Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Though this was the first time in awhile, while writing Forgotten New York the past 15 years I have frequently found myself in Westchester Square in the Bronx. The neighborhood surrounds the triangle caused by the confluence of two major roads, Westchester Avenue and East Tremont Avenue at Westchester Creek, which here is buried underground [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Middletown Westchester Square
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
I have been thinking about doing this page for some time, almost from the beginnings of FNY 15 years ago. I would come across a street in an out-of-character scene, in a neighborhood or a state in which it is completely unfamiliar. These type of scenarios are relatively rare in NYC and are sprawled out [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Broklyn Bronx Manhattan Queens Staten Island
St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, St. Ann’s Avenue between East 139th and East 141st Streets, is The Bronx’ oldest church, having been built in 1841 and dedicated to Gouverneur Morris‘ mother, named, naturally, Ann. Several members of the Bronx’ most noted families of the colonial era and beyond are buried in the church’s graveyard, including Gouverneur [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Mott Haven
The Estey Piano & Organ Company was one of the most important players in the late 19th and early 20th Century piano & organ manufacturing business. Established in 1846, Estey was one of the few American manufacturers to survive over a century. For decades, Estey manufactured several lines of upright pianos, player pianos and grand pianos. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Mott Haven
Albany Crescent is a C-shaped road that runs from Kingsbridge Terrace southwest, west and finally northeast to Bailey Avenue and West 233rd Street, in fact curving right over the Major Deegan Expressway — when engineers laid out the Deegan, the crescent was left intact. The curving route is a remnant of the colonial-era Albany [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Kingsbridge Heights
PART 1: BROOKLYN and the BRONX PART 2: QUEENS PART 3: MANHATTAN PART 4: STATEN ISLAND I’m surprised I never thought of this until now, after about fifteen years of doing Forgotten New York. I’ve seen these historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very [...]
Bronx’ own Little Red Schoolhouse, PS 15, is at 4010 Dyre Avenue, near the end of the line on the #5 train. The architectural gem was built in 1877, designed by architect Simon Williams and was originally a school in the town of Eastchester in Westchester County before its capture by NYC in 1895. It [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway in the northeast Bronx celebrated its centennial in 2012. When conceived in 1872, it was assumed that it would eventually reach Boston, but instead at its lengthiest, it ran from southern Mott Haven in the Bronx to two terminals in Westchester County, at White Plains and at Port Chester. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Park
I have an undying fascination with Parkchester — it’s not just another housing project, but a mini-city plopped in central Bronx, with its own shopping strip and movie theater. Some residents need not ever leave it for days at a stretch. You can get there by taking the #6 train to its namesake station. It [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
Simple bridges are a thing of beauty. This truss bridge takes White Plains Road over the Amtrak/Metro-North tracks just north of East Tremont Avenue, near Parkchester. It has a twin bridge a block away at Unionport Road. As late as about 2000 it still had a pair of Westinghouse incandescent “cuplights” illuminating the pedestrian walkway. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
I’ve made a big deal over the years about how I miss the color-coded street signs, by borough, that marked NYC streets between 1964 and 1985, which were thence supplanted by the green-and-white numbers since then. I’ve come to realize, though, that there were another set of directional signs right under my nose, as it [...]
Since the Corvington Longarm Type 24M — and other old forms such as the bishop crook and Type F lights — were reintroduced to NYC streets beginning in the 1980s, the Department of Transportation has granted them a great amount of flexibility, taking them where they never went before, such as producing twin versions of [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Morris Park
Just as archaeologists search for arrowheads to ascertain ancient Native American settlements, so do I look for arrowheads — arrowhead signs that point the way to NYC bridges. These first appeared in the 1930s, and while they have given way to larger directional signs, newer versions of these have actually appeared as painted arrowheads within [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Signs Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
BY GARY FONVILLE FNY Correspondent With the IND approaching 80 years old, I thought I would give their decidedly different substations (from the BMT or IRT) some attention. Since the substations were constructed in the early 1930s, the Art Moderne look was its logical direction in design. Unlike the IRT or BMT, all of its [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan
I spotted it from across East Tremont Avenue, just east of Boston Road. Having absorbed the Bronx map and street listings from Geographia’s ‘Little Red Book’ series, since childhood I had been aware of the existence of the prosaically-named Bronx Street, which sits at what is nearly the center point of the borough east of [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx West Farms
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
These ‘humpback’ navy and white street signs were standard issue in Manhattan and the Bronx from 1913 until the early 1960s. Politically, Manhattan and the Bronx were the same county until 1914. This intersection no longer exists, as East 177th was replaced by the Cross-Bronx Expressway in the 1950s. C.L. Croes was a 19th Century [...]
Continuing the 2012 tradition of beautiful weather for ForgottenTours (unlike previous years) ForgottenTour 53 met at the end of the line of the #6 train, Pelham Bay Park, and 30 ForgottenFans took the BX29 bus to the first stop in City Island, a spit of land in Eastchester Bay off the coast of Orchard Beach, [...]
Categorized in: Tours Tagged with: Bronx City Island
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 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: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Norwood Woodlawn
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 In early April 2012 I walked the route of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway, or the closest possible approximation along the tracks, from the Bronx Park East station all the way northeast to Dyre Avenue. It gave me a chance to traverse the Pelham Gardens and Eastchester sections of [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
There’s a New England undercurrent running through the Bronx. The New York Yankees’ rivalry with the Boston Red Sox began when the Sox’ owner Harry Frazee sold his pitching and slugging star, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees before the 1920 season, and the subsequent championship tally, 27 to 2 in favor of the Yanks, has [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Pelham Parkway Unionport
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
As you are going north on the Harlem River between the Bronx and Manhattan, the University Heights Bridge is the tenth in a series of eleven that includes the Willis Avenue Bridge, 3rd Avenue Bridge, Metro-North railroad bridge, Madison Avenue Bridge, 145th Street Bridge, Macombs Dam Bridge, High Bridge, Alexander Hamilton Bridge, Washington Bridge, University [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Inwood Manhattan University Heights
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
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. [...]
Categorized in: Tours Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan Queens Triborough Bridge
Riverdale is nestled along the Hudson River between Spuyten Duyvil on the south, Yonkers in the north and Van Cortlandt Park on the east. With its curving, quiet lanes, spectacular views of the New Jersey Palisades and spectacular estates, it seems to be more a part of suburban Westchester. The New York Times real estate section [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Spuyten Duyvil
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
Much of the southern Bronx was owned in the colonial era by the Morris family. Richard Morris, originally from Wales, purchased a large estate called Broncksland from a Samuel Edsall in 1670; his grandson, Lewis Morris (1726-1798), served in the Continental Congress from 1775-1777, and in the NY state legislature between 1777 and 1790, and [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Morrisania
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. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: banks Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan
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
While skulking through Pelham Bay in the Bronx in July 2010, I once again pondered the origin of the heretofore mysterious B Street, which runs south to a dead end on Baisley Avenue between Hobart and Edison. Well, thanks to the efforts of ForgottenFan Mike Fornebaio the ‘mystery’ has been solved. It turns out this [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay
Forgotten New York is sometimes like the NFL. (Stick with me.) The NFL is divided into two conferences, the AFC and the NFC, which in turn are divided into three divisions. Your team plays the teams in its own division twice per season, and it plays the rest against teams from your own conference and [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Middletown Pelham Bay
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Back in June [2010] I was dazedly puttering around the Middletown and Pelham Bay neighborhoods in the northeast Bronx, the kinds of New York City areas the AAA Guide or Time Out New York choose to ignore. Yet, thousands of people live and work there and these neighborhoods have their own [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Middletown Pelham Bay
On a way more brutally hot Saturday than my post-operational stamina had any right to be enduring, I weaved my way pitifully through Pelham Bay in the Bronx, a mendicant seeking what crumbs the neighborhood would toss an amateur seeker of hidden urban secrets. After gingerly crossing a broken glass-strewn, pockmarked, graffiti-smeared expressway overpass, I saw [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 In 1977 a set of R16 cars with #6315 bringing up the rear during the Great Age of Graffiti displays a JJ sign. Note Franklin K. Lane High School at right, and a black on white enamel station sign. Until the Unimark system was adopted for subway signage, there were a hodgepodge of different styles [...]
By the end of June [2010] the V and W trains will be no more. As part of a broad-based budget cutting procedure, the millions-in-arrears MTA, getting little help from the state and federal government, now turns to you, the consumer of its services, and requires payment of higher fares and acceptance of stingier service. This [...]
The western Bronx consists of a chain of high hills and valleys arrayed on the eastern banks of the Harlem River, heavily urbanized now, but formerly home to wealthy estates and thickly wooded meadows where you wouldn’t be surprised to hear ‘tally-ho’ as the hounds pursued hapless foxes, and horse-drawn carriages traveled the rare cobblestoned [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx High Bridge
An acquaintance of mine, a ForgottenFan, recently complained in her blog entry about slow walkers in NYC, and the impositions they put on most other people in NYC, who like to walk fast — on the way to jobs, meetings, dates, making more money, and whatever New Yorkers walk fast in order to reach. I’ve [...]
Categorized in: Ads Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan painted signs telephone exchanges
Since the mysterious Poe Toaster did not show up this year [Jan. 19, 2010] in Baltimore at Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite as he usually does on Poe’s birthday, I thought it appropriate to pay homage of my own in Forgotten NY. If you’re not familiar with the story, a mysterious figure, or figures (the tradition started [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Poe Cottage
After our earlier ramble on Westchester Square’s southern edge, it’s time now to explore the northern end of Westchester Square, formerly the town center of the Dutch village of Oostdorp, renamed by the British Westchester when they took over the joint lock stock and barrel, as well as a few raccoons, in 1664. “Oostdorp” in Dutch means [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Westchester Square
Just as you can’t swing a dead cat (sorry, PETA) without hitting something called “Richmond” in Staten Island, The Bronx is filled with place names ending in “-chester,” as in Westchester, Eastchester, Parkchester. Until 1874, The Bronx was a part of Westchester County — New York County annexed the portion of Bronx County west of the [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Westchester Square
December 2009: The end of another Forgotten year.I am hoping for a bigger year in 2010, more ForgottenTours and at least a couple of out of town trips. For the last couple weeks of 2009 I will be posting lightly; this is one of the weeks in which Forgotten NY correspondent Gary Fonville’s contributions come in [...]
A few years ago, in November 2006 to be precise, I found myself in the Fordham Plaza area in the Bronx, where East Fordham Road meets Webster Avenue in the shadow of Fordham University. After dusting myself off, removing the blindfold and waiting for the stars to stop spinning around my head, I set off to [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Belmont Bronx
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Mott Haven
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: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale
My fascination with the NYC subway’s infrastructure continues unabated and my love affair with the subways remains unrequited. That is made clear every weekend, when the MTA runs most lines completely differently than it does during the week. The subways are now over 105 years old (some lines are, at least) and while the sensible notion [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Borough Hall Broad Channel Bronx Brooklyn Central Park Grand Concourse Inwood Kensington Manhattan Mott Haven Roosevelt Island Wanamaker’s Washington Heights
I became so enamoured of the Van Cortlandt Village/Kingsbridge Heights area while doing ForgottenTour 37 around the (temporarily dry) Jerome Park Reservoir that I resolved to return and explore these two obscure Bronx enclaves a little more in-depth, and that’s exactly what I did on September 20, 2009. There’s no clear boundary between the two [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Kingsbridge Heights Van Cortlandt Village
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
Bronxdale was a small village located along Boston Post Road, surrounded by land owned by tobacco entrepreneurs the Lorillards (their snuff mill still stands alongside the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Gardens). When the Botanical Garden was developed the village disappeared, but today the name has been applied to a neighborhood roughly defined by [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Bronx Jerome Park
PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTIONS BY GARY FONVILLE, FNY corrrespondent There are many two- level stations in the NYC subway system. However, this is one where express trains are on one level and local ones are on the other: the Nostrand Avenue station at Fulton Street, Brooklyn. However: At Bergen Street on the ‘F’ the locals are on the upper [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Wall Street
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Park Avenue When Eva Gabor 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 Street. Is has [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Harlem Manhattan Mott Haven
Forgotten NY has always supported mermaid-themed art (currently I’m compiling a page full of mermaids used in posters, architecture and advertising) and Beaux-Arts sculptors and architects have also, from the looks of things, been fond of homo ichthyus as well; in the New York Botanical Garden, the Lillian Goldman Fountain of Life and Queens’ much-derided Civic Virtue, at Borough Hall, use [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx fountains
May 2009: Most of the Bronx press attention has gone to theYankees’ new billion-dollar launching pad (where they have already lost 22-4 and more lopsided scores) where the displaced parks will be built on top of parking lots, and where dozens of prime seats are sitting empty night after night because they cost $2560 per seat, per [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Concourse Village
According to the late, legendary Bronx historian John McNamara, writing in History in Asphalt, West 230th Street in KIngsbridge Heights and Riverdale has had an active history. It once led to an island: Hummock Island (Native American name Paparinimen) was part of the estate of Alexander Macomb, scion of a milling family who operated a dam bridge [...]
Categorized in: Cobblestones Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Kingsbridge Heights
As a rule, you will not find any munchkins, witches or flying monkeys in the Bronx. But there is a yellow brick road, and this one looks like it’s still got its original yellow bricks (Queens’ Stockholm Street‘s yellow bricks are a loving recreation of the original). Dorothea Place, a cul de sac on Marion Avenue just [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Fordham
ForgottenFan Dennis Harper recently found one of those rarest of birds in the NYC street paving canon — a red bricked street with a median shown by alternating bricks in white! I had only seen this treatment done on a couple of streets in Jamaica, Queens, and, though I have made a number of visits to Bedford [...]
Categorized in: Cobblestones Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Norwood
With so much attention being paid to the city’s shameful land grab that threatens to put the businesses of Willets Point, the ”Iron Triangle” of Queens, out of business, I thought it would be appropriate to show you a much larger ‘iron triangle’ just across the East River in the Bronx, Hunt’s Point, where auto glass, auto parts, light industry [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Hunts Point
guest post by DON GILLIGAN On March 1, 1932, 77 years ago (in 2009), at about 9:00 PM, someone placed a homemade ladder against the wall of the Lindbergh home in Hopewell, NJ and set in motion a series of events that would culminate three years later in a trial that journalist H. L. Mencken would call, with [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Parkway Woodlawn
As of February 2009 the subways are almost 105 years old and even the “newest” parts are over sixty years old. In that amount of time, there are bound to be outdated signs to exits that don’t exist anymore or landmarks that have been torn down. Some of this was deliberately done: plaques in some of [...]
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: Street Scenes Tagged with: Broadway Bronx Riverdale
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent FNY’s cameras are always busy picking out things that exemplify NYC’s past. Some things that our cameras find are many decades old, but some may be barely a few years old… TITLE CARD: S.M. Rose was a vibrant Chevrolet dealership until sometimes in the 1970′s. Now the building houses a carpet emporium. [...]
If you haven’t been to Parkchester you’re in for a treat. Visiting the Bronx’ s premier apartment complex is an experience that will delight anyone with an interest in urban planning and a sharp eye for detail. Take the #6 train into the Bronx, exit at the Parkchester station and you will find yourself at Hugh Grant Circle, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
FNY doesn’t spend enough time in the Bronx – your webmaster freely admits guilt. With today’s Slice I’ll present a batch of photos I shot in High Bridge mostly in January 2005, a time when I was getting photographs for the ForgottenBook — I found that most of my previous pictures were unusable for print for [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx High Bridge
Long before the “humpbacked” street signs showing cross streets were installed on cast-iron lamps in the 1910s…long before porcelain, enamel and aluminum embossed signs appeared in the 1950s…and long before color-coded vinyl and aluminum signs appeared around 1964 (the green and white successors of which still dominate around town) … there were street signs chieseled onto building corners. [...]
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
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx NY Botanical Garden
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bedford Park Bronx
BY GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent The New York City subway system was planned with a lot of standardization. Standardization was very practical for subway planners and financial backers: if each station was custom designed, costs would have risen exponentially. As a result, wall tiles, entrances, support columns, construction techniques, lighting techniques and kiosks (for the [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan mosaics Prospect Park Queens
University Heights, Bronx, is named for a university that is no longer there; Bronx Community College moved into New York University’s spacious campus, and its collection of historic buildings, some by famed late 19th Century architect Stanford White, beginning in 1973. Generally speaking, University Heights is bordered by Burnside Avenue on the south, Fordham Road on [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx University Heights
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY Correspondent Once upon a time, telephone customers were assigned alphanumeric telephone numbers. For example, the numbers were such as FOundation 8-3556 (now 368-2556), MOnument 2-2491 (now 662-2491) or NEvins 8-3886 (now 638-3886). The letters and first digit designated a certain geographic area and were referred to as exchanges. Numbers beginning with FOundation [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan telephone exchanges
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent FNY has highlighted trains and stations on the original IRT line. This time FNY will take a look at the most overlooked structures of the subway system. These edfices housed critical components of its power distribution system — the substations and the original power house on Manhattan’s west side. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan
Once upon a time, telephone customers were assigned alphanumeric telephone numbers. For example, the numbers were such as FOundation 8-3556 (now 368-2556), MOnument 2-2491 (now 662-2491) or NEvins 8-3886 (now 638-3886). The letters and first digit designated a certain geographic area and were referred to as exchanges. Numbers beginning with FOundation were in the vicinity of Lenox [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan telephone exchanges
So you’re wandering about in the Bronx wilds east of Bronx Park, where you’ve just photographed an American replica of the shrine at Lourdes (more about that on a future FNY page), you’ve gone past the gas stations, Popeyes and Wendys of Boston Road and seen where Williamsbridge Road gets its mojo, when all of a [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Bronxwood
From the ForgottenBook: The New York Botanical Garden and New York Zoological Park (known to all as the Bronx Zoo) are the two main divisions of Bronx Park, which was acquired by the city (mostly from the Lorillard estate in the center of the Bronx) in late 1888 and early 1889. By 1891, the city had allocated fully 250 acres [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx model trains
All five NYC boroughs have a Grand Street or Grand Avenue (Brooklyn’s Grand Street and Queens’ Grand Avenue run continuously). The late Bronx historian John McNamara, in History in Asphalt, claims the Bronx’ Grand Avenue, on the University Heights-Fordham border, was named for its proximity to the Grand Concourse. I was first shown a two-block stretch of Grand [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx
A note from ForgottenFan Ron Bollerman: I wanted to write and thank you for your page on “Mott Haven”. It helped me to find a building that my great, great grandfather owned – the Bollermann & Son Piano Factory. Their business ran from 1890 to approx. 1915 at 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue. We have an old [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bronx Factories Pianos
Mike Tyson wears a Mao tattoo. Thousands wear T-shirts depicting Che Guevara. (Dozens wear the Forgotten NY T-Shirt). Communist ideology has produced totalitarian governments that enslaved and murdered millions throughout the decades, but there are still people who keep the dream hanging on. Ah well. FNY isn’t a political site; Lord knows we have a lot of [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Allerton Bronx Manhattan Upper West Side
The Bronx’s Longwood and Hunts Point, heavily residential and, toward the East River, industrial, are remnants of country estates: Longwood Park was an 1870s estate owned by Samuel B. White, and Hunts Point was formerly a collection of country estates owned by the Casanovas, Barrettos, Spoffords, Failes, and other wealthy families, many of whose names now [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Longwood
During the existence of Forgotten New York, which began in 1998, we’ve mourned the loss of several of New York’s grand old watering holes such as Flessel’s in College Point, Queens; Gage and Tollner in Brooklyn (seen on FNY’s Fulton Street page); and Niederstein’s (Middle Village). Regretfully the time has now come to say goodbye to another: Charlie’s in Throgs [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Silver Beach Throgs Neck
“I’m in the mood for Easter everywhere,”once sang idiosyncratic “Arch-drude” British psychedelicist Julian Cope*, and so was your webmaster as he stormed the Bronx for what must have been the first time in months on April 8, 2007. Unfortunately the weatherman wasn’t, as conditions were rather more reminiscent of Thanksgiving, with a temperature of about 40 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx East Tremont Echo Park
The Golden Age of NYC Neon has come and gone. Believe it or not, the noble gas (since it combines with other elements only reluctantly, in lab conditions) is fairly rare on Earth, being available only in trace form in the atmosphere. If gathered in sufficient quantity it is a red-orange tangerine color. Most commercial [...]
I have been promising my Bronx Forgotten Fans some new material, and the fulfillment starts now. In fall 2006 I walked through Norwood, a triangle-shaped Bronx neighborhood defined by Woodlawn Cemetery on the north, the New York Botanical Garden on the east, and Mosholu Parkway on the south; Reservoir Oval, delineating a former Williamsbridge Reservoir, approximately [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Norwood
Writing Forgotten New York, the book, was an exhausting yet exhilarating experience. There were a lot of hours hunched over a keyboard in my non-air conditioned living room, but as many hours as I spent indoors on revisions, there were engaging hours spent outside with my camera capturing scenes that made their way onto the pages. I [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Bronx Parkchester
As a neighborhood, Morris Park, located in what’s about the exact center of the Bronx, appears to be one of the borough’s most stable and long-standing, but it’s actually only a few decades old and occupies what used to be a vast racetrack – come airfield -come road racing track; many of NYC’s more “stabler” neighborhoods, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Morris Park
Photographer and writer: FNY correspondent Gary Fonville As with many courthouses around the city , in use or abandoned, many former precincts are still standing. The buildings shown below were built to be very durable. Most were built in the late 1800s. Most of them date to horse and buggy days, since a few still have [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
New York has a marvelous collection of neon signs, and while we’ve heretofore collected scads of them on previous Signs pages we’ve never previously done a Neon Nights page, when the signs are doing what they were born to do. Your webmaster’s Canon Powershot S1 IS is ill-equipped for night photography. That’s why you call [...]
above: West 4 Street near 7th, Greenwich Village Maniacally busy schedule this weekend. Finishing a chapter for another book, helping a friend pack for a move, leading a ForgottenTour. Too much for your rapidly aging webmaster. Time to relax and put together a page of mindless drivel. “What’s the difference from any other week?” you ask. I am [...]
Before modern efficiencies, milk and milk products were done on a local scale. Eventually due to New York City’s swelling population, larger facilities were needed. There were many private companies filling that demand, but by 1930 three dairy companies dominated the dairy scene. They were the United States Dairy Products Corp., Borden’s and Sheffield Farms. Most [...]
Resembling Silver Beach along the southern edge of Throgs Neck, the Bronx community of Harding Park features inlets, reeds, and small houses and bungalows clustered along the confluence of the East and Bronx Rivers, and its topography is also shaped by Pugsley’s and Westchester Creeks. GOOGLE MAP: HARDING PARK Rocky shore of the East River; [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx Clasons Point
In 1963, the life of a 6-year-old lamppost enthusiast changed irrevocably: the cast iron Type 24M “Corvington” poles that had dominated the streets of Bay Ridge disappeared seemingly overnight, with mostly all of them replaced by streamlined aluminum poles with octagonal shafts. Most of the shafts were topped by straightarm masts, some by cobra-necked ones, and [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Fort Schuyler General Electric Hoboken Jackson Heights Madison Square McCarren Park Queens Rosedale Westinghouse
There are hundreds…perhaps thousands…of names over apartment house doors and building cornices all over town, memorialized for decades but known to no one. Of course, some are just made-up names thought impressive by the builders, but some commemorate wives, relatives, pets, companies…who can tell? Their names, at least, are known to passersby brefly as they [...]
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: apartment houses Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan
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
NOW HEAR THIS: the subway/MTA photo ban lives. Snapped a photo of a track indicator at Flatbush LIRR. With the renovations going on, these may soon vanish. Two cops rush over. One says, ‘tell me you didn’t just snap a photo.’ Demands camera, ID. Compels me to erase photo of track indicator and one of Morris [...]
IT’S not the only wayto tell you’re in a hipster neighborhood … the clothing and the hairstyles are a good tipoff…but one surefire method is the number of stickies and signs taped up all over every conceivable piece of street furniture. The lampposts, fire alarms, don’t walk signs and buildings are covered with a mix [...]
Mid-1980s IRT retro-kiosk at Astor Place, ca. 1985 In New York City, just about every subway entrance on the system’s 460-plus stations is somehow different, and that’s no mean feat. There are standard templates that different subway companies in the early days, the IRT, BMT, and IND, followed, but they’ve been blurred over the years, so [...]
WHILE preparing to march 155th Street for I CAN’T DRIVE 155, I was drawn to the Macombs Dam Bridge, which connects the 155th St. Viaduct with Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, like a magnet. When I was a kid, I read a story about a Victorian-era dad…tough, but fair, think “Life With Father“… who bought white typewriters [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx East Harlem Manhattan
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
IT’S ALWAYS FUN when it’s time to do a lamppost page in Forgotten NY, because these vaguely anthropomorphic untility poles are what got me started with this Forgotten NY stuff decades ago. My parents used to take me for bus rides all over Brooklyn, and I could never be seen without a pencil, a spoon, [...]
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
FNY PREVIOUSLY VISITED TULFAN TERRACE IN 1999, when most of it was still there. The little lane off Oxford Avenue near West 236th Street in Riverdale, Bronx, lined on both sides by picturesque cottages, was built in 1926 by two real estate contractors named Tully and Fanning, hence the unusual name. Of course that was [...]
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Spuyten Duyvil
FORGOTTEN NEW YORK hasn’t been to the Bronx nearly as much as it should have been, and we’ll see if time can correct the error. Meanwhile, we’ll depend this week on two of FNY’s more voluminous contributors, Gary of the MTA and Christina, the Queen of Queens who is touring the Bronx on this occasion, for [...]
South Brother Island (foreground), North Brother Island (background) On June 15, 1904, the General Slocum, an excursion vessel on the way to Long Island for a church picnic outing, burst into flames in the East River. Over 1200 lost their lives. Slocum Captain William Van Schaick drove the vessel toward North Brother Island, one [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx islands
TO FIND RARE BEASTS, you have to know what environment they thrive in. The same principle applies to locating species of ancient NYC streetlighting…they like to hang out in the darkest corners of the city, where the Department of Transportation can’t find them. Lamp designs that are long extinct in bright sunlight are often found [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Brighton Beach Bronx Brooklyn Bushwick Forest Hills Greenwich Village High Line Manhattan Ozone Park Queens Riverdale
Categorized in: Signs Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn fire hydrants Manhattan Staten Island
In The Prisoner, one of the Swingin’ Sixties’ most surreal, mind-bending TV series, Astoria’s own Patrick McGoohan played a government operative who is knocked out and spirited away to a mysterious location known only as The Village, where no one goes by name…just a number, and where a succession of headmasters by turns try to [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Boston Road Bronx Eastchester
There’s a little corner of the Emerald Island in the far flung northern reaches of the Bronx, past the rolling hills of Woodlawn Cemetery, the duffers in Mosholu and Van Cortlandt Golf Courses and the roaring traffic of the Deegan. It’s in the triangle known as Woodlawn Heights, just south of Yonkers. Woodlawn Heights’ [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Wakefield Woodlawn Heights
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Wave Hill
What borough has the largest amount of park acreage? Of course…the Bronx! Van Cortlandt Park, and its partner to the east, Pelham Bay Park, account for over 3800 acres of parkland…much of it undeveloped and wild. The story of Van Cortlandt Park begins in 1699, when future NYC mayor Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought a [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale
The streets of New York bear continued witness to the many failed political campaigns of years past. Though they’ve lost, they live to challenge another day. And, their campaign signage is still there just in case they do! On this Forgotten NY page, we’ll see just a few. Rick Lazio waves to supporters during his [...]
Squeezed in between the Harlem River and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is a small neighborhood known as Mott Haven, after Jordan Mott, owner of the Mott Iron Works at East 134th Street. His handiwork can be seen all over town on airshaft and manhole covers. Jordan Mott had bought the original property from Gouverneur [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Bronx Mott Haven
It’s 1950 and on Third Avenue, the el trains rumbling overhead, like the Triceratops and Tyrannosaurs of the Cretaceous, are blissfully unmindful of their upcoming doom. The shrews, rats and moles scuttling about at the feet of the dinosaurs in that long-ago era were equally unaware of their coming hegemony, and the evolution of [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: 3rd Avenue 3rd Avenue El 6th Avenue Borough Park Bronx Brooklyn Bushwick Canarsie Cobble Hill Ditmas Park Harlem Manhattan Riverdale
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 [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Bronx City Island
Heavy snow in NYC winters is unpredictable. A series of winters with little snow can be followed by years of blizzardy winters. But a fearsome, freak blizzard in early March 1888 caught New York City completely unprepared, and caused property damage, injuries and death. It also changed how telephone and telegraph wires were connected to Manhattan homes [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn East New York Jamaica Avenue Morris Park Queens Radial Wave Ridgewood Riverdale Sheepshead Bay Staten Island Van Cortlandt Park West Brighton
ST. PETER’S CEMETERY St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on 2500 Westchester Avenue is a venerable church, but the actual building is not that elderly, as far as churches go…it was built in 1855 in a Gothic Revival style (making it look rather older than it really is) by Leopold Eidlitz. Ah, then why are there some [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries Tagged with: Bronx Hunts Point Norwood Westchester Square
(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
Yznaga Place Quite possibly the only place name in the United States that begins with “yz”. I’ve looked at USA and world atlases and can’t find anymore initial Yz’s. Yznaga Place, at the south end of Brush Avenue near the Whitestone Bridge and Ferry Point Park, is one of those streets you see on [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay Schuylerville Westchester Square
PHOTOS BY GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent It’s the most natural thing in the world. We all have to go sometime. NYC, though, would pretty much not acknowledge that fact. While various cities nationwide have installed high-tech, self-flushing toilets that do everything except wipe, it’s well, sorta beneath NYC to even flirt with the concept. To [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Harlem Lower East Side Manhattan Morrisania Mount Eden Pelham Bay Upper West Side
STATIONS OF THE N.Y.W.B (Dyre Avenue Line) Between East 180th Street and Dyre Avenue near the Westchester county line, the IRT #5 runs along an abandoned railroad, the New York, Westchester & Boston, which originally ran from East 133rd Street in Port Morris, South Bronx north to Port Chester. While the width of the right of [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Morris Park Pelham Parkway
A walk in the neighborhoods of any of the five boroughs reveals the practical and pragmatic philosophy…’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ You’ll see some signs that have been in place for fifty years or more, serving generations of customers, or some that still serve their now-deceased concerns… College Bakery, Court Street, Cobble Hill, [...]
During a long summer I’ve been unable to visit as many Forgotten scenes as I’d like. To the rescue comes Forgotten Fan Gary Fonville, an MTA bus driver who gets to see many Forgotten corners of the city as yet unvisited by your webmaster. Gary has supplied us on this occasion with a new cache of [...]
Broadway. Wall Street. Fifth Avenue. 42nd Street. Mention these streets and only one city comes immediately to mind: The one abbreviated in the title of this website. But in small town USA, including most New York City suburbs, most town centers sprung up around a street called Main. Well, New York City has Main Streets [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island
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 [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Pelham Bay Park
Like the other boroughs, The Bronx had its own system of trolleys and tracks, the longest being one by the Manhattan Railway Company that ran on Melrose and Webster Avenues in the Melrose, Morrisania, Mt. Hope, Tremont, Fordham, Bedford Park, and Norwood; it continued along Gun Hill and White Plains Roads all the way to [...]
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
I’ve slowly come to the realization that Forgotten is woefully deficient as far as the Bronx, the only borough on the mainland, is concerned. And that’s ironic, since the Bronx, street for street, probably contains more ancient mural ads than any other borough. It’s no secret that large parts of the Bronx have been slow to [...]
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
City Island resembles a New England seaside town transplanted into the five boroughs. Since it was first settled in 1761 its lifeblood has been the sea, with shipyards, sailmakers and oystermen predominating. It played a large part in New York City’s coastal defense until the early 20th Century. City Island was privately owned, first [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx City Island
There’s no real story here. But for years, I’ve noticed that many liquor stores in the five boroughs have the same signage they must have had decades ago…whether they’re ceramic, painted signs or my favorite, NEON. It must just be a matter of the signs doing the same job they’ve done for many years doing [...]
“Ok, we’re back and here it comes for ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Which former Joey Bishop sidekick, cookbook author, singer and fitness video auteur not only has the most popular show on ABC in decades, but his very own street in the Bronx?” A. Sonny Fox; B. Durward Kirby; C. Robert Q. Lewis; D. Regis Philbin? [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Scenes Tagged with: Bronx Regis Philbin
When is a subway not a subway? When, of course, it’s an elevated. The elevated used to be king in Manhattan. The sun never saw lengthy stretches of Pearl Street, Church Street, the Bowery, Greenwich Street, West Broadway, Columbus Avenue, First Avenue, Second Avenue, and Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Avenues, since they were hidden beneath [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx elevated Manhattan
Just as New York City’s street signs have evolved and changed over the years, so have its one-way signs, which have undergone a three-part metamorphosis in the years I have been observing their design. Each change has made the one-way sign, a vital element in traffic control, more and more visible for motor vehicles. It’s [...]
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
Rattlesnakes? In New York City? Not anymore. The last rattlesnakes in the Bronx, their last stronghold, died off around the turn of the last century because of encroaching civilization as streets were laid out and housing was built. People and rattlesnakes aren’t a good mix; snakes have fangs and people have pitchforks. (Smaller snakes like [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Parks
The Bronx is not to be outdone when it comes to obscure alleys and lanes. Some are in leaf-filled enclaves like Riverdale and others are to be found in teeming districts like Fordham. Wherever in the Bronx they are, each has its own story to tell. Shrady Place Doctor George Shrady, editor of the New [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Baychester Bronx City Island Eastchester Fordham Kingsbridge Heights Morris Park Morrisania Norwood Riverdale Wakefield Westchester Square
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
In Country Days in New York City, author Divya Summers describes this old commuter line that is now used for another purpose: The Old Putnam Railroad Track, a defunct railroad bad that one Manhattan-based Urban Park Ranger tells me is his favorite walk in the city (“I love being out in the fresh New York air”, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Van Cortlandt Park
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Morris Park Williamsbridge
Lamppost design of yore can be seen in surviving original walkway lampposts that carry pedestrian traffic across busy highways such as the Long Island Expressway and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Many carry their original “cup” diffusers although several have been given the bucket sodium lamps that began appearing in the 1970s. LEFT, CENTER: Oddly, the dignified walkway [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Flushing Queens Riverdale Staten Island
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
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned stations Bronx elevated
Some NYC subway stations actually have above-ground station buildings. Quite frequently these houses will appear at subway stations that have been parts of actual railroad lines in the past, such as the D line between Sheeepshead Bay and Avenue H, or the #5 between 180th St. and Dyre Avenue. Other times, though, a station house was placed at a [...]
Throgs Neck is named for John Throckmorton, who settled in the area in 1643, Throgs Neck is one of the least-commented on sections in the Bronx. Featuring gorgeous views of the East River (as it merges with Long Island Sound), it evinces little of the New York City of which it is officially a part. (The [...]
Categorized in: Street Necrology You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx Throgs Neck
Here we present some old designs that don’t easily fit the above categories, including the remains of the last gaslight-era lamp left standing. LEFT: This unprepossessing little pole, at the corner of Broadway and West 211th Street in Inwood in Manhattan represents a last dinosaur. Of the thousands of gaslamps that once populated [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Flushing Inwood Manhattan Queens Throgs Neck
On this page we’ll show you a couple of ancient signs that pointed you to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, as well as a few ancient oddities that can’t be classified in any one section. This tiled sign points to the PATH train in the IND station at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue. The PATH, which stands for [...]
The Bronx is usually thought to be the most urban of New York’s five boroughs. However, several areas in NYC’s only mainland borough belie that notion… Title card: This view of the Hudson River is available just south of the Riverdale Metro-North Station. The Palisades of New Jersey are visible across the Hudson. photo: Jon [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Wave Hill
In New York City, between the golden age of cast-iron lampposts, approximately 1895 and 1950, and prior to the brave new world of green-white fluorescent bulbs (which held sway between 1960 and 1972, when super-bright yellow sodium bulbs took over) there was an interregnum of sorts, when old-style yellow incandescent lights were installed on modern, [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Cypress Hills Kew Gardens Manhattan Parkchester Queens Van Cortlandt Park
This sign, one of two located on the mezzanine of the IRT East 149th Street Station where the 2,4 and 5 lines meet, points the way to the New York Central Lines, today’s Metro-North. However, there is no Metro-North station at the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street; the closest station is the Melrose station, 12 blocks [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan
Signs on subway platforms sometimes have a way of preserving for posterity the former names of streets under which they ran, or former names of station stops. This is especially true in Queens, along the 7 line: 33rd (Rawson St), 40th St (Lowery St), 46th St (Bliss St), 52nd St (Lincoln Ave) and 69th St (Fisk [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Queens
Ads for the upscale East Side store painted 80 years ago are still good today! Picture is from New York Then and Now, © 1976 Dover Publications In decades past, Bloomingdale’s, one of the most famous stores in the world, used to advertise their location at Third Avenue and 60th Street with painted signs saying [...]
Categorized in: Ads Tagged with: Bloomingdale’s Bronx Manhattan
The 145th Street Bridge, located in New York City, USA, is a four-lane swing bridge that crosses the Harlem River, connecting 145th Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan with East 149th Street and River Avenue in the Bronx. It once carried northbound New York State Route 22 and New York State Route 100. Additionally, this bridge, for its proximity to the eponymous avenue, was once named the “Lenox Avenue [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bridges Bronx Harlem Manhattan Mott Haven
Once upon a time, New York City avenues were dominated by a long-armed, chocolate-colored cast-iron pole that my fellow lamppost maven Jeff Saltzman (whose site you can reach here) calls the “Corvingtons” although I doubt the Department Of Transportation ever gave them a real name. While side streets mostly had Bishop Crook poles, or a [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Central Park Corvingtons Dyker Heights Financial District Manhattan Queens Riverdale Rosedale Van Cortlandt Park
Scattered throughout the five boroughs are the remnants of the previous generation of street signs that predated the familiar green and white signs of today. Porcelain signs featuring raised letters were installed in the 40s and 50s. I’ve seen most of them in Brooklyn, but I recall some in the Bronx and Staten Island as [...]
There are still a few of them left and some are actually working. “Crescent moon” style luminaires, called “crescents” because of their shape, were in vogue from the mid-40s until they were replaced by mercury vapor lamps in the early 60s. The “crescent moons” were very flexible in that they could be used both on [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Eastchester Manhattan Bridge Midwood Van Cortlandt Park
