Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
I’ve passed by this building hundreds of times, as millions have, and plenty of times caught sight of the name “John Q Aymar” on the 8th Avenue side. I got around to looking him up, and it continues to be a puzzlement. The Aymars were a family of merchant princes in gaslight New York from [...]
Following a tip about ‘ugly, futurisic’ lampposts appearing on the 9th Avenue and West 14th Street area, I found instead on West 15th a small clutch of the new davit-style lampposts of which the Department of Transportation is becoming increasingly proud. By definition, a davit-style post is one in which the shaft curves out to [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
Consumer activist, author, lecturer and attorney Ralph Nader has run for President for the Green Party and independently in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. In addition, he received one vote at the Democratic convention in 1972, and competed in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire primaries in 1992. In ’08 his running mate was San Francisco [...]
When I was working in the area last winter, I noticed this unusual fire alarm at 7th Avenue and West 19th Street in Chelsea. Most fire alarms are either mounted on their own dedicated stanchions with unique designs, such as the older ones with the torch (that looks like an ice cream cone) at the [...]
A sttroll through the old Garment District (6th and 7th Avenues and side streets between 24th and 40th Streets) will reveal hundreds of painted ads on side streets advertising clothing wholesalers, 95% of which have utterly vanished or have long been bought by other companies. More and more of them fade away each year, or [...]
I have worked frequently in the Chelsea area, more specifically, the 7th Avenue corridor between 23rd Street and Penn Station. I have always been curious about the terra cotta gem on West 23rd just off 7th called the “Traffic Building.” [click on an image in the above Gallery for a larger photo] Daytonian in Manhattan [...]
The “High Line,” more properly the West Side Improvement, consisted of the construction, in the early 1930s, of two elevated structures: the Miller, or West Side Highway and the West Side Freight Railroad serving businesses, wholesalers and manufacturers near the Hudson River waterfront. The Miller was closed in 1973 after a truck fell through a [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
The Port Authority Trans-Hudson Railroad, or the PATH train, is NYC’s “other” subway, running under 6th Avenue, Christopher Street, Greenwich Street and Morton Street and from Church Street on the once and future World Trade Center site to various stops in Hoboken, Jersey City, and Newark, New Jersey. At its full length, it runs from [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Greenwich Village Manhattan
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
As a rule, I usually harbor some affection for the places I have worked, even if all of them ultimately wound up having little affection for me. There was the sepulchral passport photo office where I swept up and developed pictures, or the type shop where I worked nights for 8 years (I still love type), [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chelsea
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chelsea Flatiron Manhattan
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chelsea diners Manhattan
There’s a cluster of buildings on West 20th Street in Chelsea between 8th and 9th Avenues that are somewhat puzzling, to me at least. They stand out from the others on their side of the street in that the eschew brick cladding for stone and present a smooth, streamlined facing. Some of the windows have arched [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Chelsea Manhatatn
As most New Yorkers who have been here for the past 40 years or so know, most of our major projects that get proposed never see the light of day. The 2nd Avenue Subway is coming along very slowly, but has been planned for nearly 80 years. A perfectly manageable project to convert the James Farley Post Office [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea High Line Manhattan
Walking down West 21st Street in Chelsearecently I spotted a classic car parked by the sidewalk, and a not-so-quick online search revealed that it was a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, one of the make’s last great gasps, produced from 1962-1964. I wasn’t aware that New York State produced special license pates for [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: cars Chelsea Manhattan
Your webmaster has worked in the proximity of 6th Avenue off and on for years, in hole-in-the-wall Russian type shops, defunct art schools, college textbook sweatshops, gardening magazine publishers, you name it. I’ve seen 6th, between 23rd and 29th Streets, convert from phonograph needle wholesalers, mom and pop delis and junk sales to a phalanx [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Chelsea Madison Square Manhattan
I first stumbled on the “High Line,” or officially, the West Side Elevated Freight Railroad, way back in about 1983, when it had just run its last shipment of frozen turkeys and was marked for doom by its owner, Consolidated Rail Corporation, or Conrail. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Prior to the 1930s, 11th Avenue featured [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
In 1999, before High Line Park was a glimmer in the eye of preservationists (well, perhaps a small glimmer, as recounted in the new book chronicling its conversion from just another rusting, abandoned elevated rail line to the showpiece of the West Side) I took the Forgotten NY camera, which was then a point and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Greenwich Village Manhattan
In the 1930s and continuing into the 1950s, New York City went through a great deal of expense to eliminate its elevated trains. One by one, the celebrated els of yore came down: The Ninth Avenue, the Sixth, the Second, and finally, the Third (its Bronx tracks would not fall until 1973). Less publicized and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
