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I’ve been asked to cover locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. Through the partnership, American [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx City Island
I’ve been asked to cover three locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. Through the partnership, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: East Village Manhattan
I’ve been asked to cover three locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. Through the partnership, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens
I’ve been asked to cover three locales selected by Partners in Preservation, an organization sponsored by American Express that, in a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic locales across the country. After six years in existence, Partners in Preservation has selected New York as its focus in 2012. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Meadows. statues Queens
I don’t believe I have ever mentioned my college previously on Forgotten New York during the 13 years since 1999 that I have been producing this, your website chronicling the ‘infrastructure of a lost metropolis.’ Between 1975-1980 I attended St. Francis College, which is now pretty much a business school, but in that era was [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Two major streets named Greenwich pass through the lower west side neighborhood they are named for, Greenwich Village. One, Greenwich Street, begins at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Edgar Street (Manhattan’s shortest through street) and runs north to Gansevoort and 9th Avenue in the Meatpacking, interrupted by the World Trade Center site between Liberty and [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks
In early 2010, just as spring was beginning to spring, I ambled slowly and haltingly north on Berry Street, the only one of Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s major ‘north-south’ (in general; streets wind around to match the overall East River shoreline here) to be called a “street” not an Avenue. Before the 1900s or so, Williamsburg’s streets [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
BY SERGEY KADINSKY and KEVIN WALSH Collect Pond Park, a public space between Lafayette and Centre Streets and north of Leonard, has been called one of the worst public spaces in downtown New York, with a smattering of benches and trees surrounding broken concrete. It lies atop one of New York’s foremost sources of fresh [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes
There was a time in this fair city when Sixth Avenue did not run all the way south to Tribeca. In fact, for about the first century of its existence, until about 1928, Sixth Avenue ran north from the obscure intersection of Carmine Street and Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village. The coming of subway lines [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: 6th Avenue Soho
New York City opened up a second section of its only major rail to trails project, the former West Side Freight Railroad (popularly called the High Line) in June 2011 from West 20th to West 30th Street, leaving only a short section from West 30th to West 34th undeveloped. The city does hope to open that remaining section [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Subways & Trains Walks Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan Railroads
WAYFARING: 5 BRIDGES TOUR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Park Avenue When Eva G abor sang, “Darlin, I love ya but give me Park Avenue” she didn’t mean its lengthy Bronx stretch, which meanders along both sides of the Metro North tracks from the Major Deegan Expressway north to Third (not 3rd) Avenue and East 189th [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Harlem Manhattan Mott Haven Park Avenue
As many have guessed, I walk on the periphery in many arenas. In the spring and summer of 2010 and 2011, I maintained an ongoing survey of the Queens-Nassau line and, as mentioned on the Part 1 Little Neck page, today’s Queens-Nassau line was originally in mid-Queens and was originally a town line that was [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks
Over the course of six years I wound up taking two different batches of photos on 2nd Avenue between Houston Street and 34th. Like the Bowery, which it (sort of) parallels for a few blocks, it is now the theater for a new round of gentrification that promises to erase some of its unique quality. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: East Village
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Scenes Tagged with: 5th Avenue Brooklyn
BY GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY Correspondent The banking industry has gone through many changes. Look around. Twenty years ago if you had an account at Westminster Bank and keep it active, you would have automatically been a Fleet Bank customer. If you continued with Fleet, you would have instantly become a Bank of America customer. [...]
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Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: 9th Avenue Manhattan Meatpacking
If there is a glaring weakness in the FNY canon it’s upper Manhattan. For whatever reason I have not spent enough time north of Grand Army Plaza or Columbus Circle. To rectify things somewhat, I meandered up Amsterdam Avenue from Verdi Square to Cathedral Parkway in August 2010 and then wavered down 116th Street from [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Amsterdam Avenue banks Manhattan neon
I stumbled desultorily through the lost neighborhood of a vanished youth, a broken man with broken teeth. When I visit Bay Ridge these days it is mostly to visit my dentist, and work has been endless this year, with two cracked incisors, a crown falling out, an impacted wisdom tooth, and other work too gruesome [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn forts
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
From the ForgottenBook: Mosholu Parkway is among the many Native American place names that have been woven into the city’s fabric. Mo-sho-lu, or “smooth stones” was the Algonquin name of a rural brook running through the heart of what became the Bronx’ Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale neighborhoods. In 1888, Mosholu Parkway was laid out as [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Fordham Norwood Pelham Bay
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
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Kensington Windsor Terrace
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
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Auburndale Bayside Queens
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Broadway Manhattan
Despite having both its east and west ends chopped off in various bouts of urban renewal, Duane Street abides nicely. When it was first laid out around 1800, give or take a few years before or after, Duane Street ran from the confluence of New Chambers and Chatham Streets, curving nothwest and then running west [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
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
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 today’s Jamaica Avenue in [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
Bank windows at Maspeth Federal Savings Bank at Grand Avenue and 69th Street are featuring the very first Newtown Historical Society exhibit, A Walk Down Flushing Avenue in 1929. The exhibit runs December 21, 2009 through February 27, 2010. New York in the 1920s and 1930s is surprisingly well-documented and archived — the City photographed [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Maspeth Queens
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
A few weeks after my trip to Far East Williamsburg, I had a hankering for roughly the same territory, but this time, a little further west, where there is somewhat more of a human presence. I settled on walking down Manhattan Avenue and up Graham, in what is mostly east Williamsburg, though not far east, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods 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
In a borough that ruthlessly changed most of its street names to numbers beginning in the 1910s (beginning in Woodhaven, actually) there are, interestingly, still pockets of streets named in alphabetical order scattered throughout. There’s Elmhurst (Aske through Macnish); East Elmhurst (Butler through Humphreys); Rego Park (Asquith Crescent through Fitchett Street); Forest Hills (Austin through [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens
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
Riverdale, in the northwest Bronx between approximately West 246th Street on the south, the Yonkers city line on the north, the Henry Hudson Parkway and Riverdale Avenue on the east and the Hudson River on the west (and by the communities of North and South Riverdale) is one of the city’s most piquant, and most [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
In 2005 FNY did a 2-part survey of Queens Boulevard, a borough aorta running from Queens Plaza, the landing point of the Queensboro Bridge, all the way to Jamaica. Looking at that page again, I gave its liveliest stretch surrounding the elevated viaduct in Sunnyside short shrift. I hope to alleviate that with today’s page. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
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
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
The interesting thing is, Linden Place begins extraordinarily promisingly — as you begin at Northern Boulevard, you find yourself at several centuries-old landmarks that have somehow, somehow survived in Flushing despite its relentless overurbanization over the decades. The moment you start walking north on Linden Place, though, you quickly find yourself in what can alternately [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing 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
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 lampposts [...]
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
New York City borders on an ocean, several straits and a tidal estuary (the Hudson River). This propitious location has given rise to over 400 bridges, including two of the four remaining rectractile bridges in the USA (Carroll Street in Brooklyn and Borden Avenue in Queens); High Bridge, the oldest bridge over the Harlem, favored [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan Harlem Mott Haven
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Kips Bay Manhattan
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
By GARY FONVILLE Washington Heights is ideally situated in New York City.†Depending on driving conditions, a motorist can whisk westward to New Jersey across the George Washington Bridge in minutes. The George Washington Bridge Bus Station is located near the A train where thousands of commuters can go to the many suburban communities in New [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Art Deco Manhattan
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 End of the Line The northern end of the IRT 7th Avenue line, the West 242nd Street Station, serves the #1 local. An unfortunate quirk of the 7th Avenue IRT is the fact that it is all local above the 96th Street station. The situation is alleviated somewhat by wide spacing [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Broadway Bronx Riverdale
All five boroughs have a Main Street, there are some streets you might think are in the wrong borough, and all five have a Broadway. The Bronx’ Broadway, though, is an extension of Manhattan’s Broadway, which has existed from antiquity first as an Indian trail that ran the length of Manhattan Island, then as a [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Broadway Bronx Riverdale
BY SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten NY contributor The origin of the Flushing River predates the Pleistocene Ice Age, when the Hudson River flowed into the Atlantic Ocean using the Harlem River and Flushing River streambeds. For thousands of years, the line between the planet’s northern ice cap and terra [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens rivers
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
Categorized in: Street Scenes
Everyone at Shea Stadium on September 28, 2008, except members of the Florida Marlins — over 55,000 people — were hoping that the date would not mark the final game at Shea Stadium of Flushing Meadows, Queens. The Marlins, however, prevailed 4-2, ending hopes for any more post-season baseball at the 45-year old bucket of [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Flushing Queens stadiums
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
BY JEREMIAH MOSS Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York In the fall of 2007, the old, ramshackle, idiosyncratic newsstands that long graced our city’s streets began to vanish, replaced by “ticky tacky boxes,” the identical steel and glass street furniture brought to New York by the CEMUSA company of Spain. When their task is completed, they will [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan newsstands
Continued from Page 2 Home stretch Green-Wood Cemetery zigs another zag at the “trintersection” of McDonald Avenue, 10th Avenue and 20th Street (above left). The architecture here begins to be more interesting as older Park Slope housing stock begins to make itself seen. There are a couple of interesting items a block over at 10th [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope Windsor Terrace
Continued from Part 1 A Lost Railroad Between 1954 and 1975 the right-of-way between 37th and 38th Streets was partially occupied by an elevated railroad that served as a shuttle between the West End line and the Culver Line (now the F train). The tracks themselves were once part of the Culver, which ran from [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope Windsor Terrace
Despite the fact that ForgottenTours 24 (in April 2006) and 29 (in April 2007) have taken place in Green-Wood Cemetery (and there are likely more tours upcoming) I have yet to write a definitive FNY page on the vast enclave, probably because it would take multiple pages to do it justice — the sheer details, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope Windsor Terrace
In January 2008 I was perusing an old Hagstrom map (yes, I do that for fun). The old Hagstrom, before the company digitized the entire NYC map, preserved some archaisms and oddities that are often worth investigation. For example, in the Bronx (either in Allerton or Bronxdale; it’s on the borderline) at Mace and Bronxwood, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Bronxdale
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 [...]
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 [...]
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
I’m not sure when I first visited the Cheyenne Diner — it must have been before ForgottenTour 12 in Hell’s Kitchen gathered there (left) in May 2003; it must have been while I worked at the World’s Biggest Store between April 2000 and October 2004. The Cheyenne is closing, at least in its present [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: diners Manhattan Penn Station
BY SERGEY KADINSKY With the exception of Forest Hills Gardens, the Rego Park Crescents, and Corona Park, most of ?Rego Park, Forest Hills, and ?Corona are divided into a rectangular street grid, imposed in the 1920s. Prior to the grid, the future Rego Park and Forest Hills were separated from Elmhurst and Corona by Horse [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Corona Elmhurst Queens rivers
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
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 13th Street Greenwich Village Manhattan
For such a narrow spit of land, the Rockaway Peninsula is home to many separate communities: Neponsit, Belle Harbor, Rockaway Park, Rockaway Beach, Arverne, Edgemere, Bayswater, and where it meets the rest of Long Island, Far Rockaway. Beach 116th Street is the main street of Rockaway Park, extending two short blocks from Beach Channel Drive [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Queens Rockaway Park
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
The ghost of George Washington is all over New York City. There he is taking the oath of office at Federal Hall at Wall and Nassau Streets…he’s bidding farewell to his charges at Fraunces Tavern…he’s on horseback in Union Square and at the Williamsburg Bridge…two of him at Washington Square Arch…wearing his Masonic apron in [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Downtown Manhattan Tribeca
So far September 2007 has proven much cooler than October 2007, which has 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
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Kips Bay Manhattan Penn Station Queens Triborough Bridge
Like many other long-time ForgottenFans, Martin Langfield has an almost obsessive enthusiasm for the hidden nooks, crannies and mysteries of New York. That definitely comes through in his new novel, an unusual thriller set in Manhattan. In this guest article, Martin, husband of Newyorkology editor and ForgottenFan Amy Langfield, describes one of the true-life NY [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Central Park Manhattan
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
Your webmaster will say it right away: I’m not a porno fan and have never bought a magazine, frequented the video shops or the theatres when the Deuce was in full putrescence. Not even the Sports Illustrated swim suit issue. Why not? Well, there’s that objectification of women thing, though many women have no problems [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: 8th Avenue Hell's Kitchen Manhattan
Corridor parks…long, narrow strips of green that go on for block after block between two streets, are relatively rare in NYC. The Bronx has two lengthy ones on either side of Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, Kissena Corridor Park in Flushing and Fresh Meadows, and perhaps even Eastern and Ocean Parkways in Brooklyn can come under [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
Things took a turn for the bizarre in Maspeth when, after a July 1st, 2007 rally calling for the city takeover of St. Saviour’s Church to create a public park that would preserve the structure and add much-needed green space to the neighborhood…the property’s developer, Maspeth Development LLC, sent in the chainsaws and cut down [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Maspeth Queens st. Saviour's Church
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
We’ve heard it all before…rapacious developers threaten to eliminate one more piece of New York City history’s puzzle. In the case of the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church on 4th and Ovington Avenues in Bay Ridge, however, the picture is muddied by the fact that it is the church’s own pastor who has conracted with [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn
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
46th Street and 54th Road I SERIOUSLY doubt that half of any New York City guidebooks even mention the two areas in southwest Queens we’ll visit today, ensconced on either side of Calvary Cemetery just east of Greenpoint, north of Ridgewood and in the middle of exactly nowhere. Surprises, however, can be squeezed from these unknown [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Blisville Calvary Cemetery Laurel Hill Queens
Greenpoint Savings Bank, Manhattan Avenue and Calyer St. Forgotten aspects of the Garden Spot of Brooklyn. KNOWN as the “garden spot of Brooklyn”, an eponym bestowed by theBrooklyn Eagle many years ago, Greenpoint is Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, separated from Long Island City by Newtown Creek. It is the place where the country’s first ironsided warship, the Monitor, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods One Shots Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Metropolitan Avenue, 1976 – Photo by Middle Village artist Doug Leblang By CHRISTINA WILKINSON Forgotten NY correspondent THE Williamsburgh-Jamaica Turnpikewas completed in 1814 and operated as a toll road between the towns of Williams-burgh in Brooklyn and Jamaica in Queens, two major centers of trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. By 1820, the part [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Middle Village Queens
The last of Ravenswood’s farmhouses, seen on the title card, was torn down in the unstoppable name of development in mid-2004. It stood at 31st Drive and 12th Street. NEVERMORE will there be any more farms in Ravenswood, a tight section of western Queens arrayed along the East River between Keyspan’s Big Allis generating plant, just south of the [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Long Island City Queens Ravenswood
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca
By CHRISTINA WILKINSON A REMOTE area in western Queens, filled with woods, swamps and freshwater pools, the town of Fresh Ponds was part of the land chartered by the Dutch West India Company in 1642. Cypress Hills Street (formerly ‘Old Fresh Pond Road’), which starts in Brooklyn at its southern end, was the progenitor of present-day [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Long Island City Queens Ravenswood
WHILE BEGINNING to prepare this week’s foray into irrelevance, I was on the horns of a slight dilemma. I had ventured into one of my favorite parts of town, Long Island City and Hunters Point, on several Sundays this past year, both with Christina as my guide and without, so I had a big backlog of both LIC [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Long Island City Queens
BOSTON may be known as the “Hub of the Universe” but the south Bronx has its very own Hub where four roads converge: East 149th Street and Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues, while Westchester Avenue begins its journey to Pelham Bay Park just a block to the north. Arrayed along Third is one of the [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: 3rd Avenue Bronx Wesychester Avenue
By CHRISTINA WILKINSON MOST OF US CAN name famous generals of the American Revolution and the Civil War. But how many of us can name those who served in between? During his time, Winfield Scott was considered by many to be the world’s greatest general. He served in the Army for 53 years, and was the longest [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Queens Winfield Woodside
I can’t stay away from Coney Island for long. There’s just so much left over from the old days…good and bad…that it’s a Forgotten NY treasure trove. Yet, more and more of the old Coney seems to disappear year after year. So, summer after winter, winter after summer, I’m back. Above, Coney had a Playland too, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island
OUR EXPLORATIONS TODAY take us to a hilly, verdant corner of the Bronx that has had many names, yet no one knows precisely what they mean. Spuyten Duyvil is tucked into the corner of the Bronx at the Hudson and Harlem Rivers, first stop beyond Marble Hill, that strange piece of Manhattan that resides on the [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Spuyten Duyvil
Revere Sugar Refinery, a Red Hook landmark for decades, was demolished in 2007. “It’s hot in the poor places tonight.” SO SAYS Jeff Tweedy on Wilco’s 2002 LP Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I thought the lyric was apropos to Red Hook’s situation…after decade after desolate decade, the western Brooklyn neighborhood is now in line to get some high-income spillover [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Red Hook
Lost opportunities. Blown chances. Once again, I’ve been cheated out of a vintage dining experience. I’d always been curious about, and wanted to take in a meal at, Brooklyn’s famous Gage & Tollner, which had been in business since 1879 and had occupied this same spot on Fulton Street, a couple of doors down from Smith, since [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes
Part Three in a series exploring NYC’s boundaries with other municipalities. Third in the series: Queens’ Far Rockaway FAR ROCKAWAY is a Miss Havisham-esque doyenne whose beauty has long-since faded. No border between New YorCity and any surrounding community could be more stark: this is where the suburban ritziness of Nassau County’s Five Towns (Inwood, Hewlett, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Far Rockaway Queens Rockaways
(Apologies to the late great Joey Ramone for that ridiculous pun) Commuters hustling through the connecting passageway that connects the IRT #7 and the various 6th Avenue IND lines at 42nd Street take little notice of the historical plaques that are mounted on the wall. One of them presents this strange scene of 5th Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Croton Aqueduct High Bridge Manhattan
Auto traffic rolling pedal-to-the-metal on busy Shore Road and Hutchinson River Parkway, up in Pelham Bay Park near the Westchester Line, pass a couple of stolid landmarks that represent the area’s close connection to the Revolutionary War. Photo: Donald Gilligan There’s a large boulder on the side of Shore Road. It looks as if it [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay Park
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
Since Alexander Hamilton founded the Bank of New York in the late 1700s, there have been hundreds of different banks flourishing in NYC. Some lasted for decades, only to ultimately founder, and others were swallowed up by larger ones. My mother worked for Manufacturers Hanover Trust, which was itself an amalgamation of three other banks, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: banks Bronx
In the early years of the 20th Century, dozens of theatres proliferated in the main streets and side streets alike in all five boroughs, featuring live entertainment in the vaudeville and burlesque eras, and later on, movies. Vaudeville survived till World War II, and one-film movie theatres hung on until the 1970s, later killed off [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx movie theaters
I sometimes hear the musical question, so what was at JFK Airport before JFK was built? Well, there was something there, though not a whole lot. Before the 1940s, the huge area that became home to the airport was basically a big marsh with creeks running though it, with small settlements dotting occasional roads that ran through the marsh. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Hamilton Beach Queens Ramblersville
“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: Neighborhoods Signs Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Regis Philbin
But we are, Dorothy. There’s a section in Manhattan with winding, quiet streets, country villas, and gently sloping hills a lifetime away from the traffic choked gridiron and honking horns usually characterized with Manhattan. It’s not Greenwich Village, not on Roosevelt Island and certainly not Central Park. In fact, it’s not on the island of Manhattan at all [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Manhattan Marble Hill
Cornelius McCracken, the president of New York University, had a peach of an idea back in 1901. He would place a classical arcade on one of the highest points in the Bronx, from which there are spectacular views of Manhattan and beyond, the Palisades of New Jersey. He would honor great Americans in the fields [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx City College Hall of Fame
Scattered throughout New York City are streets that are composed entirely of steps, and steep ones at that. As a rule they were placed on hills that were too steep to build a road, yet in a rare concession to pedestrians, it was determined to allow them access to the streets denied to motor transportation. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bay Ridge Bronx Riverdale
Many people don’t know it but many of the buildings of the original village of Astoria still survive, in a tiny area west of 21st Street and north of Astoria Boulevard, and most are in terrific shape. Walking through the area is like taking a trip back to the mid-1800s, when may of these houses were [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Astoria Queens
Quick, what’s the oldest bridge in New York City that connects two boroughs? Most people would say it’s Brooklyn Bridge, which was finished in 1883. Actually, there’s a bridge 200 blocks north of it that’s almost 40 years older. High Bridge, which connects High Bridge Park near West 174th Street, Manhattan, and West170th Street in [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx High Bridge Manhattan Washington Heights
Coney Island, once America’s summer playground, has become just a shadow of its former self, despite grand plans for a new subway terminal here, or a new minor league ballpark there. I enjoy going to Coney in the winter, when there’s no one else around. I look for traces of Coney’s former glory. If you [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island
Vinegar Hill is about a four or five block square neighborhood in Brooklyn located just east of the Manhattan Bridge anchorage. It’s a charming little area marked by brownstone buildings and Belgian-block streets that haven’t yet been asphalted. To the left we see the nominal main drag, Hudson Avenue, on a cold winter Sunday. Other [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Vinegar Hill
