Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society
The Greater Astoria Historical Society, chartered in 1985, is a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community. We are dedicated to preserving our past and using it to promote our community's future.
Winter 2011-2012 has not been one for the frigid blasts and howling tempests that usually accompany the months of December and January as the weather has mostly been in the 40s. As luck would have it, when the Newtown Historical Society announced a march through Corona and tabbed Your Webmaster as the tour guide, the temperature hovered around [...]
WHEN: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011, 11:00 AM WHERE: Meet in front of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan. Take BMT R train to Whitehall or #1 to South Ferry. Weekend train routes are subject to the whims of the MTA. Check subwayweekender.com the morning of the tour to see what is running. HOW MUCH: [...]
Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace and Kensington, has proven to be a Forgotten favorite — this was the 3rd such Green-Wood tour in the series which here attains its 49th entry. The cemetery, instituted in 1838, is so vast that it’s impossible to do the same [...]
On September 17, 2011, over 40 ForgottenFans met at 2nd Avenue and East 125th Street to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Robert F. Kennedy Triborough Bridge (which opened to traffic on July 11, 2011) by walking nearly all of its pedestrian span, from Harlem to Wards and Randalls Islands and thence to Astoria, Queens. [...]
The Newtown Historical Society toured Maspeth, Queens on July 31, 2011, a day featuring uncommonly good weather for any tour led by Your Webmaster. The Newtown Historical Society was founded to educate the public about the history of the villages that comprised Newtown Township in Queens County, NY. Newtown Township stretched from the East River to the [...]
A few weeks after exploring the southern reaches of Woodside on ForgottenTour 40, the Newtown Historical Society and FNY turned north and dissected historical territory on Tour 42 (there was an intermission in Bushwick on Tour 41). Woodside, a bustling community centered at Roosevelt Avenue and 61st Street, was originally a part of Newtown, a larger colonial village. It [...]
So, what were 32 ForgottenFans doing gathered around a fenced rock in soggy Ridgewood on an October 2009 Saturday? They were standing alongside the marker that divided the ancient towns of Bushwick and Newtown, or so the story goes. In the first (to my recollection) ForgottenTour that spanned two boroughs, Forgotteners gathered at the Jefferson Street station on the [...]
ForgottenTours resumed for the first time since late summer 2008 on August 16, 2009 with a walk around Jerome Park Reservoir, the Bronx’s “Education Row.” Assisting your webmaster on this tour was Brooklyn Daily Eagle managing editor and veteran tour guide (notably for the old Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment) Raanan Geberer (left), whose recollections [...]
The confluence of decent weather and a ForgottenTour has been rare indeed. There was one string of about 9 or 10 Tours over a couple of years that featured uniformly overcast weather if not showers as well. All that changed for Tour 36 in Prospect Park on October 26, 2008. October usually features my favorite weather [...]
Forgotten Fans gather at two Type C 1910-vintage lamps flanking entrance of 1 Hanover Square downtown Well, your webmaster is never gonna get rich writing about lampposts, taking pictures of lampposts, or leading lamppost tours. This was the most sparsely attended ForgottenTour since Tour #4 in St. George, Staten Island, November 1999 — 3 people were on that one, [...]
ForgottenFans at Lady Moody House, Gravesend Neck Road, Gravesend, Brooklyn April 20, 2008: With a turnout that rivalled FNY’s most-attended tour, Brooklyn Between the Bridges in October 2003, over 50 ForgottenFans turned out on an overcast day with drizzle expected (after an extraordinary run of good weather for early ForgottenTours, clouds and rain have become an inevitability the [...]
September 16, 2007 actually dawned sunny and bright–extremely unusual conditions for a ForgottenTour. When things got started the atmosphere came to its senses and dark clouds rolled in to cover an unusually cool day for September in NYC with the temperature not budging higher than 65 degrees. ForgottenFans welcomed the change, though, after the usual lengthy [...]
ForgottenTours have been, for the past year and a half, typically held under threatening skies, but the weather for the scheduled Tour 31 on July 29, 2007 not only threatened, but delivered, forcing a move to the following Sunday, August 5th. It was perhaps the nicest day of the month so far and so, in a [...]
Anything Can Happen® on a ForgottenTour. There was the time we wound up in the Dominican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse in a downpour and ended up in a bar on Bainbridge Avenue, watching David Cone pitch a perfect game (Tour 2). We bumped into since-disgraced Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin at the Latimer House in Flushing, [...]
Well, your webmaster finally made the team picture after 29 ForgottenTours. Can you spot where I am?* As usual, despite sunny weather predicted all week, ForgottenTour Day turned out cloudy, chance of showers. At least on 2007′s Green-Wood Cemetery tour, I didn’t have any hecklers, like I did on the 2006 tour! 30 ForgottenFans and I investigated [...]
April 1, 2007, didn’t fool 48 ForgottenFans…second-most ever on a ForgottenTour (the prize goes to the 56 who turned up for Tour 14 in Dumbo, October 2003)…who turned up for FNY’s jaunt through Middle Village and Juniper Park. We were aided by FNY Correspondent Christina, the Queen of Queens, and Bob Holden, President of the Juniper Park Civic Association. [...]
Tour 26 occurred during an auspicious week in Forgotten NY-land….the release, at long last, of the Forgottenbook and a cover appearance for the site in Time Out New York! No one told the rain gods that weather for the tour was supposed to be sunny and bright, however, so it was under windy, threatening skies that Tour #26 commenced [...]
ForgottenTour 25, August 6, 2006, was our very first evening tour and went very well despite your webmaster’s same-day ascension and descension of his building’s steps 4 times to clean his apartment and spending six hours on his feet before, during and after the tour. This was ill-advised, since the following day a painful back ailment [...]
Forgotten Fans wave with Minerva In what was undoubtedly the best weather ever for a ForgottenTour (sunny and 68) forty Forgotten fans (and one heckler!) converged on Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery, a peaceful respite since 1838 as one of the first ‘rural cemteries’ or burial parks in America. Previously burials had been done in churches or in [...]
37 Forgotten fans turned out on a 65-degree November Sunday for ForgottenTour 23 in Roosevelt Island. Unlike last time at South Street Seaport when we were besieged by detours and transit delays, things got off on time and everyone was treated to fine weather and plenty of historic buildings and ruins… Many Forgotteners had never ridden on [...]
Forgotten Fans pose at the Wavertree, one of the Seaport’s museum ships, built in Southampton, England in 1885. Despite massive subway problems, the presence of the Breast Cancer Walk and the Indian Festival, Tour 22 in the South Street Seaport area went off without a hitch, albeit just a little late. All proceeds from this tour went [...]
Forgotten Fans at Kingsland Manor I’M NOT certain if I have ever made peace with living in Flushing. I moved here in 1993, to be closer to a long-gone job, and there always seems to be somewhere I’d rather be. Bay Ridge, where I came from, perhaps. Hoboken. Sunnyside Gardens. Bayside. Riverdale (where I turned down [...]
Tour 20 in April 2005 was host to about fifty Forgotten Fans in the land of your webmaster’s upbringing. Expected showers never appeared. This tour was lengthier than most, since Bay Ridge‘s sights are spread out over about 40 blocks, but that just made the rest and the eats after the tour that much better. Our tour [...]
T WAS A DAY with air so crisp, it almost broke off in your fingers. And there is no better weather than to explore the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fair remnants at vast Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on a day between the snowstorms. 40 Forgotten Fans had the same idea. Where’s Walsho? Alone at the Fair, awaiting Forgotteners. Photo: Larry [...]
Once again into the breach and this time, 40+ Forgotten Fans assembled at the 145th Street IND concourse on December 12th for our second mass invasion of Harlem, this time to Harlem Heights and City College. In the tradition of two past tours, we had a guest narrator, Forgotten Fan Sergio Kadinsky, handling the tour honors [...]
There’s a lot of Forgotten stuff the guidebooks want nothing to do with right under the noses of Wall Street brokers and Statue of Liberty-bound Iowans right down at the tip of Manhattan Island. We hadn’t done a Manhattan Forgottentour south of 34th Street so it was time for a Lower Manhattan march. A crowd of [...]
S.R. Smith Infirmary, New Brighton, Staten Island HEY, you missed a good one. Twenty Forgotten fans…a lower total than most recent tours…visited Tompkinsville and New Brighton, two of Staten Island’s more venerable small towns, seeing its collection of Victorian-era “gingerbread” mansions, unusual architecture, abandoned relics, and ending at Snug Harbor, originated by Robert R. Randall in the [...]
On ForgottenTour 16, Forgotten Fan Monica D. entered the abandoned S.R. Smith Infirmary in New Brighton, Staten Island and snagged some scenes of the gutted interior, risking her health in the process. I’m just glad she survived because I’ve been in some of these abandoned hulks, and not only do you face cave-ins, you also have [...]
In late 2003 I was sent some beautiful shots of the interior of the St. George Theater near the ferry in Staten Island, by Gregor and Elizabeth Way, who have been active in the preservation of the theater. Built in the late 20s, the St. George takes a back seat to no other magnificent movie palace [...]
March 21st, 2004: About thirty Forgotten Fans met in (extremely) windy Jamaica, Queens and toured a 4-acre, 350-year old cemetery and an over 250-year old mansion in the geographic center of Queens. Cate Ludlam, president of the Prospect Cemetery Association, shows off a hand-lettered tombstone from 1728. Cate has been involved with the cemetery, in which is interred [...]
On October 25, 2003, 56 Forgotten fans…our largest turnout to date…roamed through what used to be called Downtown Brooklyn, an industrial region blessed with spectacular views of two of the most spectacular bridges in the world. Follow us as we explore DUMBO, Vinegar Hill and Fulton Ferry. After two previous low-rated weather Forgotten Tours, we had [...]
Spring 2003′s relentless rain did not deter the busiest Forgottentour season to date on May 31, 2003 as nearly 40 Forgotten Fans set forth on a day of exploration in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a gritty outpost nestled between the Gowanus Expressway and the Buttermilk Channel. Film historian and freelance writer Mike Olshan was our Virgil in the [...]
HELL’S KITCHEN Conducted in glorious drizzle and rain, about 20 Forgotten fans visited several surprising scenes in Hell’s Kitchen, that formerly nefarious Times Square back yard running from about 34th Street north to 57th and from 8th Avenue to the Hudson. On this tour, Your Webmaster was demoted to a mere tourist as longtime Hell’s Kitchen [...]
On Sunday, April 27, 2003, twenty-five Forgotten fans arrived in Van Cortlandt Park at the end of the IRT #1 line and embarked on a voyage of discovery in Riverdale… Stopping first at the Van Cortlandt Park Station on the old New York Central PutnamBranch, we imagined what it would have been like to wait for [...]
I’ll admit it, I love Coney Island, and I wasn’t even there during its prime days of infamy, er, popularity, from 1920, when the BMT Subway arrived, till after World War II. For our tenth Forgottoners Tour, we took a walk on Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk and took a look at some of the attractions [...]
City Island, NY was the site of Forgottoners Tour #9. Located on a spit of an island in Eastchester Bay in the extreme northeast Bronx, City Island is a transplanted New England fishing village seemingly beamed into the New York Metropolitan area. Originally a part of Pelham, in Westchester County, City Island looks east to Long [...]
On October 28, 2000, one of the most beautiful days ever for a Forgotten tour, we met at the 215th Street station, one of the original IRT stations on its elevated section north of Dyckmen Street. But before meeting the other 20 Forgottoners (and one pooch), I made some observations on my own… The Dyckman Street [...]
Though Your Webmaster has resided in Flushing since 1993, I hadn’t yet taken advantage of its many historical dwellings and locales, many of which are unknown by Flushing’s thousands of residents. On a hot, humid June afternoon, a couple dozen Forgotten Fans and I decided to remedy the situation… No, this is not the next batch of “Survivor” [...]
Saturday, January 29th was sunny, cold and blustery, about what you’d expect on that date. Snow and ice crunched underfoot as over a dozen Forgotten Fans set out from the Lenox (Malcolm X Boulevard) Avenue and 125th Street IRT station. The Lenox Lounge displays the best in neon signs on the outside and the coolest jazz on [...]
In early November the Forgottoners Tour swung through Staten Island. In St. George, New Brighton, Grymes Hill and Stapleton we saw dozens of beautiful buildings dating back to the 1850s or earlier, climbed hills from which you could see mountains, and saw a few surprises along the way as well. People who ride the Staten Island Ferry [...]
In early fall some Forgotten Fans enjoyed a walk through Coney Island in which relics of its former glory and promises, perhaps, of its future regeneration were recorded. Our tour definitely had an offbeat aspect. Here’s some of what we got to see: The Coney Island Theater Building was built in 1925 and once housed a Loew’s [...]
What ads did Forgotten Fans find on a five-hour journey down Brooklyn’s Broadway? What ads DIDN’T they find? A recent walk by about a dozen intrepid Forgotten Fans down Broadway (turned out to be ForgottenTour #1) plunged the participants into a thoroughly fascinating land where advertisements and relics of the past 100 years rub elbows against [...]
