Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
Scattered around town are reminders of a time when hot water wasn’t necessarily a given, and there had to be an alternative to bathing in cold water. The city built a series of public bathhouses in the early 20th Century to address this need, and Brooklyn was given five. This one, on Huron Street near [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost community, settles along the junction of the East River and Newtown Creek north of Williamsburg. It has a — for Brooklyn — unusual alphabetized street name system. While Queens has quite a number of pockets of named streets in alphabetical order, Greenpoint can claim one of Brooklyn’s 4 entries in the genre, [...]
Categorized in: Street Necrology Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Russian People’s Home of Greenpoint, 106 Clay Street off McGuinness Boulevard. This is either an old sign of great age, or may have been part of a movie set that was never removed. Most non-English signs in Greenpoint are in Spanish or Polish. At one time, there was a sizable Slavic population in Greenpoint. In [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Greenpoint’s street names were once lettered, from A to Q, but in the late 19th Century were given actual names, in alphabetical order. In north Greenpoint, the names reflect the area’s industrial past next to Newtown Creek — Ash, Box, Clay; south of there, the names switch in emphasis to the formerly bustling commercial shore [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
The ground floor of this building at Manahttan and Driggs in Greenpoint used to be an auto repair shop that sold Matchless shock absorbers, and displayed a lighted sign. When the repair shop left and a bar moved in, they ironically called themselves Matchless, since the sign was there, and they let it stay there. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
During the same foray that produced the Eckford Street photos in April 2011, I was really there for a quick trip the length of Union Avenue. The avenue runs from the junction of Marcy and Flushing Avenue north to Driggs Avenue in McCarren Park, and if you look at the map, it forms the boundary [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint Williamsburg
Eckford Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, runs from Manhattan Avenue between Newton and Engert north to Greenpoint Avenue. According to the indispensable Brooklyn By Name (Benardo/Weiss, 2006) Eckford Webb was a founder of the Greenpoint shipyard Webb & Bell, formerly located at West and Green Streets. The firm built the wood caissons that anchored the Brooklyn [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
When Christmas comes around, my thoughts sometimes wander toward Greenpoint. I have many memories from when I was in my twenties concerning the Garden Spot of the Universe. I once accepted the keys for but never lived in an apartment on Green Street that was outfitted with a single electrical outlet and a bath tub in [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Much of Greenpoint has rightly been named a NYC Landmarks historic district, as its side streets contain vintage architecture from the mid-1800s of a quality not being produced today in even the most lavish of new homes. Several of the neighborhood’s side streets, in particular India, Kent, Milton, and Noble have more than their fair share [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Though luxury developers have had their eyes on Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, making inroads here has not been quite as easy here as it was in the rezoned Williamsburg, immediately to the southwest. And so, the Garden Spot of Brooklyn has been mostly successful in holding fast to its mom and pop shops and decidedly Polish [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
McCarren Park, on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, is, geographically speaking, one of Brooklyn’s more unusual parks. It is trisected by three streets, Bedford Avenue, Driggs Avenue, and Lorimer Street (the streets once had trolley lines and so, were not demapped when the park was created in the 1800s) and is thus in four [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Believe it or not Forgotten NY does get complaints. Well, one or two once in awhile. Many of them concern FNY’s stuck-in-1999 design. To your webmaster, RSS sounds like an auto parts store and twitter is what birds do. Others complain about underrepresentation of some neighborhoods. I will plead guilty in this — in ten [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Roads Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Blissville Brooklyn Greenpoint Queens Sunnyside
Hello and welcome to the first ForgottenSlice. It’s a new strategy on your webmaster’s part not only to post more often during the week, but perhaps to get more opinionated than I allow myself on regular Forgotten NY pages. I have always envied NYC sites like a Gothamist, or the old Gowanus Lounge, or like [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Anything Can Happen® on a ForgottenTour. There was the time we wound up in the Dominican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse in a downpour and ended up in a bar on Bainbridge Avenue, watching David Cone pitch a perfect game (Tour 2). We bumped into since-disgraced Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin at the Latimer House in Flushing, [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tours Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Greenpoint Savings Bank, Manhattan Avenue and Calyer St. KNOWN as the “garden spot of Brooklyn”, an eponym bestowed by theBrooklyn Eagle many years ago, Greenpoint is Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, separated from Long Island City by Newtown Creek. It is the place where the country’s first ironsided warship, the Monitor, was built, the land of Mae West’s [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
Picture yourself in a boat on a river…. Centuries before Robert Moses built his monuments to the automobile, New York’s first superhighways were its rivers, inlets, channels and creeks. It was so much easier to travel by boat than hack your way through a forest. Today we’re looking at Newtown Creek, which remains the longest undefended [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint Hunters Point Queens
In September 2002, FNY did its first McCarren Park Pool (Greenpoint, Brooklyn) page, assuming it would remain forlornly moribund forever. In true New York fashion, change came rapidly thereafter, as it first became a premier music venue, with big names like Blondie and Wilco appearing, and after that, a full-blown restoration of the pool was [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint pools
And now we come to one of the true hidden marvels of New York City, an ‘enchanted village’ a vision of one man’s mind. It’s located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the borough’s northernmost neighborhood, a thriving Polish/Latino enclave and home to some of Brooklyn’s most fascinating architecture and baffling relics. PERSONAL NOTE: Your webmaster had an apartment in Greenpoint [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Brooklyn Greenpoint
