Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Every once in awhile I walk one of Manhattan’s cross streets because I find a number of things along them interesting. I don’t usually walk the entire street river to river, but sometimes that happens. I have done it for 53rd Street, 14th Street, 125th Street in Manhattanville and Harlem, 155th Street, and most recently, [...]
Categorized in: Walks
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 WAYFARING: Red Hook Louis Valentino Park and Pier are named for a hero fireman who spent his early years in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens. Valentino gave his life while searching for three injured firefighters in a Flatlands garage fire on February 5, 1996. The park is surrounded by ancient warehouse [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Walks
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Walks
Long Island University has a campaign (in 2013) called “Find Out How Good You Really Are.” When I went to college, I found out I wasn’t all that good. I persevered and finally got a diploma. Maybe I should have gone to City College — just the architecture alone might have been better inspiration. In [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Manhattanville Morningside Heights
Actually this walk features rather less wilderness than when I first did it in 1999. After reading Bruce Kershner’s Secret Places of Staten Island, a primer for the remaining wild areas all over the island, I sallied forth on several of the adventures written about in the book. One of the more fascinating ones was [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Bulls Head Heartland Village New Springville Richmondtown Staten Island
Continued from PART 1 Continuing my trip from Straus Square on the Lower East Side to Midtown’s Penn Station… WAYFARING MAP: Seward Park to Penn Station 222 Bowery just south of Prince might look a little out of place — there are not many Queen Anne-style 1884 brick buildings on this stretch, where many [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Litttle Italy Lower East Side Manhattan Noho Penn Station Union Square
I haven’t done as many long-form specials with as many as 100 pictures per page of late. In the Age of Twitter, people are increasingly impatient with these long treatises and tend to lose interest. Also, the winter winds play havoc with my tear ducts and I frequently have tears streaking down my face when [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Chinatown Little Italy Lower East Side Manhattan Noho Penn Station Union Square
Prepare to gape in awe when walking any street between Albemarle and Beverley Roads and Stratford Road and East 19th Street. You’ll find huge Victorian mansions of every conceivable size, color and style in these streets. This is no mere accident: one region, known as Prospect Park South, was developed by Syracusan Dean Alvord, who purchased [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks
There are a number of short streets along the East River from the Financial District northeast to Corlear’s Hook, where the East River turns north, called “slips.” I’ve pored over maps of other cities over the years, and in the United States at least, “slip” seems to be a unique appellation to streets in NYC, [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Walks Tagged with: Financial District Lower East Side Manhattan
After my Park Slope, Brooklyn 9th Street exploration in August 2012 I turned north on 7th Avenue and discovered why one of Brooklyn’ old nicknames was the City of Churches, later the Borough of Churches. (I call the Bronx the Borough of Apartment Houses.) There seems to be a classic 19th Century church every other [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope
Four auto traffic bridges connect Staten Island to the outside world. In order of construction, they are the Outerbridge Crossing (named for its engineer, not because it is in the outer reaches of NYC) the Goethals Bridge (opened the same day as the Outerbridge, 6/29/28), the Bayonne Bridge (11/15/31), and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (11/21/64). Though [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Walks Tagged with: Bayonne New Jersey Port Richmond Staten Island
When NYC was still subject to the British Crown there were a number of streets downtown named Queen, Duke, and other royal titles. Pretty much all of them were wiped off the map after the USA won independence for good and all in 1783 and the British evacuated the country and NYC in particular. Queen [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Financial District Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan’s side streets can be lined with ancient structures, but they have come to hide their antiquity well. In the go-go real estate world, busy, commercial neighborhoods call for the new, the now, the happening. Old signs are removed or covered with new vinyl signs lest things appear too aged. Storefronts are updated. Building [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks
The relentless heat of the summer of 2012 (every day was over 80 degrees — I would like to retire to a clime where daytime readings never exceed 70, which is a humane temperature) and the relentless anomie of joblessness have been playing on the white matter and slowly been rendering a madness resulting in [...]
Categorized in: Walks
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 GOOGLE MAP: WOODLAWN HEIGHTS TO RIVERDALE Where was I? At the confluence of 5 streets at one intersection: Webster Avenue, East 238th, East 240th/McLean Avenue and Bronx River Road, and Nereid Avenue if you count what the locals call the bridge over the Bronx River and its parkway. Heading west again [...]
In August 2012 I walked a convoluted route from the West 233rd Street station on the #2 elevated northwest, east and northwest again through Woodlawn Heights (or is it Woodlawn? I call the cemetery Woodlawn) southern Yonkers and northern Riverdale, one of the pleasanter walks in town–to a point, which I will explain later. The [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Westchester Woodlawn Heights Yonkers
In June 2012, on a weekday afternoon (I was, and at this writing am, still paying the penance for years of unpreparedness for the modern world by being unemployed) I braved the searing, unrelenting, inhumane heat in western Queens, were vegetation and the cooling cover of large trees is nearly absent, on a walk on [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens Sunnyside
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Richmondtown Staten Island
It had been quite awhile sine I had taken a long ramble in the Fifth Borough, apart from some wanderings from the ferry along Kill Van Kull to Snug Harbor, so I took a few hours in July 2012 to travel from Oakwood Heights through Lighthouse Hill and around again to Richmondtown, a location almost [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Lighthouse Hill Oakwood Heights Richmondtown Staten Island
I have always been fascinated by streets that dramatically change character from one end to the other, as well as change their level of traffic. There are a number of streets in NYC that start with just a trickle of traffic and build and build to a heavy volume, such as Staten Island’s Hylan Boulevard, [...]
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 In Part One of my quest to walk between both of Manhattan’s cable-stayed bridges, I meandered from Rockefeller University on the East River just north of the Queensboro (that is the only name I call that bridge) west through the Fifties, passing several unsung landmarks such as the Central Synagogue, DuMont Tower, [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Hell's Kitchen Manhattan Times Square
I have always had a soft spot for cable-stayed bridges, which resemble suspension bridges but feature towers to which are attached cables that support the traffic-bearing bridge deck. Though cable-stayed bridges were first conceived during the Renaissance period they have only come into their own beginning in the late 1970s. Some of the world’s most [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Hell's Kitchen Manhattan Theatre District
On a cloudy afternoon in March I took a bus to my old neighborhood at Sanford Avenue and 158th Street and walked through the area unofficially known as Boadway-Flushing as far as Bell Boulevard in Bayside. Though the area is nowhere near Queens’ Broadway, which runs from Long Island City to Elmhurst, the stretch of [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Auburndale Bayside Flushing
In late winter 2012 I was wandering around downtown Brooklyn, on Fulton, Duffield, and Livingston Streets. Fulton has undergone a change lately, as the venerable Fulton Mall, instituted in 1979, has undergone a remake with curved, Dystopian-looking light poles and updated signage and shelters. It had been frozen in time for about 30 years. The [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
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
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Astoria Lenox Hill Manhattan Queens
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Astoria Lenox Hill Manhattan Queens
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Today’s featured walk sent me from Bay Ridge after a dental appointment southeast and east through Sunset Park and Borough Park at the border of Kensington. Well-worn territory for me, and suffused with familiarity and memories…since I was born, raised and spent my first 35 years there. Still, I can always [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Borough Park Brooklyn Sunset Park
Today’s featured walk sent me from Bay Ridge after a dental appointment southeast and east through Sunset Park and Borough Park at the border of Kensington. Well-worn territory for me, and suffused with familiarity and memories…since I was born, raised and spent my first 35 years there. Still, I can always find some little-trodden ground [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Bay Ridge Borough Park Brooklyn Sunset Park
CONTINUED FROM PART 2 Since I’m the biggest square in town, I thought it would be appropriate to do a page, or set of pages, on the five major squares in Manhattan south of Central Park: Madison, Union, Stuyvesant, Tompkins, and Washington. (Yes I know I have left out Bryant Park and Greeley and Herald Squares, [...]
Categorized in: Walks
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Since I’m the biggest square in town, I thought it would be appropriate to do a page, or set of pages, on the five major squares in Manhattan south of Central Park: Madison, Union, Stuyvesant, Tompkins, and Washington. (Yes I know I have left out Bryant Park and Greeley and Herald Squares, [...]
Categorized in: Walks
Since I’m the biggest square in town, I thought it would be appropriate to do a page, or set of pages, on the five major squares in Manhattan south of Central Park: Madison, Union, Stuyvesant, Tompkins, and Washington. (Yes I know I have left out Bryant Park and Greeley and Herald Squares, which I’ll get [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Madison Square Union Square
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Steinway Mansion William Steinway’s mansion, on 41st Street, still stands on a high hill that has never been leveled, unlike the surrounding area. 41st Street still looks like a country lane. 41st Street, looking north from 19th Avenue, is totally nondescript — there are a couple of manufacturers and some storage [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
After chronicling Columbus Square at the Astoria Boulevard station on the Ditmars Boulevard Astoria el I found myself with a couple of spare hours on a brilliant August afternoon. Actually I had all the time in the world, as I was unemployed at the time. I never fully take advantage of a bad situation; when [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks
In October 2011 I walked through the mid-Bronx from the Grand Concourse to Parkchester, east through Mount Hope, Tremont, Belmont, Bronx Park South and West Farms, pretty much the center of the Bronx, a land sadly not visited by FNY as much as it should be. I consider the borough sort of “interconference”, in football [...]
Categorized in: Walks
I mean, one of these days, to walk 86th Street from the Narrows to Gravesend. It is the main east-west street in southwest Brooklyn, and contains many secrets of old. I grew up three blocks from 86th, and so, when communities were more tight-knit, I knew the butchers, the bakers and the candle stick makers [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bensonhurst Brooklyn
I’m quite familiar with Canarsie and Flatlands — these neighborhoods in southeast Brooklyn were quite accessible to the Bay Ridge boy just by bicycling east a few miles, which I did readily in my years before moving to Queens in 1992. While these neighborhoods look essentially the same as they did in the 1970s and [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Canarsie Flatbush Flatlands
On Thanksgiving Friday I decided to walk the Harlem River area from Yankee Stadium north into Inwood, the most northerly neighborhood on Manhattan Island. Understand, though, access to the Harlem River is limited, as it’s lined with warehousing, industry and the twin barriers of the Major Deegan Expressway and the NY Central, now Metro-North, Railroad. [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bronx High Bridge Inwood Manhattan University Heights
Greenwich Village features four streets that run northwest to southeast, in a sort of subgrid set off against Manhattan’s general grid which runs west to east. The four are Bedford, Bleecker, West 4th and Waverly Place. Greenwich’s Village’s grid is rather complicated, as there are two separate orientations of northwest-southeast streets. Grove, Barrow, Morton, Leroy, [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village
Just a short Walk today that was part of a longer walk, from downtown Brooklyn to the edge of Williamsburg. Today I will cover the short span of Hanson Place, which runs from the confluence of Flatbush and 4th Avenues to the confluence of Fulton Street and Greene Avenue — some of Brooklyn’s longest streets. [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Fort Greene
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Port Richmond West Brighton
Continuing my halting, wavering, and occasionally incoherent way up the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, the spine of the western Bronx broached in Grand Concourse Part 1, my first stop was the grand pasha of Bronx entertainment meccas, Loew’s Paradise and East 188th, just south of Fordham Road. Of the dozens of movie theatres in 20th [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bronx Fordham Grand Concourse
The Grand Concourse runs up the western end of the Bronx like a zipper. Unzip it and you will find Bronx past, present and future: the grand visions of a suburban borough for the wealthy, that turned into a gritty, urban superhighway from Yankee Stadium to Van Cortlandt Park. FNY has been covering the Concourse [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bronx Grand Concourse
If you have never heard of Finn Square, that’s perfectly understandable. In NYC parlance, a “square” can be any shape, and Finn Square is a triangle in Tribeca formed by the intersection of West Broadway and Varick and Franklin Streets. Officially, there’s no actual neighborhood called Finn Square, but in my opinion there’s enough distinctive [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Walks Tagged with: Finn Square Manhattan Tribeca
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
My pointless peregrinations along the Queens-Nassau line, through Little Neck, Bellerose/Floral Park, and Cambria Heights/Elmont then brought me to the undefended border of Rosedale and Valley Stream, where worlds of vastly similar appearances collide. The first thing you should know is that the web address given in the sign in this week’s title card is [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Queens Rosedale
New York is full of Unions – not only labor unions, but streets and squares called Union. While Manhattan’s Union Square was named in the 19th Century for the encounter of Broadway and Bowery Road (now 4th Avenue), the lengthy routes Union Avenue and Union Street in Brooklyn, Union Street and Turnpike in Queens, and Union [...]
Categorized in: Roads Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Gowanus Park Slope
Having made my way along the undefended and demilitarized Queens-Nassau Border in Little Neck (Part 1) and Bellerose and Floral Park (Part 2), and having noted a previous walk along the borderline along Jamaica Avenue-Jericho Turnpike, I then lit off just below the city line in a thicket of confusingly-named Nassau County communities called Floral [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bellerose Terrace Cambria Heights Elmont Nassau Queens
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 Street Scenes Walks
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Little Neck Queens
After having previously walked Jamaica Avenue from its beginnings in Brooklyn out to Lefferts Boulevard and then along its easternmost stretch (now known as Jericho Turnpike at the insistence of the local community board, which forced a name change in 2005, I thought I would more or less complete the route from downtown Jamaica out to [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bellerose Jamaica Queens Queens Village
Though Times Square has certainly changed since I was in school, St. Marks Place (opinions are divided over whether it gets an apostrophe) remains an epicenter of NYC counterculture – come – tourist trade, as Midwesterners, Europeans and Far Easterners flock there for an ‘authentic’ NYC experience. I have spent time on St. Marks in [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
During the same foray that produced the Eckford Street photos in April 2011, I was really there for a quick trip the length of Union Avenue. The avenue runs from the junction of Marcy and Flushing Avenue north to Driggs Avenue in McCarren Park, and if you look at the map, it forms the boundary [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint Williamsburg
Eckford Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, runs from Manhattan Avenue between Newton and Engert north to Greenpoint Avenue. According to the indispensable Brooklyn By Name (Benardo/Weiss, 2006) Eckford Webb was a founder of the Greenpoint shipyard Webb & Bell, formerly located at West and Green Streets. The firm built the wood caissons that anchored the Brooklyn [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
It’s about time I finished my Westchester Avenue walk, which I began in the summer of 2009 from Parkchester, the 1942 apartment complex created by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on the grounds of the former Catholic Protectory, an orphanage and “home for troubled boys” run by the Brothers of Christian Schools, which moved to [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bronx Hub Longwood Morrisania West Farms
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Former St. Ambrose parish house, Tompkins and Kosciuszko Street. General Thaddeus Kosciuszko (1746-1817) specialized in aiding uprisings — as a colonel and later brigadier general during the American Revolution, 1776-1783, where he aided the fortifications at Ticonderoga and arrayed impregnable defenses at Saratoga in New York; served as General Nathaniel [...]
Categorized in: Walks
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 The Road to Ridgewood At Jamaica and Euclid Avenues, a four-lane road, Cypress Hills Street, climbs the glacier-born hills, connecting the vast gulfs that comprise the Queens Cemetery Belt comprising seventeen cemeteries (a few of them located in Brooklyn). At this point we are still in the Borough of [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Cypress Hills Queens Ridgewood Williamsburg Woodhaven
Forgotten NY has blazed a trail of urban web photography and commentary for over a decade but sometimes I shudder when I think of the opportunities I missed out on. In 1998 Times Square was a wasteland in transition from the sleazy porn era to the shined up, Disneyfied tourist mecca that it became. They [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Harlem Manhattan Morningside Heights
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Coney Island Midwood Sheepshead Bay
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 WAYFARING: CONEY ISLAND TO MIDWOOD At East 14th Street, the BMT Brighton Line bridges over the Belt Parkway and in an unusual arrangement, a pedestrian walkway adjoins it, with barbed razor wire preventing miscreants from entering the tracks. Remnants of a previous lighting arrangement have been left in place, as these [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Coney Island Midwood Sheepshead Bay
A run of preternaturally sunny and mild November weather has allowed me to do some ForgottenWalks covering much of mid-and southern Brooklyn as well as western Manhattan, and all this will eventually show up in Forgotten NY. Today’s page found me taking the subway to the Atlantic Terminal area in downtown Brooklyn, from whence I [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights Downtown Brooklyn Park Slope
On a mostly overcast, heavily muggy late summer weekend afternoon I wandered lonely as a clown through the concrete fields of western Queens. I had an appointment at a saloon in Long Island City, but purposely arrived in Woodside on the LIRR a couple of hours early so I could indulge the wandering sickness for [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Hunters Point Long Island City Woodside
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
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Kensington Windsor Terrace
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Walks Tagged with: Queens Woodside
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
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 “Mellow Yellow” Donovan is actually saying he’s just mad about Frontine, but in 1960s transistor radio-squawk that was always rendered Fourteen, and I thought he liked teenagers, which wouldn’t have surprised me. Your webmaster has always been mad about 14th– East and West 14th, the first numbered street to go coast to coast — [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Meatpacking Union Square
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Port Richmond Staten Island
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
Has it been two years since I began my Bedford Avenue survey with a walk along its entire length from Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay north to its beginnings at Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint? It doesn’t seem that long, but there it is. This summer I finally completed that walk, in two sections, and I’ll [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Crown Heights Flatbush Leffets Gardens
Continued From Part 1 Ditmars Boulevard is interrupted for a couple of blocks between 82nd and 86th Streets, partly a consequence of the construction of LaGuardia, né Glenn Curtiss Airport, in the early 1930s. 23rd Avenue (left) skirts the southern boundary of the airport for a couple of blocks and is lit by dwarf [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
The name Ditmars, or Ditmas, appears more than once in the NYC street directory. The Bronx has a Ditmars Street in City Island, there’s a Ditmas Avenue in Kensington, namesake Ditmas Park and Brownsville, Brooklyn; and here in Astoria, Ditmars Boulevard, named in honor of Abram Ditmars, first mayor of Long Island City, NY who [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Queens
Brooklyn’s Court Street, named for the courthouse buildings downtown, runs from Montague Street and Cadman Plaza West (which was once Fulton Street and was shadowed by the rumblings of that street’s titular el until 1942) in a straight line to Gowanus Bay in Red Hook. It encompasses the hustle and bustle of downtown, the almost [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Cobble Hill
In Time Magazine this week (4/26/09) President Obama’s staffers say they think of the White House as a “living museum.” Sometimes things should be frozen right where they are, never to change. Detroit used to employ tens of thousands of people who made the best cars on the planet. The New York City waterfront used [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: St. Pauls Avenue Stapleton Staten Island
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Flushing Queens
Believe it or not Forgotten NY does get complaints. Well, one or two once in awhile. Many of them concern FNY’s stuck-in-1999 design. To your webmaster, RSS sounds like an auto parts store and twitter is what birds do. Others complain about underrepresentation of some neighborhoods. I will plead guilty in this — in ten [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Blissville Brooklyn Greenpoint Queens Sunnyside
Staten Island’s surviving Broadway is one of the main north-south streets of West New Brighton, running from Clove Road at St. Peter’s Cemetery generally north to Richmond Terrace. I say “surviving” because Staten Island has had a number of Broadways over the years, as this list by historian Steve Morse attests: there have also been [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Staten Island West Brighton
Among New York City’s numbered avenues, 1st through 12th, 4th Avenue has always been the odd duck– you can tell just by looking at a map. While most avenues are extraordinarily lengthy, spanning much of the island from north to south, 4th runs just six short blocks between Cooper and Union Squares; and while all [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 4th Avenue Manhattan Union Square
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Past and present fast food The Orange Hut at Broadway and 54th Street still carries the outlines and contours of its former life as a White Tower hamburger chain restaurant. The last White Tower closed in Toledo, OH in June 2008; the chain originated in 1926, its origins detailed in a [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Long Island City Queens Woodside
Continuing my fascination with NYC’s non-Manhattan Broadways, which begain in June 1999 with my very first ForgottenTour on Brooklyn’s Broadway, continued on several Forgotten NY pages there, and then continued further on the Bronx’ Broadway in late 2008, I hiked Queens’ very own Broadway in December 2008 and Jaunary 2009. The route begins in Ravenswood [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Long Island City Queens Woodside
Continued from Part 2 Metropolitan Forgive the blur on the image above: it was blown up from a smaller picture I obtained in 2005 on a previous walk. This is Metropolitan Avenue looking east. Some structures in the photo have been torn down, and new construction has appeared elswhere on the street. Metropolitan Avenue runs [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
Continued from Page 1 Con Dead Time has proven the enemy for our magnificent brick power plants in recent years. The Long Island City Penn Station powerhouse, with its four iconic smokestacks, has been converted to residential use, minus the smokestacks, and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT) powerhouse on 500 Kent and Division Avenues, shown [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
Kent Avenue runs from the eastern end of Clinton Hill to the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border. Because of Brooklyn’s topography along the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Wallabout Channel and the East River, the route resembles a giant question mark in reverse without the dot. It’s unusual among Williamsburg’s north-south avenues like Wythe Avenue, Berry Street, and Driggs Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn Williamsburg
I recently got an angry note from a ForgottenFan that, as far as I understood it, excoriated me for not yet making it down to Gerritsen Beach for a FNY page. Fear not, with a few days off coming up during the holidays (recent losses have chastened me into doing a Staycation™ this holiday season) [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Smith Street
In mid-September 2008 I embarked on my first Forgotten mission after a brief, but horrendous battle with a stomach flu of some kind that struck on September 11th, of all dates, a couple of hours after a meal of baked chicken and boiled frozen vegetables. (Even now, in mid-October, your webmaster hasn’t returned to frozen [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Flatiron Manhattan
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
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Queens Ridgewood Wyckoff Avenue
Continued from West Broadway Part 2 West Broadway and Grand Street. Once north of Canal Street, West Broadway enters Soho (no longer below Canal but now south of Houston) and changes character completely, becoming the main shopping and restaurant strip in a neighborhood jampacked with them… Prior to about 1840 the stretch of West Broadway between Canal [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
Continued from West Broadway Part 1 Here’s the scene on West Broadway between Duane and Thomas Streets. All the buildings are from 1860-1875, and two have “Easter eggs” that give clues about them. “Standard Scale & Supply Co.” former business 1871, date of construction. With a 6-star shield; one star has fallen off. Duane Street east [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
Those who live in or who’ve been to Atlanta say that an inordinate amount of streets are called Peachtree; in Manhattan, meanwhile, there are 6 streets called Broadway, and all five boroughs, for that matter, have a Broadway. In NYC, all Broadways are a hommage to the original that begins at Bowling Green and runs [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Manhattan Tribeca West Broadway
4/12/08: a couple of weeks ago FNY walked East 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets in the East Village, and your webmaster had promised a look at East 6th and 7th Streets, which I had also photographed that day. Circumstances intervened, though, and I convened an emergency session of ForgottenFans to descend on the Cheyenne Diner [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 6th Street 7th Street East Village Manhattan
Your webmaster lived in Bay Ridge between 1957 and 1993 (with an neighborhoodus interruptus in Dyker Heights in 1990-1991) and yet, the adjacent region to the east, Bensonhurst, the vast area between 14th Avenue, 65th Street and the Belt Parkway and Bay Parkway and Stillwell Avenue) largely remains unplumbed territory for me. I had had [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 18th Avenue Bensonhurst Brooklyn Kensington
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: 13th Street Greenwich Village Manhattan
A few months ago FNY took you on a tour of the eastern end of Jamaica Avenue in Floral Park and Bellerose, the part that was recently renamed Jericho Turnpike to match its Nassau and Suffolk County extension. This week, we’ll take a journey down Jamaica Avenue’s western end, that rides along the south end [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Jamaica Avenue Jamica Jamica Brooklyn Queens Woodhaven
So far September 2007 had proven much cooler than October 2007, which had seen July-like temperatures, at least until the 7th. September was perfect for a breezy walk along West Street from the Chelsea Piers sports complex south to Canal, revisiting places I had not seen for a few years. As it turns out I [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan Meatpacking
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Astoria Kips Bay Manhattan Penn Station Queens Triborough Bridge
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
There’s a wide, 6-lane boulevard way out in eastern Queens recently renamed for a small town of about 14,000 in eastern Nassau. Settled by Welshman Robert Williams after he purchased land from the Matinecock Indians in 1648 and which, like Flushing in that era, became a center for the Quaker religion, Jericho was the home [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Bellerose Queens Queens Village
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
WHEN I REVISIT Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue, I am going back to a stretch I have traversed thousands of times. Each day between September 1971 and the fall of 1980 (the latter date gets a little fuzzy) I rode the B63 bus up and down the lengthy stretch to get to high school (Cathedral Prep in Bedford-Stuyvesant) [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Park Slope
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 WHEN IT reaches Union Turnpike, the Jackie Robinson Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway in Kew Gardens, Queens Blvd. begins its slow process of winding down. Quiet Briarwood and Maple Grove Cemetery are all that lie between the 10-lane behemoth and its Waterloo at Jamaica Avenue. The cottages and homes of Kew [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Briarwood Forest Hills Jamaica Kew Gardens Queens
WHETHER it wants to admit it or not, the Department of Transportation’s main function is the movement of motor vehicles; to enable them to move as quickly as possible. That means synchronized stoplights that are calibrated to provide uninterrupted passage for a lengthy distance. Such traffic lights often provide two minutes of green for the vehicles [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Forest Hills Queens Rego Park Sunnyside
FIRST of all, we’ll get Houston Street’s derivation, and its unusual pronunciation, out of the way: The street from the Hudson River to Bedford had acquired its name by 1803, when Texas general, senator and governor Sam Houston (1793-1863) was ten years old. Couldn’t be him. Other accounts have the name derived from the Dutch termhuystujn (“garden house”) from [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: East Village Greenwich Village Manhattan Noho
