Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
While meandering through eastern Bushwick, dazed by the unbearable 80-degree heat in the late summer of 2011, I was pleased to find something I hadn’t previously known about: the almost-garishly turned out Engine 252 on Central Avenue at Covert Street, which is also covered in red paint, something also guaranteed to attract. When Bushwick was [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick firehouses
This ad for Norge Appliances, seen from the Myrtle Avenue platform on the Broadway el in Bushwick, has probably been there since the World War II era, and the clock has probably been stopped almost as long. (Norge is what Norwegians call their home country.) The brand has since passed through many hands. The Norge [...]
Ditmars Street runs for one block between Broadway and Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick. It’s unremarkable in every way, except that there is an elevated train at both ends, so it’s probably the only one-block street in NYV for which that claim can be made. Here we are facing the last remnant of the old Myrtle [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
I have been complaining about new street signs in the Cleartype font, many of them in upper and lower case, that have been appearing on NYC streets in compliance with an apparently now-rescinded federal mandate, since they’re apparently easier to read if you’re in a car in motion. I have no idea if this is [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
This arrow-shaped sign lurking under the Broadway Brooklyn el on Broadway and Aberdeen Street is a remaining specimen of the previous generation of one-way signs. They were in use prior to 1965 or so, and were white with the words ONE-WAY in black. Some of the signs carried the words “POLICE DEPT.” on them. This [...]
Though the hot sweltering Sunday, June 27, 2010 weather kept a number of tourgoers away (by apparent contract with the Almighty, ForgottenTours are never held in sunny, brisk, cool weather) 30 diehards still made it to Bushwick, Brooklyn for the 41st tour in a sequence that began June 1st, 1999 — on a nearby thoroughfare, Brooklyn’s [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
I hadn’t walked a considerable length of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn since 1965. That year I distinctly remember some aspects of a walk my mother and I took down Myrtle, one of the lengthiest avenues in Brooklyn and Queens. In those days, and right on into the 1980s, a walk down Myrtle was a somewhat [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Today’s Myrtle Avenue walk extends from the leftover unused el section from Lewis Avenue east to the Madison Theatre, just past the point where the remaining active section of the Myrtle el turns off on Palmetto Street. Myrtle Avenue was laid out as a tolled plank road from Broadway east to [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Mayrtle Avenue Ridgewood
Categorized in: Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick Queens Ridgewood Wyckoff Avenue
Your webmaster had the day to himself after making anappearance on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC Radio (to promote the new Forgottenbook) on a sparkling Monday in October, and had to make a decision about what to do. I was thinking of walking the Brooklyn Bridge, but that would have gotten me to the Brooklyn Heights-Dumbo [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
AS WE celebrate the 100th anniversary of the New York City subway in 2004, just think about what 100 years has meant for the sheer variety of architectural styles that are represented down below. Next time you take the mugger mover, consider that the subways were built by three different companies that were once in [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick IND IRT Long Island City Manhattan mosaics Park Slope Washington Heights Williamsburg
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
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
“Few men in all history … have ever been made to suffer so bitterly and so inexpressibly as I because of the assertion of my achievement.” Was Dr. Frederick A. Cook the first American to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley and the first explorer to reach the North Pole? Or, was he, as some detractors assert, a fake and [...]
Categorized in: Uncategorized
The LIRR Bushwick Branch, probably the least-known active railroad in New York City, runs from Bushwick Place and Montrose Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn to its junction with the Long Island Rail Road Montauk Branch near Flushng Avenue and Rust Street in Maspeth, Queens. At some points it’s smooth and well-maintained, but at others, it’s overgrown [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
On June 1st, 1999, on the very first ForgottenTour, I stumbled across some remains of a long-dead trolley line on a piece of Johnson Avenue that doesn’t even show up on city maps anymore. This piece of Johnson Avenue, complete with trolley tracks, between Union Avenue and Broadway was cut off when the Lindsay Park Houses (in [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
