Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
On Sunday, April 21, 2013, nearly 35 ForgottenFans gathered for a tour in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn and with sunny, 55 degree conditions, the recent weather winning streak for FNY tours continued going back to most 2012 tours. The title card shows the crowd at the WWI War Memorial in Carroll Park. The [...]
Categorized in: Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Cobble Hill
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
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
New York City and United States history can be gleaned from the most mundane, unexceptional places. There’s a tiny street on the Cobble Hill-Red Hook border that exists in two sections, having been ravaged by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and submerged under the Brooklyn Battery toll plaza, that remembers the family that produced the very first European [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens
Manhattan may have its Canal Street, built over a former waterway draining the equally lost Collect Pond, but Brooklyn has its very own waterway known as the Gowanus Canal bisecting the neighborhood of the same name (which means, depending on what source you use, “a young or small pine,” or “the sleeper” in the Delaware Indian language). [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens Gowanus
YOU NEVER KNOW where you’re going to find inspiration for Forgotten NY pages. One of the interviewees in Gothamist in September 2004 was columnist/novelist Amy Sohn, and she slipped in this remark: The F [is my favorite subway line]. It was the first train I spent a lot of time on when I moved into my very first post-grad apartment, [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Carroll Gardens
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
This bridge, on Carroll Street spanning the Gowanus Canal, was built in 1889 by the Brooklyn Department of City Works (when Brooklyn was a city) and is one of two retractile bridges left in New York, and one of four left in the United States (another can be found on Borden Avenue crossing Dutch Kills [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Bridges Brooklyn Carroll Gardens
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
