Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society
The Greater Astoria Historical Society, chartered in 1985, is a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community. We are dedicated to preserving our past and using it to promote our community's future.
When the Commissioners’ Plan for the grid system of NYC streets was adopted in 1811 and John Randel Jr. set about surveying the island as related in the Museum of the City of New York winter 2012 exhibition and the book “The Greatest Grid,” the survey was laid out only as far north as 155th [...]
In the mid-19th Century Manhattan was getting so crowded (by 1845 the island was fully built up south of about 42nd Street) that it was running out of cemetery space. The two largest cemeteries had been developed by Trinity Cemetery, in the churchyard adjacent to its ancient Broadway and Wall Street location, and uptown in [...]
Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace and Kensington, has proven to be a Forgotten favorite — this was the 3rd such Green-Wood tour in the series which here attains its 49th entry. The cemetery, instituted in 1838, is so vast that it’s impossible to do the same [...]
Queens is dotted with minuscule cemeteries, some still existing, some as dead as the people who were buried within, whose remains are blown in the breeze now. Corona used to have a small cemetery on Alstyne Avenue that is long forgotten. TheBunn Cemetery on 46th Avenue and 165th Street in Flushing was recently rededicated after being cemented [...]
When I moved to Flushing in 1993, Martin’s Field, 46th Avenue and 164th-165th Streets, was just another playground: a desultory concrete space, with broken swings and a curious weedy green space in the back. I had no idea then that Martin’s Field was in fact a cemetery, and it took one man’s persistence and vision [...]
Well, your webmaster finally made the team picture after 29 ForgottenTours. Can you spot where I am?* As usual, despite sunny weather predicted all week, ForgottenTour Day turned out cloudy, chance of showers. At least on 2007′s Green-Wood Cemetery tour, I didn’t have any hecklers, like I did on the 2006 tour! 30 ForgottenFans and I investigated [...]
April 1, 2007, didn’t fool 48 ForgottenFans…second-most ever on a ForgottenTour (the prize goes to the 56 who turned up for Tour 14 in Dumbo, October 2003)…who turned up for FNY’s jaunt through Middle Village and Juniper Park. We were aided by FNY Correspondent Christina, the Queen of Queens, and Bob Holden, President of the Juniper Park Civic Association. [...]
Whenever I lead a ForgottenTour through a cemetery (like Green-Wood Cemetery, Tour 24) I always tell people to peek in the windows of the mausolea. More often than not, you’ll get the ring in the Cracker Jack box — a gorgeous stained-glass panel depicting a religious scene…most of the time, but not always. The fascinating [...]
Forgotten Fans wave with Minerva In what was undoubtedly the best weather ever for a ForgottenTour (sunny and 68) forty Forgotten fans (and one heckler!) converged on Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery, a peaceful respite since 1838 as one of the first ‘rural cemteries’ or burial parks in America. Previously burials had been done in churches or in [...]
A lonely outpost even by Staten Island standards is Travis, a small village of about two thousand at the western end of Victory Boulevard. In the colonial period, it was an important crossing point (New Blazing Star Ferry) over the Arthur Kill to Carteret, New Jersey, from whence horses and carriages could continue on to [...]
Maurice and 54th Avenues, Mt. Zion Cemetery with a waste disposal plant overlooking it. In the 1850s, NYC decided it didn’t want its dead anymore. Rising real estate costs and an ever-expanding urban frontier led NYC to pass a law prohibiting any more burials in Manhattan in 1852. Churches and synagogues, which had begun to [...]
March 21st, 2004: About thirty Forgotten Fans met in (extremely) windy Jamaica, Queens and toured a 4-acre, 350-year old cemetery and an over 250-year old mansion in the geographic center of Queens. Cate Ludlam, president of the Prospect Cemetery Association, shows off a hand-lettered tombstone from 1728. Cate has been involved with the cemetery, in which is interred [...]
ST. PETER’S CEMETERY St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on 2500 Westchester Avenue is a venerable church, but the actual building is not that elderly, as far as churches go…it was built in 1855 in a Gothic Revival style (making it look rather older than it really is) by Leopold Eidlitz. Ah, then why are there some [...]
One of the eeriest places in the five boroughs, the entire Northeast, or perhaps the entire country, is in the borderland where New York City peters out, leaving New Jersey ahead and the hustle & bustle of the city behind. This is the place where the souls of 17th and 18th century patriots wander in [...]
It’s not who you think. The last resting place of the 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, and his wife on Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side has been the subject of NYC’s most infamous, and silliest, riddle over the years. The correct answer is that nobody is buried under the monument…Grant and his wife [...]
Was Ichabod Crane, the scrawny schoolteacher who met the Headless Horseman in Washington Irving’s classic “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” a real person? Of course he was, and he rests in peace in Staten Island. Or rather, his namesake does. This isn’t the Ichabod Crane of fantasy and fiction, but rather, an army major who [...]
Queens has an abundance of small, out-of-the-way, ancient cemeteries, many of which go back to the 1700s, some of which are barely suspected by neighbors. Ancient burial grounds are alngside two-family homes, in parks and even UNDER a lot of places they wouldn’t be expected. LAWRENCE FAMILY BURIAL GROUND, Astoria Though the historical marker says [...]
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 [...]
The hidden cemeteries of Staten Island are more valuable today then they ever were, because as Staten Island continues to be swallowed by urban sprawl and green patches are getting harder and harder to find, these cemeteries will forever provide oases of quite contemplation. You begin to see how small we are in the grand [...]
If it’s possible, Sylvan Cemetery, at the end of Victory Boulevard in Staten Island in the small town of Travis, had been in even worse shape than Prospect Cemetery was in 1999, when I first photographed each. In 1999 most of the headstones in Sylvan had been knocked over. As in Prospect Cemetery, overgrown weeds [...]
Prospect Cemetery in Jamaica is probably the oldest cemetery in Queens, and perhaps the entire city. Old records show that it dates to 1668. The cemetery can boast 53 Revolutionary War veterans, 43 Civil War veterans, three Spanish-American War veterans, and many interments of prominent Long Island families such as the Lefferts. Prospect was designated [...]
Scattered throughout New York City are several small cemeteries. In the 1800s, a law was passed that prohibited further cemetery construction on the island of Manhattan, owing to the city’s rapid growth. Subsequently, many cemeteries began to appear in western Queens, which was close to the city. However, remnants and vestiges of several old cemeteries [...]
