Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
This thick-shafted, guy wired traffic light at Fresh Pond Road and 59th Drive in Maspeth is just like thousands of others around town. But when these large stoplights first appeared in NYC in the 1950s, they carried a pair of WALK/DONT WALK signals, if that much. This one has a lamp to illuminate the park [...]
This new street sign leaves no possibility of error in the pronunciation of Louis Nine Boulevard: it’s Louis NEEN-yay, not “Louis 9″. The street was renamed from Wilkins Avenue soon after the 1983 death of Bronx assemblyman Nine, whose name is spelled without the accents in his NY Times obituary. Louis IX, meanwhile, was a [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Bronx Crotona Park
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan Stuyvesant Square
Though there are examples of previous stoplight stylings, such as the short Olive posts with their Ruleta signals (a few of those can still be found in Central Park, and when I began FNY there were a few samples still hanging around local streets) … … variances from the thick-shafted, guy wire masted heavy-duty [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Manhattan
Adjoining the Gross pawnbroker on 8th Avenue near W. 34th is a concrete facade touting the long-gone presence of Bickford’s, one of a chain of luncheonettes and eateries founded by Samuel L. Bickford in 1922. It was a chain restaurant a bit of a step below Child’s or Schrafft’s and had they survived, a step [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Penn Station
Passing by on a Saturday, I had thought pawnbroker S & G Gross had closed, but actually it’s not open on weekends. It even has a web presence and, like the sign says, the outfit was established in 1901. The three golden balls that signify the pawnbroker was a symbol that developed in Lombardy, a [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Penn Station
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
A sign on the east side of Broadway, just south of West 125th and in front of the General Grant Houses, advertises the presence of a Moylan Place. However, there’s no Moylan Place — just the sign. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and this 1949 Hagstrom map segment shows that, indeed, there was a [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Manhattanville
Though standard Philadelphia street signs are green on white, 4-sided and trapezoidal with room at the top of the sign for the cross street, Philly has never been as fanatical about eradicating older signs as the New York City Department of Transportation has been over the years, and there are plenty of examples of older [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Philadelphia
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Midtown Penn Station
With its baseball and tennis racket, as far as I know this is the only MTA black-and-white subway ID or directional sign that contains anything but the name of the station; directions; ID bullet; and hours of service. If there’s an equivalent sign at Yankee Stadium I’m unaware of it. It can be found on [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Flushing Meadows Queens
Except for a few wholesalers on Little West 12th between West and Washington Streets, the Meatpacking District, now the home of fashion retail and super-expensive apartment houses, has pretty much expunged all traces of its old meat wholesalers and slaughterhouses. Except… … for this remaining sign at 426 West 13th, which may or may not [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Meatpacking
A sign pointing to Red Hook’s abandoned Fishport could still be found on Columbia Street near Halleck, at least in 2008. The sign pointed the way to an ambitious fish wholesaling project that never got off the ground in the Erie Basin area. Between 1983 and 1989 the city renovated the boat basin and built [...]
When the IND Subway was built beginning in the late 1920s, designer/architect Squire Vickers decided to move away from the Beaux Arts terra cotta and multicolored mosaics that had characterized the IRT and BMT, then run by private contractors, and streamline the whole design, with stations outfitted in one color with black and/or white trim. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
The Transit Authority (it was called that once) posted small bus route maps on the nearest available utility poles at bus stops in the Swinging Sixties. This one appears at Greenpoint and Gale Avenues at the Calvary Cemetery entrance. The #24 doesn’t follow this exact route anymore, and the #29 is a dim memory. In [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Blissville Queens
Part 4: Staten Island I’m surprised I never thought of this until now, after about fifteen years of doing Forgotten New York. I’ve seen these historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very occasional one in the five boroughs. They’re part of an initiative devised by New York [...]
Categorized in: Signs
PART 3: MANHATTAN PART 1: BRONX and BROOKLYN PART 2: QUEENS PART 4: STATEN ISLAND I’m surprised I never thought of this until now, after about fifteen years of doing Forgotten New York. I’ve seen these historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very occasional one in [...]
Though the Department of Transportation has now succeeded in eliminating every “olive” stoplight stanchion on the streets of NYC — they used to guard traffic, a pair to each intersection beginning in the 1920s — a few working models can still be found in Central Park, like this one on the West Drive. This [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Central Park Manhattan
PART 2: QUEENS PART 1: BRONX and BROOKLYN PART 3: MANHATTAN PART 4: STATEN ISLAND I’m surprised I never thought of this until now, after about fifteen years of doing Forgotten New York. I’ve seen these historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very occasional one [...]
Categorized in: Signs
PART 1: BROOKLYN and the BRONX PART 2: QUEENS PART 3: MANHATTAN PART 4: STATEN ISLAND I’m surprised I never thought of this until now, after about fifteen years of doing Forgotten New York. I’ve seen these historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
Walk past most police precincts in New York City, and you will notice that almost inevitably the entrances are lit by a pair of lamps mounted on each side of the door and that, also almost inevitably, the lamps feature green plastic or glass through which the light shines. Depending on the age of the [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens
Queens recently lost another of its classic white and blue street signs, that had been a staple between 1964 and about 1985, only to be replaced by federally mandated green signs. On a recent stumble through Hunters Point, I noticed that the pole that this sign at 2nd Street and 55th Avenue was on was [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens
It’s no secret that both Brooklyn’s and Queens’ street numbering and naming systems are a bit of a mess, confusing out- of-towners and residents alike. Brooklyn has several sets of numbered streets: numbers with no prefixes, and North, South, East, West, Bay, Beach, Plumb, Flatlands, and Paerdegat numbered streets, and I’ve likely missed a few. [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Flatbush. Brooklyn
The massive Kentile Floors neon sign, built to attract business from the passing IND trains on the viaduct, looms over 9th Street near the Gowanus Canal. It is one of a number of now-defunct large neon signs that can be found in the Gowanus and Red Hook areas, springing up from the 30s through the 50s to [...]
Hopefully, Sol Moscot [formerly 118 Orchard, at Delancey, shown here] will take this iconic sign with them when they move directly across Delancey Street, to 108 Orchard. Founded on Rivington Street in 1915 after founder Hyman started selling eyeglasses from a pushcart in 1899, Moscot had occupied this location since 1935. 2/6/13
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan
While the recently deceased [February 2013] mayor Ed Koch has had the Queensboro Bridge subnamed for him during his lifetime, and there was a push to name the 77th Street Lexington Avenue Line subway stop serving the #6 train for him after his decease, his successor also has a spot named for him. Exit the [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Flushing Meadows Queens
Prospect Park South was developed by Syracusan Dean Alvord, who purchased a parcel of land in Flatbush from the estate of Luther Voorhies and the Dutch Reformed Church in 1898. Unlike developers like Alfred Treadway White, who built Cobble Hill’s Workingmen’s Cottages, Alvord from the start built sumptuously-appointed buildings for the well-to-do. By 1898 Flatbush [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Prospect Park South
Park Crescent is a dead end off 86th Road near 164th Street in Jamaica Hills, a neighborhood rife with odd roads and dead ends, many of them connected with the formal Normal School and the old trolley line that used to rumble through. Park Crescent is straight as a string and not a crescent at [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Jamaica Hills Queens
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 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
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 [...]
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
I’ve made a big deal over the years about how I miss the color-coded street signs, by borough, that marked NYC streets between 1964 and 1985, which were thence supplanted by the green-and-white numbers since then. I’ve come to realize, though, that there were another set of directional signs right under my nose, as it [...]
When I began Forgotten NY in 1998, the last bastions of the two-light stoplight were along Liberty Avenue under the A train el in Woodhaven/Ozone Park, and along Shore Front Parkway and Edgemere Avenue on the Rockaway peninsula. The Department of Transportation has since purged them all away and today, every stoplight in NYC has [...]
Long before Queens officials thought of doing it, the city of Williamsburgh laid out streets that were all numbered, with the odd rare named street here and there. North-south streets were numbered 1 to 12 beginning at the street closest to the East River and running east. Then there were two sets of east-west numbered [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
Just as archaeologists search for arrowheads to ascertain ancient Native American settlements, so do I look for arrowheads — arrowhead signs that point the way to NYC bridges. These first appeared in the 1930s, and while they have given way to larger directional signs, newer versions of these have actually appeared as painted arrowheads within [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
Russian People’s Home of Greenpoint, 106 Clay Street off McGuinness Boulevard. This is either an old sign of great age, or may have been part of a movie set that was never removed. Most non-English signs in Greenpoint are in Spanish or Polish. At one time, there was a sizable Slavic population in Greenpoint. In [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
In the early 20th Century, Queens featured hundreds of striped poles featuring directional signs to different neighborhoods and even out-of-borough locations. This one, photographed in 1931, pointed to Flushing, Brooklyn, Richmond Hill, New York, Hollis, and Merrick Boulevard. Another sign points to “Queens,” but since we’re already in Queens, I’m unsure what was meant. Perhaps [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Fresh Meadows Queens
Forest Hills Gardens, a ritzy community on the south side of the LIRR main line tracks roughly between Continental Avenue, Union Turnpike, the LIRR and Greenway South, was one of America’s first planned developments. It was begun in 1908 and its English green style setting is the work of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the son [...]
Boston does a great job marking war heroes and local luminaries on hundreds of street corners with these embossed black and gold signs, like this one in the West End. Max Hirshovitz was a corporal who was killed during World War I. For all I know, that gold star is also significant. Can anyone link [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Boston North End
I had been unaware of it, but NYC’s Department of Transportation officially refers to these type of street signs as “camelback” signs, instead of my own appellation, “humpback” signs. I suppose it’s classier that way. This sign adorns a gate at Washington and West 10th; when in use in the early to mid-20th Century, it [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
This handsome painted red, black and white sign for a marine repairs firm has hung in there on Christopher Street near Washington almost 3 decades after the demise of its parent. It faces 2 sides with an identical sign on each side. The Landmarks Prevervation Commission report for its Weehawken Street district says Meier & [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
I remember 1973 somewhat, but not well. I was fifteen and still in high school. Most of my life revolved around schoolwork and following the Knicks, who had just won their last championship to date, and the Mets, who went to their second World Series and dropped a 7-game tilt to Oakland. I was just [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Noho
Rex Cole (1887-1967) was originally a lamp manufacturer, then became associated with General Electric in the 1920s and designed white enamel Monitor Top refrigerators. Famed architect Raymond Hood designed a series of buildings in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the Grand Concourse, and Northern Blvd. in Flushing for Cole’s showrooms that either looked like refrigerators or featured [...]
Sometimes, you don’t find something Forgotten — it has to find you. I was idly making my way through Facebook late tonight and I saw this enamel mid-20th Century sign that used to be at Amsterdam Avenue and a certain Croton Street. I had never heard of it. A quick trip to oldstreets.com filled me [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Washington Heights
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
I have been complaining about new street signs in the Cleartype font, many of them in upper and lower case, that have been appearing on NYC streets in compliance with an apparently now-rescinded federal mandate, since they’re apparently easier to read if you’re in a car in motion. I have no idea if this is [...]
Here’s another one of those marvelous navy blue and white street signs used in Manhattan and the Bronx between about 1913 and 1964. Seaman Avenue and Isham Street are way up north in Inwood. It’s an incredible font. There was a real flair in the rendering. Look at those cap M’s. I’ve never before seen [...]
I was loitering in Bayonne the other day and noticed, even as its streetlamp luminaires are being replaced with one new model, imparting a strangling uniformity, its street signs remain delightfully disparate. Some corners have brand-new vinyl signs, with Helvetica or Cleartype, those fonts of bureaucracy, while other ones, made of stamped and pressed metal [...]
This is the street sign style used in Manhattan and the Bronx beginning in the mid-1910s, and surviving in some cases until the early 1960s. They were navy blue and white, with the cross street placed above the main identifier street in what came to be called the ‘hump.’ That serif lettering was exquisite — [...]
These ‘humpback’ navy and white street signs were standard issue in Manhattan and the Bronx from 1913 until the early 1960s. Politically, Manhattan and the Bronx were the same county until 1914. This intersection no longer exists, as East 177th was replaced by the Cross-Bronx Expressway in the 1950s. C.L. Croes was a 19th Century [...]
One of Brooklyn’s oldest street signs is hiding in plain sight in Brooklyn’s premier residential neighborhood (or so the papers and magazines would have you believe). At the corner of 7th Avenue and 1st street on the edge of a landmarked section of Park Slope — indicated by the maroon 1st Street sign — is [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope
While meandering down 1st Avenue, between East Houston and East 14th Streets recently, I was struck by the large number of small hole-in-the wall businesses and the handmade or old-fashioned signs that accompany them. Time for a quickie Signs page to show them to you. DeRobertis Pastry Shop/Pasticceria between East 10th and 11th boasts [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: East Village Manhttan
The Department of Transportation has come up with an unusual arrangement in downtown College Point in NW Queens. For the former WALK/DONT WALK signs, now represented by a red hand and green walking man, they have installed slightly thicker, taller stanchions, which allows the placement of other traffic signs and street signs. A harbinger of [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: College Point Queens
The Frost Pharamcy sign on 55th Avenue and Queens Boulevard is without a doubt one of my favorites in Queens. It’s likely a snapshot from the Fab Forties or Nifty Fifties. Rendered in my favorite color combination, black and yellow, it’s purely hand-lettered, probably by a signmaker using just a triangle and ruler to measure. [...]
As the city wastes millions by changing street signs that are ALL CAPS to Upper & Lower Case — including, ridiculously, numbered signs that, at most, have a tiny “AV” or a “ST” on them, it occurs to me that the millions would be better spent on replacing the signs that actually need replacing. A [...]
Other than Little Neck, the Queens neighborhood in which I spend the most time is unquestionably Astoria, where I sit on the board of the Greater Astoria Historical Society and, as such, am often summoned to one meeting or the other. To make things interesting I get off at different stops on the Astoria elevated [...]
Spring Street, which runs in Soho from the Bowery west to West and Canal Streets, is named for an actual spring that has been contained in the sewer system for the past couple of centuries. Like the rest of NYC, some interesting signs and buildings can be found along its length. A peculiar attribute [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Soho
Once I get a critical mass of these, they’ll get their own page. This is an example of mid-20th Century traffic signs– in general, signs pointing to bridges would be arrowhead-shaped, while those referencing tunnels would be circular. They were phased out when the large green traffic signs became prevalent, but some are still in [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
To paraphrase Yogi, you can observe a lot by looking. I was walking up Broadway after getting a new tour guide license when these painted window signs for Izquierdo & Vila, fabric exporters, manifested themselves at Franklin Street. The elaborate lettering for the word “Fabrics” seems to point the ad toward the 1920s, 30s at [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Washington Heights
Here’s some more examples of ancient signage found by FNY’s Gary Fonville… As a sign enthusiast, my eye always wandered to this building on Second Avenue near 116th Street in Spanish Harlem, Manhattan. Fischer & Co., who sold pork products, felt it was worth it to spend probably a lot of money for this terra-cotta beauty. [The [...]
Categorized in: Signs
The John Lindsay campaign ad (likely dating to 1965) uncovered on Flatbush Avenue reminded me of the time back in 1998 when I was dazedly wandering the back roads of Staten Island and I located this shed on Crabtree Avenue in Bloomingdale, on which there was affixed a sign with Mayor Robert Wagner Jr.’s name [...]
Here’s a surviving 1940-era street sign on Tunnel Exit Street, an exit from the Queens Midtown Tunnel in Murray Hill. photo: Steve Garza The tunnel was designed by Ole Singstad, and it was opened to traffic in 1940 under the supervision of New York City Tunnel Authority to relieve traffic congestion on the city’s East [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Murray Hill
I find myself shambling through indifferent crowds in Manhattan more often these days, as I have taken a job (as of December 2011) smack in the heart of the Flatiron District, formerly a down-at-heel stretch containing anonymous offices on 5th Avenue, and a stretch of mostly abandoned, monumental stores on 6th. When I first encountered [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Flatiron Manhattan
A head-scratcher at the 65th Street station on the IND Queens Boulevard line (R and M trains) has a modern sign showing the exit at Rowan Street and Broadway. 65th Street hasn’t been known by that name since the 1920s, when most Queens streets were grouped under one numbering system. Early IND signs, installed in [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Subways & Trains
One of my favorite buildings in Woodside, at Laurel Hill Boulevard and 65th Place, is this frame house, with a deli on the ground floor. This type sign, with vinyl letters, was distributed to many mom and pops by the Coca Cola Company; Coke ads are invariably displayed in either side. Beats the vinyl awnings [...]
There are, or were, only two streets called “Row” in New York and wouldn’t you know it, they met each other. Tryon Row was a one block street between Centre Street and Park Row just south of the Municipal Building. Tryon Row’s space is now occupied by a modest sitting space with tables and chairs. [...]
Beach Street ranks among the Forgotten men among its neighbors in Tribeca. Two blocks between West and Greenwich were hacked off in favor of the Independence Plaza apartment house development in the early 1970s (depriving present-day New Yorkers, perhaps, of a monument commemorating the landing of the very first steam locomotive in America, the Stourbridge Lion, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
Between about 1964 and 1985 all street signs in Queens looked like this, with an off-white background and blue lettering. In 1964 the city installed large vinyl and metal street signs around town, replacing smaller enamel and metal signs that preceded them. The city had started color coding signs in a haphazard fashion before 1964, [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Hunters Point Long Island City
A fascinating exhibit has turned up on the plywood boards surrounding a construction site on Church Street downtown, between Barclay Street and Park Place. It is the second in a series called Walking Men 99™ created by Israeli artist Maya Barkai and curated by the Alliance for Downtown New York. Many pedestrian traffic signals throughout the globe have switched over [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs
The Forgotten NY Book of Street Necrology is a thick, dusty, ancient tome, encrusted with the grime of centuries, its lock rusting and the last flecks of gilt flaking off the bindery. Unlike the recent flimsy editions of the AIA Guide to New York City (whose pages separate from the glue binding soon after first [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Necrology Subways & Trains Tagged with: Astoria Hunters Point Queens Rockaway Sunnyside
I was slowly and furtively making my way on a looping route from Bartel-Pritchard Square (really a traffic roundabout) at the western end of Prospect Park south and southwest to Borough Park, when the shoes started to pinch too much at last (I don’t like the way conventional sneakers look, so I always buy black sneakers [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Borough Park Brooklyn
I was foraging on Metropolitan Avenue recently, a couple of hours before a meeting at Dave Herman’s City Reliquary, when I found myself teetering tenuously up Havemeyer Street, which extends for a few blocks between Broadway and Union Avenue. Formerly 7th Street in Williamsburg, the street was renamed for a member of the 19th Century German immigrant [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
The Department of Transportation, in its unceasing effort to expunge all remnants of vintage street signage (taking time off from building more bicycle lanes or pedestrian plazas in heavily trafficked parts of town) has eliminated two more nonstandard street signs on its hit list, both in my neighborhood of Little Neck. The sign on the title [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Little Neck Queens
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 In 1977 a set of R16 cars with #6315 bringing up the rear during the Great Age of Graffiti displays a JJ sign. Note Franklin K. Lane High School at right, and a black on white enamel station sign. Until the Unimark system was adopted for subway signage, there were a hodgepodge of different styles [...]
By the end of June [2010] the V and W trains will be no more. As part of a broad-based budget cutting procedure, the millions-in-arrears MTA, getting little help from the state and federal government, now turns to you, the consumer of its services, and requires payment of higher fares and acceptance of stingier service. This [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Astoria Queens
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
December 2009: The end of another Forgotten year.I am hoping for a bigger year in 2010, more ForgottenTours and at least a couple of out of town trips. For the last couple weeks of 2009 I will be posting lightly; this is one of the weeks in which Forgotten NY correspondent Gary Fonville’s contributions come in [...]
Though luxury developers have had their eyes on Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, making inroads here has not been quite as easy here as it was in the rezoned Williamsburg, immediately to the southwest. And so, the Garden Spot of Brooklyn has been mostly successful in holding fast to its mom and pop shops and decidedly Polish [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
6/09. Catching up on some older stuff while I am gradually recovering from surgery. In December I was out for lunch and a short walk in Sunnyside, Queens and in just that brief time, mainly on Skillman and Roosevelt Avenues, I was able to find a number of examples of old-school signage…some of which looked as [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
I was in Forest Hills/Rego Park the other day (January 2009), 108th Street and 69th Road to be precise, when I vaguely remembered I had found a classic flute-bottomed, olive-colored stoplight about a block away, on 110th Street, in June 2005. Of course, I wanted to go over and say hello to my old friend. Instead, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Forest Hills Queens
Do architects design house numbers as parts of buildings anymore? Today house numbers are usually indicated by metal numbers attached separately above the door, or if we’re really talking cheap, by glued-back numbers that get slapped on transoms or on front doors. In a recent stroll on Broadway on Open House NY weekend, I noticed [...]
December 2008: Just got a special ForgottenAlert from FFan David Sanders: I was returning from upstate NY today and got off the PATH train at 33rd Street, heading to the N train…at the top of the stairs there were two large vertical posters whose ads had been removed, and there were 4 small posters, two in [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Herald Square Manhattan
It may have come across before but I enjoy New York City’s elevated trains. Not every American city has them anymore, or has them to the extent that New York does. Boston tore down its Orange Line el over Washington Street in the late 1980s, and the last remnant of the Green Line el over Causeway [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Queens Woodside
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent FNY’s cameras are always busy picking out things that exemplify NYC’s past. Some things that our cameras find are many decades old, but some may be barely a few years old… TITLE CARD: S.M. Rose was a vibrant Chevrolet dealership until sometimes in the 1970′s. Now the building houses a carpet emporium. [...]
You have to hand it to Nassau and Suffolk Counties…both of those counties mark many of their historic locales with blue and gold signs giving brief details of the building, when it was built, et cetera. Queens used to have quite a few of them, too…these days there are only a couple of the older [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Queens Richmond Hill Woodhaven
9th Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen between West 42nd and West 57th Streets, is known for restaurants showcasing cuisines from around the globe…European, Asian, Caribbean, you name it. On a recent walk south on 9th, I wasn’t particularly hungry and so skipped all the restaurants and bistros, and instead snapped photos of all the terrific signage to be [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Hell's Kitchen Manhattan
Long before the “humpbacked” street signs showing cross streets were installed on cast-iron lamps in the 1910s…long before porcelain, enamel and aluminum embossed signs appeared in the 1950s…and long before color-coded vinyl and aluminum signs appeared around 1964 (the green and white successors of which still dominate around town) … there were street signs chieseled onto building corners. [...]
I was staggering around the Briarwood-Jamaica border a few weeks ago (in July 2008) ignoring the drizzle and humidity and getting images for a possible Briarwood page and picking up possible ideas for a long-planned Jamaica page when I spotted some unusual sights and signs along Jamaica Avenue, which I had earlier chronicled in its Brooklyn stretch late [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Jamaica Queens
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY Correspondent Once upon a time, telephone customers were assigned alphanumeric telephone numbers. For example, the numbers were such as FOundation 8-3556 (now 368-2556), MOnument 2-2491 (now 662-2491) or NEvins 8-3886 (now 638-3886). The letters and first digit designated a certain geographic area and were referred to as exchanges. Numbers beginning with FOundation [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan telephone exchanges
Once upon a time, telephone customers were assigned alphanumeric telephone numbers. For example, the numbers were such as FOundation 8-3556 (now 368-2556), MOnument 2-2491 (now 662-2491) or NEvins 8-3886 (now 638-3886). The letters and first digit designated a certain geographic area and were referred to as exchanges. Numbers beginning with FOundation were in the vicinity of Lenox [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan telephone exchanges
Your webmaster never runs out of ForgottenMaterial. That’s how vast New York City is. Unfortunately, lately the bulldozers seem to be knocking down things faster than Forgotten New York can chronicle any of their historic or unusual aspects. Ideally, I’d have unlimited time to gad about town with a camera, but I am at a [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: drugstores Harper's
Mike Tyson wears a Mao tattoo. Thousands wear T-shirts depicting Che Guevara. (Dozens wear the Forgotten NY T-Shirt). Communist ideology has produced totalitarian governments that enslaved and murdered millions throughout the decades, but there are still people who keep the dream hanging on. Ah well. FNY isn’t a political site; Lord knows we have a lot of [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Allerton Bronx Manhattan Upper West Side
The Golden Age of NYC Neon has come and gone. Believe it or not, the noble gas (since it combines with other elements only reluctantly, in lab conditions) is fairly rare on Earth, being available only in trace form in the atmosphere. If gathered in sufficient quantity it is a red-orange tangerine color. Most commercial [...]
Acting on a report from a ForgottenFan that the two remaining Ocean Parkway milestones (seen on this page) at Avenue P and Neptune Avenue had been removed, on Christmas Eve 2006 I jumped on an F train and headed, in alarm, for Midwood. Thankfully both the nearly 150-year-old markers are still there, although if the [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island
There’s an entire subculture of people who follow trains around or are fascinated by them. In England, they’re called “trainspotters” and here in NYC, there are a group of rabid fans that are known even among themselves as “foamers.” They know how to recognize every piece of “equipment” in the system. Your webmaster is not quite [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
A slice of history form the 1940s was revealed on 8th Avenue and 43rd Street in Hell’s Kitchen in late November when the old facade of the Dixon Cafeteria was revealed. A jeans store had occupied this space previously, and it was being converted to the new 8th Avenue Pavilion. As David Dunlap put it [...]
New York has a marvelous collection of neon signs, and while we’ve heretofore collected scads of them on previous Signs pages we’ve never previously done a Neon Nights page, when the signs are doing what they were born to do. Your webmaster’s Canon Powershot S1 IS is ill-equipped for night photography. That’s why you call [...]
Forgotten Fan Steve Fallon has discovered an isolated flock of DONT WALK/WALK signs, apparently the last of their species, in an isolated corner of the Bronx. These may be the only ones still remaining in New York City; all others were replaced beginning in 1999 by signals I call the Hand (red) and the Man [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: lamps Stoplights
above: West 4 Street near 7th, Greenwich Village Maniacally busy schedule this weekend. Finishing a chapter for another book, helping a friend pack for a move, leading a ForgottenTour. Too much for your rapidly aging webmaster. Time to relax and put together a page of mindless drivel. “What’s the difference from any other week?” you ask. I am [...]
Before modern efficiencies, milk and milk products were done on a local scale. Eventually due to New York City’s swelling population, larger facilities were needed. There were many private companies filling that demand, but by 1930 three dairy companies dominated the dairy scene. They were the United States Dairy Products Corp., Borden’s and Sheffield Farms. Most [...]
There are hundreds…perhaps thousands…of names over apartment house doors and building cornices all over town, memorialized for decades but known to no one. Of course, some are just made-up names thought impressive by the builders, but some commemorate wives, relatives, pets, companies…who can tell? Their names, at least, are known to passersby brefly as they [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: apartment houses Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan
Original 28, Part One Subway design reached its apotheosis in the original 28 subway stations, designed by architects George Heins and Christopher LaFarge, engineered and built by William Barclay Parsons and opened to the public on October 27, 1904. The original line ran from City Hall to 145th Street and is now a part of today’s [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan mosaics plaques
Like many things, the subways disappoint more often than not. The waits are too long, graffiti is creeping back again, the express won’t wait for passengers to cross the platform from the local, and token booth clerks, or rather station attendants, can bark more often than offer polite responses. A look at a 1967 report I [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan mosaics plaques
I WAS stalking around the Lower East Side, having been rebuffed in an effort to photograph the exterior of the Eldridge Street Synagogue (it’s covered with scaffolding during an ongoing renovation). I remembered I wanted to shoot the exterior of 97 Orchard Street, which the Lower East Side Tenement Museum maintains as a preserved slice [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Lower East Side Manhattan Orchard Street
Categorized in: Signs
IT’S not the only wayto tell you’re in a hipster neighborhood … the clothing and the hairstyles are a good tipoff…but one surefire method is the number of stickies and signs taped up all over every conceivable piece of street furniture. The lampposts, fire alarms, don’t walk signs and buildings are covered with a mix [...]
Tribeca– a neighborhood that I prefer to call the Lower West Side, which it was before it became a hipster and yuppie playground –has been raised from the dead in the past 30 years, as Independence Plaza and PS 234 have been constructed atop the former Washington Market. Let’s do a very quick assessment of [...]
BY MIKE EPSTEIN of satanslaundromat Everyone knows about Kentucky Fried Chicken, lately known as KFC, whose hundreds of franchise locations in New York City make sure chicken and biscuits are never too far away. But KFC tends to stick to middle-class neighborhoods and busy commercial streets, leaving broad swaths of the city under-chickened. Uncountable entrepreneurs [...]
THE Lower East Side of cheap clothing bins, wholesale bargains and sweatshops is vanishing, as Chinatown expands east into its southern section (between, say, Delancey and Canal) and hipsters and yuppies infiltrate its northern flank, between Delancey and Houston. The LES, though, is still very much a bargain clothing enclave, though, and for some reason, [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Manhattan. Lower East Side
YOU NEVER KNOW where you’re going to find inspiration for Forgotten NY pages. One of the interviewees in Gothamist in September 2004 was columnist/novelist Amy Sohn, and she slipped in this remark: The F [is my favorite subway line]. It was the first train I spent a lot of time on when I moved into my very first post-grad apartment, [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens
photo: Rachelle Bowden The Bethesda Fountain and Terrace, at the north end of Central Park’s Mall at about 72nd Street, has long been a focal point and a favorite meeting place in the park. Emma Stebbins’ statue, Angel of the Waters, is named for an angel in the Gospel of John who touched the waters [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Central Park graffiti Manhattan
Insurance attorney Lawrence Rogak of Oceanside, Long Island, has been collecting old signs and NYC arcana for many years. Recently, he invited your webmaster to his law office for a tour of the collection. MTA roll signs are mounted throughout the office. They are from the 1967-1978 period when color coding was first used in [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn fire hydrants Manhattan Staten Island
You’re not supposed to call it 6th Avenue, you know. 6th Avenue has a rather involved history. It has been extended both northward and southward and has been renamed twice! In 1945, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia renamed Sixth Avenue along its entire length south of Central Park “Avenue of the Americas.” Some histories indicate it was done in [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: 6th Avenue Greenwich Village Manhattan Midtown Soho
The streets of New York bear continued witness to the many failed political campaigns of years past. Though they’ve lost, they live to challenge another day. And, their campaign signage is still there just in case they do! On this Forgotten NY page, we’ll see just a few. Rick Lazio waves to supporters during his [...]
A walk in the neighborhoods of any of the five boroughs reveals the practical and pragmatic philosophy…’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ You’ll see some signs that have been in place for fifty years or more, serving generations of customers, or some that still serve their now-deceased concerns… College Bakery, Court Street, Cobble Hill, [...]
There’s no real story here. But for years, I’ve noticed that many liquor stores in the five boroughs have the same signage they must have had decades ago…whether they’re ceramic, painted signs or my favorite, NEON. It must just be a matter of the signs doing the same job they’ve done for many years doing [...]
“Ok, we’re back and here it comes for ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Which former Joey Bishop sidekick, cookbook author, singer and fitness video auteur not only has the most popular show on ABC in decades, but his very own street in the Bronx?” A. Sonny Fox; B. Durward Kirby; C. Robert Q. Lewis; D. Regis Philbin? [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Regis Philbin
Back in the 1940s, every once in awhile, subway cars and stations would become sort of unkempt, and people could be less than courteous. Maybe there’d be a candy wrapper on the platform. Maybe a gent would forget to hold a door for a lady. And shockingly, every so often, someone would try to sneak [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan signs
Just as New York City’s street signs have evolved and changed over the years, so have its one-way signs, which have undergone a three-part metamorphosis in the years I have been observing their design. Each change has made the one-way sign, a vital element in traffic control, more and more visible for motor vehicles. It’s [...]
At first glance, the brick building at 6th Avenue and 24th Street doesn’t appear to be all that unusual, other than the presence of the longtime strip joint Billy’s Topless on the bottom floor. But before going inside to ogle the girls, take a look at the two signs chiseled into the building on the corner, and [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Madison Square Manhattan
The familiar red fire alarm box that has been a fixture on every other street corner in New York City is being phased out, with many of them being disconnected in many neighborhoods. The city has decided that calling 911 on a cellphone is the best response when a fire breaks out. The Fire Department of New [...]
Categorized in: Signs
On this page, we’ll take a look at some of the unusual sights in the subways that don’t fit into any other category… The 181st Street station (IND, A line) is unusual for a couple of reasons: first, it is among the deepest subway stations in the system, and second, it has this rather unique and [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan
Some NYC subway stations actually have above-ground station buildings. Quite frequently these houses will appear at subway stations that have been parts of actual railroad lines in the past, such as the D line between Sheeepshead Bay and Avenue H, or the #5 between 180th St. and Dyre Avenue. Other times, though, a station house was placed at a [...]
One of the great joys of the NYC subway system is that so much of its rich heritage is still on display for all to see. The preservation of its ancient terra-cotta platform signs is already well-documented. Here, we’ll take a look at the various ways the city marks subway stations at street level. The removal of [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
On this page we’ll show you a couple of ancient signs that pointed you to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, as well as a few ancient oddities that can’t be classified in any one section. This tiled sign points to the PATH train in the IND station at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue. The PATH, which stands for [...]
This sign, one of two located on the mezzanine of the IRT East 149th Street Station where the 2,4 and 5 lines meet, points the way to the New York Central Lines, today’s Metro-North. However, there is no Metro-North station at the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street; the closest station is the Melrose station, 12 blocks [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan
Signs on subway platforms sometimes have a way of preserving for posterity the former names of streets under which they ran, or former names of station stops. This is especially true in Queens, along the 7 line: 33rd (Rawson St), 40th St (Lowery St), 46th St (Bliss St), 52nd St (Lincoln Ave) and 69th St (Fisk [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Queens
NYC stoplight design has pretty much been stuck in neutral since the 1960s, when cylindrical posts holding three-light stoplights as well as WALK/DONT WALK signs first appeared on street corners, joining the more massive guy-wired lamps at major corners that first appeared in the 1950s. This page will take a look at the stoplight posts [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Lamps Tagged with: Auburndale Central Park Far Rockaway Forest Hills Grand Central Terminal Manhattan Ozone Park Queens St. Albans
In a very old section of Queens now called West Maspeth, formerly called Laurel Hill, can be found an old house on the corner of the two streets formerly known as Clifton Avenue (46th Street) and Waters Avenue (54th Road). The house has two very old street signs carrying the streets’ old names. (12/97) Waters Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Laurel Hill Queens
Scattered throughout the five boroughs are the remnants of the previous generation of street signs that predated the familiar green and white signs of today. Porcelain signs featuring raised letters were installed in the 40s and 50s. I’ve seen most of them in Brooklyn, but I recall some in the Bronx and Staten Island as [...]
