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  • Archives

  • GROVE COURT, Greenwich Village

    April 15, 2013
    Tags:Greenwich Village, Manhattan
    grove.court

    The Village is full of narrow alleys that lead to back houses (buildings that don’t front on the street but instead stand in back of houses that face the street and can be reached only by gates with key access). Grove Court, in the bend of Grove Street just east of Hudson Street, is probably [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys One Shots Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan

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  • GOUVERNEUR LANE, Financial District

    March 14, 2013

    Hagstrom Maps used to produce an incredibly detailed map of lower Manhattan, which showed all major buildings and adresses, subway lines and their entrances and exits, and even subtle curvatures and widenings and narrowings of streets.   Manhattan, of course, was a different world in the early 20th Century when this map was produced, and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices

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  • BELOVED LANES around town

    February 14, 2013
    Tags:Bedford Park, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Eltingville, Glendale, Queens, St. Albans, Staten Island

    Since today  (2/14) is supposed to be the holiday of love, I’ll show you a few streets around town that honor it by name…   Valentine Avenue, Bronx (Do I use Google Street View? You bet I do, and I enjoy it.) Valentine is the lengthiest of NYC’s ‘love lanes’, running from East Tremont Avenue [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bedford Park Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Eltingville Glendale Queens St. Albans Staten Island

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  • NEW YORK’S “SLIPS,” Financial District, Lower East Side

    January 27, 2013
    Tags:Financial District, Lower East Side, Manhattan

    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

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  • FLORENCE PLACE, Chinatown

    January 22, 2013
    Tags:Chinatown, Manhattan

    It all began on a lunchtime stroll when I was working at Macy’s in the summer of 2001. I’d frequently take the train downtown or uptown — sometimes I’d go as far afield as Brooklyn. I was going up Division Street, probably on my way to the F train at East Broadway, when just before [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chinatown Manhattan

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  • COLLISTER STREET, Tribeca

    January 20, 2013
    Tags:Manhattan, Tribeca

    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. [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca

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  • WEEKS LANE

    December 31, 2012
    Tags:Fresh Meadows, Queens

    Forgotten New York has many parents. I have said before that the kernel may have been planted in 1962, when the Department of Traffic tore down all the castiron lampposts along 6th Avenue in Bay Ridge, replacing them with Donald Deskeys, and the entire stretch of row houses across the street were torn down so [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Fresh Meadows Queens

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  • JACKSON AVENUE SIDE STREETS

    December 30, 2012
    Tags:Hunters Point, Queens

    Just as I wrote about the odd lost streets of Greenpoint in December 2012, many or all of which never existed in the first place, I also explored the usually unremarked-upon dead ends of Hunters Point, just across the mighty Newtown Creek. These streets are lined up along Jackson Avenue between its source at Vernon [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens

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  • JERSEY STREET, SoHo

    December 9, 2012
    Tags:Manhattan, Soho

    At the very beginnings of Forgotten NY in 1998, I went around Manhattan, as well as the other boroughs, taking pictures of obscure alleyways, which have been a favorite subject of mine for decades. You never know what kind of obscurities might be lurking in alleys, from ancient signage or illumination to an out-of-the -way [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Manhattan Soho

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  • CHARLES LANE, Greenwich Village

    November 30, 2012
    Tags:Greenwich Village, Manhattan

    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

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  • TRIMBLE PLACE, Tribeca

    November 9, 2012
    Tags:Manhattan, Tribeca

    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

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  • CORTLANDT ALLEY, Tribeca

    October 16, 2012
    Tags:Manhattan, Tribeca

    Lower Manhattan…the Tribecas, the SoHos, the NoHos — have become, during the last couple of decades, a wonderworld of high-end shopping, impossible-to-afford residences, and have acheived an aura of sophistication and haute couture, where mink-wrapped socialites exit limos into the boutiques. Just a generation ago, though, Tribeca didn’t have a name, it was just a [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca

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  • BRONX STREET

    September 3, 2012
    Tags:Bronx, West Farms

    I spotted it from across East Tremont Avenue, just east of Boston Road. Having absorbed the Bronx map and street listings from Geographia’s ‘Little Red Book’ series, since childhood I had been aware of the existence of the prosaically-named Bronx Street, which sits at what is nearly the center point of the borough east of [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx West Farms

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  • LANES OF KENSINGTON

    July 21, 2012
    Tags:Brooklyn, Kensington

    Kensington, the section of Brooklyn located just south of Windsor Terrace, SW of Prospect Park and SE of Green-Wood Cemetery, is named for a western borough of London — many streets in Prospect Park South were given British names by Prospect Park South‘s developer, Dean Alvord, during the early 20th Century. Kensington lies near Bay [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Kensington

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  • ON BROADWAY ALLEY

    July 5, 2012
    Tags:Kips Bay, Manhattan

    Manhattan’s grid, first imposed in 1811, is remarkably rigid between 14th Street and 59th, with very few interruptions from the system of north-south avenues and east-west streets. This is a situation unlike that of most Northeast cities, and indeed, many cities west of the Mississippi, when built on flat plains, also emulate the strict checkerboard [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Kips Bay Manhattan

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  • RETURN TO STUYVESANT STREET

    March 28, 2012
    Tags:East Village, Manhattan

    Back in 1999, the Dawn of Forgotten New York, I did a page on Stuyvesant Street, one of the very few routes that flouts New York City’s strict street grid (which celebrated its bicentennial in 2011). I explained its former role as the driveway to the Stuyvesant estate, and why and how it survived. A [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: East Village Manhattan

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  • OLD KINGSBRIDGE ROAD, Bronx

    January 2, 2012

    At 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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  • ALICE and AGATE COURTS

    December 15, 2011
    Tags:Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Crown Heights

    Cul de sacs and alleyways have always held a fascination for me. However they are rather scarce in New York City, which has a grid system of streets not only in Manhattan, but in many locales in the other boroughs; service alleys behind buildings are rare as well, which means trash and refuse has to [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Crown Heights

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  • TRIMBLE AND HICKS

    November 17, 2011
    Tags:Queens, Woodside

    The title card shows Trimble Road, a one-block street running from 62nd to 63rd Streets along the Long Island Rail Road main line north of Woodside Avenue. Trimble Road has a counterpart, Hicks Drive, a one block street running south of the LIRR tracks between 63rd and 64th Streets. The large building used to be [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Queens Woodside

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  • NOLAN’S LANE, Canarsie

    October 25, 2011
    Tags:Brooklyn, Canarsie

    While careening through Canarsie this past week, searching for lost alleys, I checked Nolan’s Lane, which I hadn’t visited since 1999. For most, unless you live there, there’s no reason to visit. As you will see, though, this is one of my favorite obscure Canarsie lanes. There was a kid at grade school with me [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Canarsie

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  • SMITHS LANE, Canarsie

    October 24, 2011

    According to maps through most of the 20th Century, Smiths Lane is a narrow alley running from Rockaway Parkway southwest to East 92nd Street just south of Farragut Road in Canarsie. By 2011, though, the alley has been pretty much reduced to one block and a tiny cul de sac. This Google satellite view shows [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices

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  • FINE STREET MINING. Looking for Delmonico Place

    July 19, 2011
    Tags:Brooklyn, Delmonico

    There’s probably an interesting story behind the naming of Delmonico Place in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, just below its undefended border with Williamsburg. It’s a one-block street on an odd slant between Ellery Street and Park Avenue, east of Tompkins. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that story is, but it would be notable if the street had anything [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Delmonico

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  • INWOOD LANES

    March 13, 2011
    Tags:Inwood, Manhattan

    Helping fulfill a recent self-promise to tour around in places such as upper Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island locales that have so far gotten something of the short end of the stick, FNY-wise, I was in Inwood in upper Manhattan checking out its collection of one-block streets. True, I had already covered little known Manhattan streets [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Inwood Manhattan

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  • MIGHTY BOVANIZER and other Staten Island lanes

    February 2, 2011
    Tags:Staten Island

    I have mentioned this before but in February 2005 I spent a week on vacation…in Staten Island. I rented a room at a B&B at the water’s edge, at the beginning of Hylan Boulevard where it meets the Narrows, just across the road from the Alice Austen House: it was a “residency” as they say [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Staten Island

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  • CLOVE & MALBONE: Crown Heights Leftovers

    December 14, 2010
    Tags:Brooklyn, Crown Heights

    During my recent walk from downtown Brooklyn to Crown Heights, I was meandering down Montgomery Street when, just past Nostrand Avenue I spotted an odd little part-dirt, part Belgian blocked path issuing forth toward the southeast. Actually I was doing more than meandering because I had chosen to walk Montgomery Street specifically so I would go by [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Cobblestones Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights

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  • JACKSON MILL ROAD TRACKS

    August 15, 2010
    Tags:Jackson Heights, Queens

    I moved to Queens on March 28th, 1993 and have lived there since, the first 14 in eastern Flushing and the next three (as of 2010) in Little Neck. While I lived in Bay ridge I made the occasional Queens foray on a bicycle, and would also take the #7 to see games at Shea Stadium [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Trolleys Tagged with: Jackson Heights Queens

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  • PELHAM BAY’S “B STREET”

    July 26, 2010
    Tags:Bronx, Pelham Bay

    While skulking through Pelham Bay in the Bronx in July 2010, I once again pondered the origin of the heretofore mysterious B Street, which runs south to a dead end on Baisley Avenue between Hobart and Edison. Well, thanks to the efforts of ForgottenFan Mike Fornebaio the ‘mystery’ has been solved. It turns out this [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay

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  • MILL ROAD: twilit lane of Bath Beach

    June 27, 2010
    Tags:Bath Beach, Brooklyn, Gravesend

    When NYC had a more rural character and was dotted with farms a couple of centuries ago, grist mills, in which grain is ground into flour, were primary engines of commerce. Though none are left within the five boroughs, maps nonetheless are stocked with lanes and roads called Mill, some major, some minor — Manhattan (1), [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bath Beach Brooklyn Gravesend

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  • ‘Places’ Matter – Alleys in DUMBO and downtown Brooklyn

    June 6, 2010
    Tags:Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown, DUMBO

    Sometimes, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. Or Boston. Or even Albany, Newark or Jersey City. I’ll explain. Manhattan, once you get north of 14th Street, just doesn’t have the sheer number of dead-ends or one-block alleys block by block that other northeast cities have. Philadelphia has a main network grid of streets — numbered north and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Downtown DUMBO

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  • POE PLACE- A Bronx tribute to a literary master

    February 7, 2010
    Tags:Bronx, Poe Cottage

    Since the mysterious Poe Toaster did not show up this year [Jan. 19, 2010] in Baltimore at Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite as he usually does on Poe’s birthday, I thought it appropriate to pay homage of my own in Forgotten NY. If you’re not familiar with the story, a mysterious figure, or figures (the tradition started [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Poe Cottage

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  • LITTLE NECK’S SURPRISE ALLEYS

    November 10, 2009
    Tags:Little Neck, Queens

    Two dead-end lanes called Cornell Lane and Jessie Court, running north from Northern Boulevard between Marathon Parkway and Little Neck Parkway, have been there for decades — likely as much as a century. Yet, I had no idea they were there until I moved to Queens in 1993 and found Cornell Lane riding past in a [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Little Neck Queens

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  • CEDAR LANE, Bronx

    May 15, 2009
    Tags:Bronx, Concourse Village

    May 2009: Most of the Bronx press attention has gone to theYankees’ new billion-dollar launching pad (where they have already lost 22-4 and more lopsided scores) where the displaced parks will be built on top of parking lots, and where dozens of prime seats are sitting empty night after night because they cost $2560 per seat, per [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Concourse Village

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  • ‘Places’ Matter – short streets of BAY RIDGE Part 1

    April 19, 2009
    Tags:Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

    There are entire sections of Brooklyn, probably New York City’s borough that hews most rigidly to the grid concept, that have no cul de sacs or alleys whatsoever; think of Sunset Park, Marine Park or Bensonhurst, which have only a handful between them. When it comes to one-block streets or hidden laneways, I was fortunate to [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn

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  • ‘Places’ Matter – short streets of BAY RIDGE part 2

    April 19, 2009
    Tags:Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

    Continued from Page 1 WAYFARING: BAY RIDGE ALLEYS 72nd Court 72nd Court is a dead-end on 72nd Street just east of Shore Road. Unlike its alley partners in Bay Ridge, it doesn’t have a name, but rather unimaginatively borrows the number of the street where it’s located; perhaps all the permutations of “Bay” and “Ridge” had been [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn

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  • DOROTHEA PLACE

    April 6, 2009
    Tags:Bronx, Fordham

    As a rule, you will not find any munchkins, witches or flying monkeys in the Bronx. But there is a yellow brick road, and this one looks like it’s still got its original yellow bricks (Queens’ Stockholm Street‘s yellow bricks are a loving recreation of the original). Dorothea Place, a cul de sac on Marion Avenue just [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Fordham

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  • NEW YORK’S SHORTEST STREETS – three of ‘em

    March 22, 2009
    Tags:Manhattan, Tribeca

    “Heaven,” postulated David Byrne, “is a place where nothing ever happens.” “Being just contaminates the void,” Robyn Hitchcock riposted some years later. In that spirit, it’s just possible that the three alleyways shown on today’s ForgottenPage are still here in New York, a town that has gradually sloughed off, paved over and eliminated its alleys over the [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca

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  • DENNET PLACE, Cobble Hill

    November 6, 2008
    Tags:Brooklyn, Cobble Hill

    I’ve been aware of Dennet Place since I first started perusing Hagstrom maps, specifically September 1968 (age 11) when I acquired my first one, at Gertz on Jamaica Avenue, in precincts far from my parents’ Bay Ridge base. We were on a mission to get a wall unit for the old man to put all his [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Cobble Hill

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  • DUNHAM PLACE, Williamsburg

    August 4, 2008
    Tags:Brooklyn, Williamsburg

    According to the Bible of Brooklyn street names, Brooklyn By Name by Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss, Williamsburg’s Dunham Place was named for David Dunham (1790-1823), a New York merchant who helped initiate an early steam ferry from Brooklyn to New York, which earned him the nickname “Father of Williamsburg.” Dunham was an indefatigable advocate for steam navigation and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg

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  • RENWICK STREET

    July 24, 2008
    Tags:Manhattan, Soho

    I think it was 1992 when I first spotted Renwick Street. In the summer of that year I was freelancing at a type shop named ModKomp, entered from a loading dock on Greenwich near Vandam. This was still in the era when you pulled long galleys of print, cut them and pasted them on boards; there [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Manhattan Soho

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  • STEWART AVENUE, Bay Ridge

    May 19, 2008
    Tags:Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

    What you see here is Bay Ridge’s main drag…for most of the 19th Century, that is. Stewart Avenue (it likely takes that name from a landowner along its route) once ran straight up the spine of what was then the western edge of the town of New Utrecht. What would become Bay Ridge was first [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn

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  • CHINATOWN’S ALLEYS

    May 12, 2008

    Making up somewhat for previous oversights, I invaded Chinatown in February in search of ancient laneways that contain hidden architectural “Easter eggs” and traces of long-vanished neighborhoods. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out perhaps the Deskey post’s most distinctive NYC contribution: in 1965 several of them were outfitted with luminaires resembling traditional Chinese [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices

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  • GOOD CHARLOTTE. A Ridgewood cul de sac

    April 23, 2008
    Tags:Queens, Ridgewood

    When “Charlotte Street” is mentioned, anyone in NYC over age 40 can remember the two words with dread, remembering the dead landscape full of burned, crumbling buildings visited by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980. Arson (some of it perpetrated by landlords and owners), crime, drugs and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Queens Ridgewood

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  • CORBIN COURT: forgotten Brooklyn alley

    January 9, 2008
    Tags:Brooklyn, Flatbush

    Well, there are a number of hidden alleys in Brooklyn (and FNY will ferret them all out eventually) but one that has continually escaped the Department of Transportation as well as nearly all the mapmakers over the years (including google maps, which is jusually pretty thorough) is a little court hidden behind Coney Island Avenue in [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Flatbush

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  • CREAKY ALLEYS – Part 2: Tribeca and The Village

    October 28, 2007
    Tags:Greenwich Village, Manhattan, Tribeca

    CONTINUED FROM CREAKY ALLEYS PART 1 Before testing our courage and skulking around some more of lower Manhattan’s rare extant alleys, I thought we should pay tribute to a pair that are no longer with us…. Caroline Street was a short lane running from Duane north to Jay between West and Washington. It was eliminated [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan Tribeca

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  • CREAKY ALLEYS PART 1: A new look at lower Manhattan’s centuries-old alleys

    October 21, 2007
    Tags:Greenwich Village, Manhattan, Tribeca

    Your webmaster recently went prowling about lower Manhattan, re-shooting the little-known laneways and alleys of the island’s underbelly. It wasn’t so much an attempt to revisit old ground–though admittedly, the first time I photographed these alleys, back in 1999, I was more of a photography amateur than I am now, and the results were rather [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan Tribeca

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  • PARK SLOPE “PLACES”

    October 21, 2007
    Tags:Brooklyn, Park Slope

    “There are places I remember…” As I have said before in these pages, New York City is virtually alone among East Coast cities in being “alley-poor.” Stalking the older sections of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore (though urban renewal has cost Charm City of some of its alleys) and even Trenton and Providence will reveal netwroks of criss-crossing [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope

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  • LOVEJONES

    April 5, 2007
    Tags:Manhattan, Noho

     New York is just not an alley town. While Boston has its Crab Alleys, Quaker Lanes and Primus Avenues, Philadelphia its Crooked Billet Streets, Black Horse and Elfreth’s Alleys, and even Newark, NJ its Despoilation Alley, New York’s grid system conceals a relative few hidden lanes. That’s the reason your webmaster has attempted to ferret [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Manhattan Noho

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  • ROSE AND JIMMY – a downtown alley duo

    January 1, 2007
    Tags:City Hall, Manhattan

    In a city that routinely discards its history, you will sometimes find it in overlooked alleys that are no more than modern passageways under bridge ramps, or service lanes providing access for garbage pickup. New York City has obliterated many of its alleys, most of which were concentrated Downtown and on the lower east side. [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: City Hall Manhattan

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  • TULFAN TERRACE, Bronx

    December 11, 2004
    Tags:Bronx, Riverdale

    FNY PREVIOUSLY VISITED TULFAN TERRACE IN 1999, when most of it was still there. The little lane off Oxford Avenue near West 236th Street in Riverdale, Bronx, lined on both sides by picturesque cottages, was built in 1926 by two real estate contractors named Tully and Fanning, hence the unusual name. Of course that was [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale

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  • The last days of RED HOOK LANE

    June 4, 2004
    Tags:Brooklyn, Downtown, Red Hook

    WE’RE FADING TO GRAY this week as we mourn the possible imminent death of one of Brooklyn’s last colonial links. Red Hook Lane, running diagonally in downtown from Fulton and Pearl to Boerum Place and Livingston Street, has been there even before the British and Dutch arrived in Brooklyn as an Indian trail, but it [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Downtown Red Hook

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  • HITCH A RIDE TO ROCKAWAY BEACH to see the alleys

    January 1, 2003
    Tags:Queens, Rockaway

    It’s a long way out there, at the end of the A Train on the Rockaway Peninsula, though its thousands of residents would differ with you about that. To them it’s just as much a New York City community as Tribeca, Fordham, Flatbush or Port Richmond. The Rockaway Peninsula was first settled by the namesake [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Queens Rockaway

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  • ISLAND OF ALLEYS

    July 4, 2002
    Tags:Eltingville, Grasmere, Rosebank, Stapleton, Staten Island, Tottenville

    It might be argued, mostly by people who’ve never been there, that Staten Island has mostly alleys and nothing else. In fact, most of Staten Island by now has been thoroughly suburbanized and landscaped, with regular, rigid street patterns imposed, especially in the southern sections of the island. Staten differs from the other 4 boroughs [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Eltingville Grasmere Rosebank Stapleton Staten Island Tottenville

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  • YZNAGA SAGA Cuban sugar plantations & ancient colonial post roads.

    November 17, 2001
    Tags:Bronx, Pelham Bay, Schuylerville, Westchester Square

      Yznaga Place Quite possibly the only place name in the United States that begins with “yz”. I’ve looked at USA and world atlases and can’t find anymore initial Yz’s. Yznaga Place, at the south end of Brush Avenue near the Whitestone Bridge and Ferry Point Park, is one of those streets you see on [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay Schuylerville Westchester Square

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  • SHEEPSHEAD BAY Hidden alleys between the bungalows.

    May 27, 2001
    Tags:Brooklyn, Sheepshead Bay

    Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, named for the fish that used to be abundant there, has been occupied by Europeans since the 1640s when English noblewoman Lady Deborah Moody planned the village of Gravesend. Some of the first roads in the area, Gravesend Neck Road and Sheepshead Bay Road, still survive today, and roads that became streets like [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay

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  • TURN TO STONE. A comeback for a downtown Manhattan alley

    May 9, 2001
    Tags:Financial District, Manhattan, Stone Street

    Unnoticed in the gold-plated greenbacked canyons in the shadow of Wall Street is a short, one-block, curved street called Stone. Remarkably immune to Lower Manhattan’s incredible cycle of renewal in the 20th Century, little Stone Street, which stretches between Coenties Alley and Hanover Square, looks remarkably like it did in the late 19th Century. It’s [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan Stone Street

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  • SPEED THE PLOUGHMAN. Hidden lanes in Riverdale.

    April 8, 2001
    Tags:Bronx, Delafield, Riverdale

    This Alleys page takes us to the most northwestern part of New York City, Riverdale, which some say has more in common with NYC’s suburbs to the north than it does the rest of the Bronx. A stroll through Riverdale would certainly bear that out, as well as reveal a cache of tiny alleys…some of [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Delafield Riverdale

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  • CONEY ISLAND ALLEYS

    January 1, 2001
    Tags:Brooklyn, Coney Island

    Believe it or not, your webmaster does enjoy the usual pleasures of Coney Island. The mermaid parade, a dog at Nathans, and a July stroll on the boardwalk are all parts of my usual summer repertoire. But Coney Island is a land inhabited by many ghosts. Strange little walkways and alleys with unusual names abound, and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island

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  • MR. STUYVESANT’S GARDEN. The story of Stuyvesant Street

    October 1, 2000
    Tags:East Village, Manhattan, Stuyvesant

    Tiny Stuyvesant Street, crossing E. 9th Street between 3rd and 2nd Avenues, is notable for being the one and only diagonal street in Manhattan north of 8th Street and south of Central Park except Broadway. (We’ll leave Greenwich Village out of it, since it’s always had its very own street system quite independent of the [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: East Village Manhattan Stuyvesant

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  • MID- AND EASTERN BROOKLYN ALLEYS

    September 16, 2000
    Tags:Brooklyn, Crown Heights, Cypress Hills, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Gravesend, Windsor Terrace

    More than any other borough, Brooklyn pretty much adheres to the strict checkerboard grid system that was devised when its six towns coalesced into one city in the late 1800s. That’s why it’s all the more interesting when the occasional lane or alley breaks the mold and strikes off on its own. And, as in [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights Cypress Hills East Flatbush Flatbush Gravesend Windsor Terrace

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  • BLYTHEBOURNE’S COUNTRY LANE. The story of Old New Utrecht Road.

    July 2, 2000
    Tags:Borough Park, Brooklyn

    Borough Park is thought of today as a quiet residential neighborhood between Dyker Heights and Kensington in the southwestern quadrant of Brooklyn. But, Borough Park used to have a quite different aspect. Sure, it was always pretty quiet, but until the late 1800s it was the province of farms, hay wagons and mooing cows. Two [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Roads Tagged with: Borough Park Brooklyn

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  • WESTERN BROOKLYN. The alleys of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park

    May 7, 2000
    Tags:Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Sunset Park

     When I do most Forgotten New York webpages, there’s usually a ready resource of publications, periodicals and newspapers, both out of print and in, through which I get my information. But when I do pages devoted to alleys–a subject of particular interest for me–I often have to resort to guesses and hunches about the backgrounds [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn Sunset Park

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  • QUEENS ALLEYS part 2

    April 2, 2000
    Tags:Astoria, Boker, Briarwood, Charlotte, College Point, Cornell, Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing, Forest Hills, Glendale, Hawtree, Linneaus, Little Neck, Queens, Ridgewood, South Jamaica, Sunnyside, Whitestone

    Continued from Part 1 This time, our survey of little-noticed Queens alleyways takes us from gritty, concrete-enveloped Long Island City all the way east to bucolic, rural Little Neck–which could pass for an upstate village or a small North Shore town, which, of course, it is! So let’s start in Long Island City and work [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Astoria Boker Briarwood Charlotte College Point Cornell Corona Elmhurst Flushing Forest Hills Glendale Hawtree Linneaus Little Neck Queens Ridgewood South Jamaica Sunnyside Whitestone

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  • ALLEYS OF QUEENS. Part 1

    December 27, 1999
    Tags:Astoria, Briarwood, College Point, Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing, Forest Hills, Glendale, Little Neck, Queens, Ridgewood, South Jamaica, Sunnyside, Whitestone

    Queens, in many ways, is the youngest of the five boroughs. It became a part of the city when its widely separated towns joined with the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan in 1898 to become the five boroughs. Part of Queens, though, wanted nothing to do with New York City and so the Queens [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Astoria Briarwood College Point Corona Elmhurst Flushing Forest Hills Glendale Little Neck Queens Ridgewood South Jamaica Sunnyside Whitestone

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  • THE ALLEYS OF UPPER MANHATTAN

    August 27, 1999
    Tags:Harlem, Manhattan, Upper West Side, Washington Heights, Yorkville

    North of Fourteenth Street, Manhattan is pretty uniform, with only Broadway and Central Park interrupting the gridiron of streets between 14th Street and 110th. Still, there are a few obscure dead ends to be found on the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and Washington Heights. Henderson Place Henderson Place has its very own Landmark [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Cemeteries Tagged with: Harlem Manhattan Upper West Side Washington Heights Yorkville

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  • THE ALLEYS OF OLD BROOKLYN

    June 19, 1999
    Tags:Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights

    Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill are regarded to be the most beautiful neighborhoods in Brooklyn, though each neighborhood has its own partisans. They have dozens of landmarked 19th century brownstone buildings as well as other varieties of architecture along its narrow streets. They  also have their share of blind alleys and short cobblestoned paths, which [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights

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  • SHADY SHRADY and other Bronx lanes

    June 10, 1999
    Tags:Baychester, Bronx, City Island, Eastchester, Fordham, Kingsbridge Heights, Morris Park, Morrisania, Norwood, Riverdale, Wakefield, Westchester Square

    The Bronx is not to be outdone when it comes to obscure alleys and lanes. Some are in leaf-filled enclaves like Riverdale and others are to be found in teeming districts like Fordham. Wherever in the Bronx they are, each has its own story to tell. Shrady Place Doctor George Shrady, editor of the New [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Baychester Bronx City Island Eastchester Fordham Kingsbridge Heights Morris Park Morrisania Norwood Riverdale Wakefield Westchester Square

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  • THE ALLEYS OF SOHO AND NOHO

    May 16, 1999
    Tags:Extra Place, Freeman, Manhattan, Noho, Shinbone, Soho

    While poking around the streets of Soho (South of Houston) and Noho (North of Houston) you can find several hidden and not-so-hidden alleyways that contain a few surprises here and there. Extra Place CBGB, the capital of underground NYC rock and roll in the 1970s, was instrumental in introducing bands like Blondie, Talking Heads and the [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Extra Place Freeman Manhattan Noho Shinbone Soho

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  • THE ALLEYS OF LOWER MANHATTAN

    May 14, 1999
    Tags:Financial District, Manhattan

    The Indian trails and cowpaths that made up lower Manhattan from the mid-1600s are still largely there, but instead of the hilly, pastoral scenes that played along their routes in the early days, today these tiny lanes are dwarfed by immense steel and concrete structures. Every so often though, while digging foundations for yet more [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan

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  • LAKE PLACE in Gravesend

    May 3, 1999
    Tags:Brooklyn, Gravesend

    Lake Place, a little alley running a few blocks between 86th Street and Van Sicklen Street in Gravesend, Brooklyn, wasn’t named for a nearby lake, and it wasn’t always an alley. In fact, it was once a main artery in the town of Gravesend … back when it was a town. This unpaved back alley [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Gravesend

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  • GREENWICH VILLAGE. Its back alleys and lanes

    May 2, 1999
    Tags:Greenwich Village, Manhattan

    Greenwich Village has always had a well-developed street layout that made it impossible for city commissioners to impose the street grid plan that was given to the rest of the city in 1811. Though Greenwich Village had been very hilly in the early 1800s, its hills have been leveled over the years. Its narrow, winding [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan

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  • THE ALLEYS OF CANARSIE. Southeast Brooklyn’s forgotten roads

    April 24, 1999
    Tags:Brooklyn, Canarsie

    above: Skidmore Lane at East 92nd Street Canarsie, a neighborhood in southeast Brooklyn at the end of the BMT L line, for many decades of its history had been derided as a backwater, a place somehow left behind on the evolutionary scale that other New York City neighborhoods were measured by. Just take a look [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn Canarsie

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  • SNIFFEN COURT. Historic Manhattan alleys

    April 23, 1999
    Tags:Cooper Square, Hell’s Kitchen, Kips Bay, Manhattan, Murray Hill, Times Square, Turtle Bay, Upper East Side

    Nestled in prosperous Murray Hill on East 36th Street between 3rd and Lexington is one of the few alleys of the midtown area. Sniffen Court was constructed between 1850 and 1860 and consists of ten handsome brick carriage houses protected behind a locked iron gate. The carriage houses were built by architect John Sniffen and [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Cooper Square Hell’s Kitchen Kips Bay Manhattan Murray Hill Times Square Turtle Bay Upper East Side

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  • ROAD REMNANTS. Some of Brooklyn’s lost lanes

    October 1, 1998
    Tags:Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, East Flatbush

    Southern Brooklyn still has a number of its ancient routes preserved as hardly-surviving dirt roads and alleys. Today’s Brooklynites probably do not know that these roads existed for centuries, ever since the first Dutch settlements in the 1600s.   What, you might ask, is so unusual about this intersection of Avenue Z and Jerome Avenue [...]

    Categorized in: Alleys Roads Tagged with: Bath Beach Bay Ridge Brooklyn East Flatbush

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