincent Impellitteri and more. The NYC Tenement Museum had occupied the ground floor of the building on the corner of Orchard and Broome and the signs had been recently uncovered after more than [...]
Categorized in: Ads One Shots Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
BY 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
One of a pair of surviving painted ad signs on East 32nd near Lexington advertises the old Manning-Bowman Company, founded in 1832 and purchased in 1872 by Connecticutters Edward Manning and Robert Bowman. The company was famed for its metalware, and Manning-Bowman pieces are still prized by collectors. Of course, the sign should be read: [...]
After contemplating the presence of Koster and Bial’s “The Corner” building on 6th and 24th Streets miraculously still standing after 123 years despite the utter transformation of the rest of 6th Avenue (as of 2011; for me, the years now seem like science fiction; we aren’t on Mars, as some have marveled about, but we [...]
Categorized in: Ads Forgotten Slices Tagged with: 6th Avenue
An acquaintance of mine, a ForgottenFan, recently complained in her blog entry about slow walkers in NYC, and the impositions they put on most other people in NYC, who like to walk fast — on the way to jobs, meetings, dates, making more money, and whatever New Yorkers walk fast in order to reach. I’ve [...]
Categorized in: Ads Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan painted signs telephone exchanges
“Cadet,” according to The Word Detective, is derived from the Latin ”capitellum,” a diminutive of Latin “caput,” meaning “head.” It was later applied to young men entering the military and interstingly, was also condensed to “cad,” a young man who doesn’t dance with the woman he brought to the party. For decades the word also delineated a [...]
Categorized in: Ads Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Maspeth Queens
Just when you think you’ve found them all… you just keep discovering even more. That’s the story of Forgotten New York’s fascination with ancient building advertising — there are still painted ads on buildings that come from as early as 1890, and new ads are added all the time that, in 50 or 60 years’ [...]
Categorized in: Ads
I was surprised, and disappointed, to see one of NYC’s iconic painted walldog ads is gone, as the giant Wellner Motors ad on Greenwich Avenue facing 8th opposite Jackson Square has been cruelly sandblasted out of existence. For decade after decade, long after its titular garage had left the scene, it had advertised sales, service and [...]
Categorized in: Ads Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Greenwich Village
Roving FNY correspondent Gary Fonville has come up with yet another big catch of faded advertisements throughout the five boroughs. LEFT: This ancient relic was meant to be seen from the old 6th Avenue el and the street. Unfortunately, FNY’s camera could not get a better angle on this unintelligible sign. This as in all likelihood predates [...]
Categorized in: Ads Neighborhoods
Rowland Hussey Macy (1822-1877) was a Nantucket seaman aboard the Emily Morgan whaling ship at age 15, and while serving there he picked up at a port of call a red, five-pointed star tattoo. After a period of apprenticeship he opened four dry goods stores in the 1850s, all of which failed; undeterred, he moved [...]
Categorized in: Ads Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Macy's
The city seems more determined than ever to rebuild, retool, and plan for the future, even as in 2006 entire neighborhoods like Flushing, Long Island City, and Williamsburg are being torn down and new businesses and dwellings, some decent, some awful, rise in their place. The acceleration of destruction and construction is dizzying, confusing and disorienting. As [...]
Categorized in: Ads
As more and more historic treasures and well-designed, well-built businesses and dwellings are destroyed or under the gun, more and more we find that the things that are preserved are there strictly by happenstance. No doubt about it: from the time Minuit swindled the island away from the Weekquaeskeeks (or perhaps the Lenape) New York City has [...]
FORGOTTEN NEW YORK hasn’t been to the Bronx nearly as much as it should have been, and we’ll see if time can correct the error. Meanwhile, we’ll depend this week on two of FNY’s more voluminous contributors, Gary of the MTA and Christina, the Queen of Queens who is touring the Bronx on this occasion, for [...]
photo: L. Sylvers Next to the building where Little Liberty used to raise her torch, during the spring some demolition work exposed a gigantic, brilliantly-colored 1900-1910-era ad for Hunter’s Baltimore Rye. Since then, local concerns have been quite busy covering it with run-of the-mill ads, probably for the bane of the 21st Century, cellular phones. God how I [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Bloomingdale’s Hosiery Woolworth’s
Some more golden goodies from Brooklyn…. Photo: Gary Fonville Though Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn has tried hard to homogenize and mall-ify itself over the last 20 years, a quick glance skyward along its antiquated upper stories is like taking a trip back in time. Here, we see a former London Shoe store and, [...]
During a long summer I’ve been unable to visit as many Forgotten scenes as I’d like. To the rescue comes Forgotten Fan Gary Fonville, an MTA bus driver who gets to see many Forgotten corners of the city as yet unvisited by your webmaster. Gary has supplied us on this occasion with a new cache of [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Brooklyn Brownsville
Tribeca, the Triangle Below Canal Street, was saved when Robert Moses’ plan to run the Cross-Manhattan Expressway over Broome Street was defeated. It saved a lot of ancient ads that call Tribeca home! New watch ad integrated on an older sewing thead ad, mural on Houston Street near Thompson Street. Soho, not Tribeca, but who’s counting. Lekow Desks and Office [...]
I’ve slowly come to the realization that Forgotten is woefully deficient as far as the Bronx, the only borough on the mainland, is concerned. And that’s ironic, since the Bronx, street for street, probably contains more ancient mural ads than any other borough. It’s no secret that large parts of the Bronx have been slow to [...]
It’s quite possible that, block for block, the streets above Central Park are the best hunting grounds of all if you’re looking for ancient advertising. Quite possibly that’s because there are a lot of buildings left up there from the early 1900s and late 1800s, and what construction does occur up there tends to reveal [...]
Categorized in: Ads Neighborhoods Tagged with: Macy’s Manhattan Omega Oil
Bowling alleys. I thought bowling was enjoying a revival in the 80s and 90s, with electronic exploding scoreboards and spiffed-up bowling establishments that put the lie to the commonly held impression that bowling alleys were smoky, dark places featuring leagues full of beer swilling drunks wearing incredibly ugly two- or three-toned shoes. I thought bowling was [...]
Midtown Manhattan between 5th and 7th Avenues and between about 14th Street and 42nd Street is home to hundreds of mural ads on the tall buildings that were built between 1915 and 1935. Most of them advertise long-dead clothing manufacturers and distributors although there are scattered ads for restaurants and newspapers in there as well. A. [...]
Just a bunch more superannuated ads you can find walking around Manhattan. Not only do some of them show off now-forgotten products, they play up the stark changes that have come over the Manhattan streetscape through the decades. West 185th Street, near Broadway This one has two ads, both at least 50 years old, one printed on [...]
Categorized in: Ads
Trudge from the Williamsburg to the Manhattan Bridges in search of aged ads, and sink a cold Pepsi when you’re done. My home borough, Brooklyn, has its own set of ancient advertising none of which I had ever noticed until recent walks in the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge areas. I found classic ads that [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Brooklyn Pepsi-Cola
What ads did Forgotten Fans find on a five-hour journey down Brooklyn’s Broadway? What ads DIDN’T they find? A recent walk by about a dozen intrepid Forgotten Fans down Broadway (turned out to be ForgottenTour #1) plunged the participants into a thoroughly fascinating land where advertisements and relics of the past 100 years rub elbows against [...]
Once one of New York’s most notorious slums, Hell’s Kitchen has made a comeback but some of its ancient ads remain. Hell’s Kitchen, the area west of 8th Avenue and between 30th Street and 59th Street, used to be one of the city’s most notorious slums. It was one of the roughest, toughest districts in [...]
Categorized in: Ads Neighborhoods Tagged with: Hell's Kitchen Manhattan Omega Oil Pianos
Buildings that line the routes of elevated trains are always fertile ground for seekers of ancient advertising. Customers walking along Broadway in Brooklyn under the el tracks, or perhaps looking out the sides of elevated cars (which were more open in the old days than they are now) could easily be swayed by them. No elevated [...]
Delancey Street, on the Lower East Side, is a repository of elderly, fading advertisements from bygone eras. Sharp-eyed observers will see this ad for Gold Medal Flour on this building set back from Delancey. I can’t quite make out the script writing above the sign, which has been weathered into illegibility. Sometimes two ads will be placed on [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
At the top of a grand old building at Broadway and Washington Place in Greenwich Village is a sign that says “Treffurth’s.” Treffurth’s was a noted restaurant on Broadway at the turn of the century. The building, according to the book “A Walk On Broadway: A Journey Over Time” by David Dunlap, dates to 1882. An enterprising [...]
Categorized in: Ads
Bohacks was a chain of supermarkets in the five boroughs that closed in the early seventies. This smokestack is on the corner of Flushing and Metropolitan Avenues in Ridgewood, Queens. The square was formerly called Bohack Square. Forgotten Fan Doug Douglass has submitted this website devoted to the Bohack family; Forgotten Fan Allan Karr submits the ad [...]
Bull Durham tobacco advertised on thousands of wall murals all over the country in the early part of the Twentieth Century by the Duke family, who contributed to Trinity College which became Duke University. The above ad is so prominent because the Long Island Rail Road operated at grade along Atlantic Avenue here until 1940, and [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Coca-Cola Pepsi-Cola Queens
Walk through the Garment District (7th Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets), and you’ll see, besides the men dragging coat and clothing- laden carts through the cramped streets, a plethora of clothing storefronts and wholesalers. If you look up, you’ll see quite a few ads painted on the sides of buildings for clothing stores..some of [...]
It’s 1888 and steam-powered elevated trains and horsecars were the primary means of transportation on the Bowery. In those days, the Third Avenue El ran down each side of the Bowery and would do so until 1915, when it was rebuilt and placed in the center of the street. It met its ultimate demise in 1953 [...]
Before Hollywood became the center of the motion picture industry in the 1920s, New York City boasted several studios that produced silent motion pictures. At left we see a scene from Vitagraph Studios, which was located at East 15th St. just north of Avenue M in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, then known as South Greenfield. Photos from [...]
Ads for this children’s stomach remedy can be found all over the five boroughs. Most date back to the Teens or Twenties. Charles H. Fletcher began selling his Castoria, a mild stomach remedy for children, in 1871. The medicine was heavily promoted on ads and billboards in the late 1800s and early part of the 20th [...]
Ads for the upscale East Side store painted 80 years ago are still good today! Picture is from New York Then and Now, © 1976 Dover Publications In decades past, Bloomingdale’s, one of the most famous stores in the world, used to advertise their location at Third Avenue and 60th Street with painted signs saying [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Bloomingdale’s Bronx Manhattan
In 1998, a demolition in Duffy Square allowed an ancient (ca. 1880) advertisement for horse and buggy carriages to come to light in the now-high tech, Disneyfied area. In 1998, passersby ignore recently revealed history on Broadway. The recent demolition of the Central Theatre, built in 1877, on the SW corner of Broadway and 47th Street [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Manhattan Times Square
