Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Brooklyn Heights is known for its attached brownstones and apartment buildings, but here and there are some freestanding buildings, as well as frame and wood houses, leftovers from the very beginnings of the neighborhood. 59 Hicks Street, at Cranberry Street, is one of those relics. It was built by cooper (cabinet and furniture maker) John [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Categorized in: Alleys Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Bedford Park Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Eltingville Glendale Queens St. Albans Staten Island
Brooklyn Bridge Park is an over $200 million extravaganza, an 85-acre park along the East River from Atlantic Avenue north and northweat along the East River to Jay Street in DUMBO. It was formerly docklands worked by the Port Authority of NYC, which ended operations north of Atlantic Avenue in 1984. It was a bustling, [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Furman Street runs along the East River in Brooklyn from Atlantic Avenue north to (Old) Fulton, and since the 1950s, has mostly been accompanied by the stolid overhang of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. On its river side, it was formerly lined with busy docks handling goods brought in from the world over, shuttled along to distant [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
It’s hard to find “Whitestone” type lampposts anywhere in NYC these days, though in the 1940s and 1950s, they were the lampposts of choice on the then-fledgling NYC expressway system. Officially the “Type 41″ single or twin arm posts, they originated on the Whitestone Bridge and its approach roads and spread to wherever elevated expressways [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Street Lamps Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
I don’t believe I have ever mentioned my college previously on Forgotten New York during the 13 years since 1999 that I have been producing this, your website chronicling the ‘infrastructure of a lost metropolis.’ Between 1975-1980 I attended St. Francis College, which is now pretty much a business school, but in that era was [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
If you’re unfamilar with the INDependent subway, IND stations are instantly recognizable in contrast to BMT and IRT stations, which were built earlier. In fact, I’m beginning to hear from people who no longer know the old subway divisions, which is understandable since the subways have, since 1940, been consolidated in the same system — which [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
There are still some very old metal sidewalk compasses to be found on sidewalks around town. This one is at Hicks between Poplar and Middagh Streets at PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights (se Comment below), no doubt installed by a developer or surveyor a century ago. True north is indicated by the up arrow. More [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Heights
Time to delve once more into the Bob Mulero collection of lampposts. Bob and I achieved our separate lamppost obsessions separately: while both us have been enthusiastically noting the state of NYC’s lamppost collection since childhood, Bob got the jump on me and began photographing them in the mid-1970s, a time when I was attending college [...]
While walking uptown during Summer Streets 2010 I passed by two of New York City’s most picturesque relics at Park Avenue and East 46th, at the tunnel that takes the Park Avenue Viaduct through the Helmsley Building. On both sides of the street, you find two picturesque Corvington-esque light posts, but instead of a streetlight attached to the [...]
Sometimes, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. Or Boston. Or even Albany, Newark or Jersey City. I’ll explain. Manhattan, once you get north of 14th Street, just doesn’t have the sheer number of dead-ends or one-block alleys block by block that other northeast cities have. Philadelphia has a main network grid of streets — numbered north and [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Downtown DUMBO
Brooklyn’s Furman Street runs along the East River waterfront for about 3/4 mile between Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street, but in that long stretch intersects with only a couple of streets in between: Joralemon St. and tiny Doughty Street (three, if you count a dead-end stub of Montague). Brooklyn Heights is called thus because most [...]
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Furman Street
Atlantic Avenue runs from the Brooklyn waterfront at the East River to the Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica, Queens; along the way it separates several neighborhoods and comprises many architectural styles. As downtown Brooklyn remakes itself, the FNY camera caught it on the cusp of what could be major change along its westernmost three miles. [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bedford-Suyvesant Brooklyn Heights Cobble Hill Downtown Fort Greene
Before poured concrete became the de rigueur material for New York City sidewalks, they boasted unique slate bluestone plates that made a distinct hollow noise when trod upon. Older parts of town can still be recognized, in part, by the presence of such distinct and handsome bluestone slate sidewalks, as we’ll see on this page… [...]
Categorized in: Cobblestones Tagged with: Astoria Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Carroll Gardens Flushing Maspeth Queens
Continued from Part 1 “DOWNTOWN” BROOKLYN, FULTON FERRY, ‘DUMBO’ These three areas, on the present-day map pf Brooklyn, encompass all the territory north and east of Old Fulton Street/Cadman Plaza West, to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the east and Fulton Mall on the south. This part of Brooklyn has seen the most change since the [...]
Categorized in: Street Necrology Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Cobble Hill Downtown
Much of downtown Brooklyn, which for my purposes includes Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Vinegar Hill, Red Hook and part of Fort Greene, no longer exists. It used to be home to a collection of streets wide and narrow, full of tenements, stores, and cobblestones, many overshadowed by dark forbidding elevated structures where trains rattled on their way to and across [...]
Categorized in: Street Necrology Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Cobble Hill Downtown
Unbeknownst to most, an abandoned Long Island Railroad tunnel runs for a couple of blocks below Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights. But this isn’t just any tunnel…it was abandoned for 140 years with virtually no one knowing about its existence! It was built in 1844 and was used in passenger service for fourteen years, ending [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Heights Walt Whitman
Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill are regarded to be the most beautiful neighborhoods in Brooklyn, though each neighborhood has its own partisans. They have dozens of landmarked 19th century brownstone buildings as well as other varieties of architecture along its narrow streets. They also have their share of blind alleys and short cobblestoned paths, which [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
You say that there haven’t been any trolleys on the streets of Brooklyn since the late 1950s? Don’t tell Robert Diamond, the man who discovered the ancient Long Island Railroad tunnel underneath Atlantic Avenue in 1980 . Since then, Diamond has been trying to inaugurate a trolley line that would extend through the long-abandoned tunnel [...]
Categorized in: Trolleys Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
Categorized in: Cobblestones Tagged with: Bay Ridge Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights Cobble Hill Red Hook
