Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Even though I grew up mere blocks away from Dyker Beach Golf Course in Dyker Heights, I have never swung a golf club in my life. Who can afford golf clubs? And anyway, golf seems like a tremendously frustrating game if you’re not good at it — you have to chase a little white ball [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn Dyker Heights
Here Victory Boulevard rolls through the Bulls Head neighborhood in northwest Staten Island. Though the road was built in 1816 as Richmond Turnpike, a toll road by a company owned by Vice-President Daniel Tompkins, who lived in Stapleton where the road begins, it’s hardly Staten Island’s oldest road — both Richmond Terrace and Amboy Road, [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Roads Tagged with: Staten Island
I have always been fascinated by streets that dramatically change character from one end to the other, as well as change their level of traffic. There are a number of streets in NYC that start with just a trickle of traffic and build and build to a heavy volume, such as Staten Island’s Hylan Boulevard, [...]
New York is full of Unions – not only labor unions, but streets and squares called Union. While Manhattan’s Union Square was named in the 19th Century for the encounter of Broadway and Bowery Road (now 4th Avenue), the lengthy routes Union Avenue and Union Street in Brooklyn, Union Street and Turnpike in Queens, and Union [...]
Categorized in: Roads Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Gowanus Park Slope
Finding ancient routes throughout the five boroughs has been challenging and rewarding for me. Some, like Broadway in Manhattan and the Bronx, or Kings Highway in Brooklyn, are just as busy, if not busier, than they were centuries ago when they were first initiated. Some are Native American trails that were based on wild animal traces. [...]
Categorized in: Roads Tagged with: Howard Beach Ozone Park Queens
Continued from Part 1 MASONIC TEMPLE I detoured a block west on Lafayette to Clermont so I could see the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, assembled in 1908 by not one but two architectural firms, Lord & Hewlett and Pell & Corbett. It’s notable for its eight Ionic columns on the front and side and for its [...]
Categorized in: Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn Clinton Hill
Welcome to the inaugural page in the latest FNY category, the second added in the past two years, following FNY Walks in 2010. In FNY Roads I’ll be concentrating on one one road or street per page, walking it end to end, or alternately covering an ancient NYC road of which only short pieces remain. In the [...]
Categorized in: Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn Clinton Hill
As I had written on an early Forgotten New York page in 2000, NYC has a Main Street in all five boroughs: Manhattan (Roosevelt Island), Brooklyn (DUMBO), The Bronx (Edgewater Village), Staten Island (Tottenville) and Queens, in Flushing and Kew Gardens Hills. Though none of NYC’s Main Streets are renowned in history or show business, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Briarwood Flushing Kew Gardens Main Street Queens
After a re-examination of Bay Ridge’s 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge in Part One, I continued along 3rd Avenue in its mid-section, under the elevated Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park from 65th Street north to the Prospect Expressway, where some of 3rd Avenue seamlessly becomes Hamilton Avenue and the rest continues along to downtown Brooklyn. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: 3rd Avenue Brooklyn Sunset Park
Three boroughs have a major road called 3rd Avenue: Manhattan’s 3rd Avenue runs from Cooper Square north to the Harlem River and officially extends into the Bronx as Third Avenue (it was so named when the elevated train was extended into the Bronx in the 1880s). The Bronx even has a second 3rd Avenue in [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: 3rd Avenue Bay Ridge Brooklyn
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Boerum Hill Brooklyn Gowanus
I resided in fab Flushing between 1993 and 2007, and during that time both on foot and by bike, familiarized myself with the older routes through the area including the maze of roads that used to delineate Rocky Hill Road, as well as the bicycle and jogging path that now follows the route of the Motor Parkway built as [...]
Categorized in: Roads Tagged with: Auburndale Flushing Fresh Meadows Queens
I have not allowed the debilitating heat and humidity of one of the hottest New York summers in years [2010] in this age of accursed global warming to keep me indoors by the air conditioner. Indeed I have stepped up my activity if anything, with added tours and exhibitions in an effort to cram it [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Bath Beach Brooklyn Coney Island Cropsey Avenue
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 The Franny Lew As the roadbed of 47th Avenue, Rocky Hill Road crosses Francis Lewis Boulevard, the lengthiest road contained completely in Queens, stretching generally north to south from Whitestone to Rosedale. The oldest part of the road is in Whitestone and carried the name Whitestone Road when first laid out around 1900. [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Auburndale Bayside Queens
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Roads Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
So today, FNY is concluding its Myrtle Avenue survey, covering the five miles the road spans between downtown Brooklyn and Richmond Hill. I often walk NYC’s lengthy avenues from beginning to end, since I enjoy the contrasts along the way. In 1999 my first such walk was the length of the Bronx’ Grand Concourse — [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Tagged with: Glendale Queens Richond Hill
Continuing FNY’s Myrtle Avenue walk this week we rather abruptly cross into Queens and two relatively stable, peaceful neighborhoods, Ridgewood and Glendale. If you look at a map of Brooklyn and Queens, two major roads travel from western Brooklyn on almost a straight line (with a couple of gentle zigs and zags here and there) [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Glendale Queens Richond Hill
I hadn’t walked a considerable length of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn since 1965. That year I distinctly remember some aspects of a walk my mother and I took down Myrtle, one of the lengthiest avenues in Brooklyn and Queens. In those days, and right on into the 1980s, a walk down Myrtle was a somewhat [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Today’s Myrtle Avenue walk extends from the leftover unused el section from Lewis Avenue east to the Madison Theatre, just past the point where the remaining active section of the Myrtle el turns off on Palmetto Street. Myrtle Avenue was laid out as a tolled plank road from Broadway east to [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
After reaching Graham Avenue after duly noting the Gothic Most Holy Trinity/St. Mary’s Church and its satellite buildings after proceeding south on Manhattan Avenue, I turned north up Graham. The avenue runs from Flushing Avenue, where it meets Broadway and Marcus Garvey Boulevard (a.k.a. Sumner Avenue) north to Driggs Avenue and McGuiness Boulevard. Graham Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
Division Street is one of Manhattan’s most unremarked-on thoroughfares. It hasn’t gotten much respect over the centuries and decades, either — it’s been reduced to less than half of its original length, first by placing a public park smack in its path, and the rest was later taken out by a massive housing project. In [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Chinatown Manhattan
There are two Sheepshead Bay Roads in Brooklyn. To add to the muddle, one of them comes in two pieces. The first Sheepshead Bay Road runs from Neptune Avenue and West 8th east one block to West 6th Street. As we’ll see, it used to be quite a bit longer. The other, more important Sheepshead Bay [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
In “Mellow Yellow” Donovan is actually saying he’s just mad about Frontine, but in 1960s transistor radio-squawk that was always rendered Fourteen, and I thought he liked teenagers, which wouldn’t have surprised me. Your webmaster has always been mad about 14th– East and West 14th, the first numbered street to go coast to coast — [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Meatpacking Union Square
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Port Richmond Staten Island
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
I love els. From Brooklyn’s New Utrecht Ave., Livonia Avenue, Broadway of Brooklyn (Manhattan’s Broadway is elled too) to Queens’ Liberty and Jamaica Avenues, Roosevelt Avenue and Queens Boulevard (that el is all shot and ready to go on a future piece) despite the noise and crowds, els hold a fascination for me…Forgotten artifacts seem [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay Westchester Avenue
Has it been two years since I began my Bedford Avenue survey with a walk along its entire length from Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay north to its beginnings at Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint? It doesn’t seem that long, but there it is. This summer I finally completed that walk, in two sections, and I’ll [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights Flatbush Leffets Gardens
Continued From Part 1 Ditmars Boulevard is interrupted for a couple of blocks between 82nd and 86th Streets, partly a consequence of the construction of LaGuardia, né Glenn Curtiss Airport, in the early 1930s. 23rd Avenue (left) skirts the southern boundary of the airport for a couple of blocks and is lit by dwarf [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
The name Ditmars, or Ditmas, appears more than once in the NYC street directory. The Bronx has a Ditmars Street in City Island, there’s a Ditmas Avenue in Kensington, namesake Ditmas Park and Brownsville, Brooklyn; and here in Astoria, Ditmars Boulevard, named in honor of Abram Ditmars, first mayor of Long Island City, NY who [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
Brooklyn’s Court Street, named for the courthouse buildings downtown, runs from Montague Street and Cadman Plaza West (which was once Fulton Street and was shadowed by the rumblings of that street’s titular el until 1942) in a straight line to Gowanus Bay in Red Hook. It encompasses the hustle and bustle of downtown, the almost [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Cobble Hill
In Time Magazine this week (4/26/09) President Obama’s staffers say they think of the White House as a “living museum.” Sometimes things should be frozen right where they are, never to change. Detroit used to employ tens of thousands of people who made the best cars on the planet. The New York City waterfront used [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: St. Pauls Avenue Stapleton Staten Island
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Flushing Queens
Believe it or not Forgotten NY does get complaints. Well, one or two once in awhile. Many of them concern FNY’s stuck-in-1999 design. To your webmaster, RSS sounds like an auto parts store and twitter is what birds do. Others complain about underrepresentation of some neighborhoods. I will plead guilty in this — in ten [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Blissville Brooklyn Greenpoint Queens Sunnyside
Staten Island’s surviving Broadway is one of the main north-south streets of West New Brighton, running from Clove Road at St. Peter’s Cemetery generally north to Richmond Terrace. I say “surviving” because Staten Island has had a number of Broadways over the years, as this list by historian Steve Morse attests: there have also been [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Staten Island West Brighton
Among New York City’s numbered avenues, 1st through 12th, 4th Avenue has always been the odd duck– you can tell just by looking at a map. While most avenues are extraordinarily lengthy, spanning much of the island from north to south, 4th runs just six short blocks between Cooper and Union Squares; and while all [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 4th Avenue Manhattan Union Square
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Past and present fast food The Orange Hut at Broadway and 54th Street still carries the outlines and contours of its former life as a White Tower hamburger chain restaurant. The last White Tower closed in Toledo, OH in June 2008; the chain originated in 1926, its origins detailed in a [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Long Island City Queens Woodside
Continuing my fascination with NYC’s non-Manhattan Broadways, which begain in June 1999 with my very first ForgottenTour on Brooklyn’s Broadway, continued on several Forgotten NY pages there, and then continued further on the Bronx’ Broadway in late 2008, I hiked Queens’ very own Broadway in December 2008 and Jaunary 2009. The route begins in Ravenswood [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Long Island City Queens Woodside
Continued from Part 2 Metropolitan Forgive the blur on the image above: it was blown up from a smaller picture I obtained in 2005 on a previous walk. This is Metropolitan Avenue looking east. Some structures in the photo have been torn down, and new construction has appeared elswhere on the street. Metropolitan Avenue runs [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
Continued from Page 1 Con Dead Time has proven the enemy for our magnificent brick power plants in recent years. The Long Island City Penn Station powerhouse, with its four iconic smokestacks, has been converted to residential use, minus the smokestacks, and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT) powerhouse on 500 Kent and Division Avenues, shown [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
Kent Avenue runs from the eastern end of Clinton Hill to the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border. Because of Brooklyn’s topography along the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Wallabout Channel and the East River, the route resembles a giant question mark in reverse without the dot. It’s unusual among Williamsburg’s north-south avenues like Wythe Avenue, Berry Street, and Driggs Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
I recently got an angry note from a ForgottenFan that, as far as I understood it, excoriated me for not yet making it down to Gerritsen Beach for a FNY page. Fear not, with a few days off coming up during the holidays (recent losses have chastened me into doing a Staycation™ this holiday season) [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Smith Street
In mid-September 2008 I embarked on my first Forgotten mission after a brief, but horrendous battle with a stomach flu of some kind that struck on September 11th, of all dates, a couple of hours after a meal of baked chicken and boiled frozen vegetables. (Even now, in mid-October, your webmaster hasn’t returned to frozen [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Flatiron Manhattan
Heaven, as XTC has told us, is paved with broken glass. That means that as a resident of New York City, I’ll feel right at home if I ever get there. Today we’ll take a walk on downtown Brooklyn’s Willoughby Street, which shares the title of main business street along with Fulton Street, the big [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Downtown Willoughby Street
Brooklyn’s Furman Street runs along the East River waterfront for about 3/4 mile between Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street, but in that long stretch intersects with only a couple of streets in between: Joralemon St. and tiny Doughty Street (three, if you count a dead-end stub of Montague). Brooklyn Heights is called thus because most [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Furman Street
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Queens Ridgewood Wyckoff Avenue
Continued from West Broadway Part 2 West Broadway and Grand Street. Once north of Canal Street, West Broadway enters Soho (no longer below Canal but now south of Houston) and changes character completely, becoming the main shopping and restaurant strip in a neighborhood jampacked with them… Prior to about 1840 the stretch of West Broadway between Canal [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
Continued from West Broadway Part 1 Here’s the scene on West Broadway between Duane and Thomas Streets. All the buildings are from 1860-1875, and two have “Easter eggs” that give clues about them. “Standard Scale & Supply Co.” former business 1871, date of construction. With a 6-star shield; one star has fallen off. Duane Street east [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
Those who live in or who’ve been to Atlanta say that an inordinate amount of streets are called Peachtree; in Manhattan, meanwhile, there are 6 streets called Broadway, and all five boroughs, for that matter, have a Broadway. In NYC, all Broadways are a hommage to the original that begins at Bowling Green and runs [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
4/12/08: a couple of weeks ago FNY walked East 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets in the East Village, and your webmaster had promised a look at East 6th and 7th Streets, which I had also photographed that day. Circumstances intervened, though, and I convened an emergency session of ForgottenFans to descend on the Cheyenne Diner [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 6th Street 7th Street East Village Manhattan
Your webmaster lived in Bay Ridge between 1957 and 1993 (with an neighborhoodus interruptus in Dyker Heights in 1990-1991) and yet, the adjacent region to the east, Bensonhurst, the vast area between 14th Avenue, 65th Street and the Belt Parkway and Bay Parkway and Stillwell Avenue) largely remains unplumbed territory for me. I had had [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 18th Avenue Bensonhurst Brooklyn Kensington
Fifth Avenue is, as the late, great Channel 11 St. Patrick’s Day Parade compere Captain Jack McCarthy nicknamed it, the “Queen of Avenues.” It marches in an unbroken line from Washington Square North past the Empire State Building (the King of All Buildings), New York Public Library, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Central Park to Marcus Garvey Park, [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Lamps Tagged with: 14th Street 5th Avenue Donald Deskey Manhattan
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 13th Street Greenwich Village Manhattan
A few months ago FNY took you on a tour of the eastern end of Jamaica Avenue in Floral Park and Bellerose, the part that was recently renamed Jericho Turnpike to match its Nassau and Suffolk County extension. This week, we’ll take a journey down Jamaica Avenue’s western end, that rides along the south end [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Jamaica Avenue Jamica Jamica Brooklyn Queens Woodhaven
So far September 2007 had proven much cooler than October 2007, which had seen July-like temperatures, at least until the 7th. September was perfect for a breezy walk along West Street from the Chelsea Piers sports complex south to Canal, revisiting places I had not seen for a few years. As it turns out I [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan Meatpacking
After a walk in NYC’s underbelly down Hell’s Kitchen’s 8th Avenue, a trip down Brooklyn’s 8th Avenue in Park Slope shapes up to be rather a change of pace. As you can tell by the unleaved trees this trip actually preceded my Manhattan 8th Avenue foray [Porn Under a Bad Sign] Though it seems the [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope
What’s the longest street that runs entirely in Brooklyn? It seems there are two candidates: Flatbush Avenue and Bedford Avenue. (Any drivers out there want to decide the matter using their odometers?) Some roads running east-west are pretty lengthy, but they extend all the way to Queens and beyond: Linden Boulevard, Myrtle, Metropolitan, Atlantic, and [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford Avenue Brooklyn Flatbush Midwood Sheepshead Bay
Title card: 910 Grand Concourse at East 163 St I FIRST WALKED the Bronx’s Grand Concourse on July 18, 1999, on ForgottenTour 2. It was 100 degrees, the tour split up into two factions, there was a Dominican Day Parade, a thunderstorm, and some of us wound up in a bar on Bainbridge Avenue watching [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Fordham Grand Concourse Mount Eden
EDGED as it is between the Russian delis and nightclubs of Brighton Beach, the colonial houses and cemeteries of Gravesend, and the sideshow freaks, kiddie rides and mermaids of Coney Island, West Brighton doesn’t get a whole lot of attention. Yet the small area dominated by the Warbasse and Trump Houses has its own collection of relics (besides your webmaster, who [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Tagged with: Brooklyn West Brighton
We’re going to Broadway today. We’re also going to Park Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Wall Street, Canal Street and several other well-known New York City locales. But since this website is called Forgotten NY, things aren’t always as obvious as they can appear. Get your Brooks Brothers suit on and bring your portfolio… Wall Street is [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Fort Greene New Brighton Port Richmond St. George Stapleton Staten Island
On two separate trips, in the summers of 1999 and 2000, I walked the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, which marches north from the Major Deegan Expressway to Mosholu Parkway through Mott Haven, Concourse Village, Mount Eden, Mount Hope (the Concourse is constructed on a hill), Fordham, and Bedford Park. Eleven lanes wide from 161st Street [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Fordham Grand Concourse Mount Eden
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
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 [...]
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
