Forgotten New York is in Association with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit organization supported by the Long Island City community.
The concrete-cladded viaduct that takes the IRT #7 Flushing Line down the middle of Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside was built in 1917, and in the mid-1990s was treated to a complete overhaul with new station canopies and stained glass panels, as well as a complete replacement of the concrete and terra cotta ornamentation that left [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
There seems to be some strange stuff, lamppost and luminaire-wise, increasingly happening in Sunnyside, Queens. While NYC’s streets until mid-2009 were a glorious mish mosh of lighting styles, from the green-white mercury bulbs of the 1960s GE M400 and Westinghouse OV25 “Silverliners”on up to the brilliant yellow sodium lamps first seen in the 1970s and [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
In June 2012, on a weekday afternoon (I was, and at this writing am, still paying the penance for years of unpreparedness for the modern world by being unemployed) I braved the searing, unrelenting, inhumane heat in western Queens, were vegetation and the cooling cover of large trees is nearly absent, on a walk on [...]
Categorized in: Walks Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens Sunnyside
Besides pawing with ever-increasing futility amongst the dregs of the online listings and interviewing with firms located for me by an agency, with briefly elevated and later inevitably dashed hopes, I have been continuing to write new pages of this site while updating the old, as well as lurching around various neighborhoods, attempting to remain [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Neighborhoods Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
One of my favorite developments in the ongoing renovations in NYC subway stations is the stained glass artwork that has been installed on elevated station windscreens. I consider the #7 Flushing Line branch my local line (along with the 7th Avenue Line trains, #1,2,3) and 8th Avenue Line trains (A, C, E) I board at [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
In the mid-19th Century Manhattan was getting so crowded (by 1845 the island was fully built up south of about 42nd Street) that it was running out of cemetery space. The two largest cemeteries had been developed by Trinity Cemetery, in the churchyard adjacent to its ancient Broadway and Wall Street location, and uptown in [...]
Categorized in: Cemeteries Tagged with: Blissville Queens Sunnyside
I did a thorough survey of Staten Island’s Tompkinsville and Stapleton, especially Van Duzer Street, in December 2010 (to match my earlier page on the gorgeous homes of St. Paul’s Avenue). I wasn’t finished that day, though, and after getting through Tompkinsville and Stapleton, I pressed further, into Grymes Hill, West Brighton, Randall Manor, Clove [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Grymes Hill Staten Island Sunnyside West Brighton
The Forgotten NY Book of Street Necrology is a thick, dusty, ancient tome, encrusted with the grime of centuries, its lock rusting and the last flecks of gilt flaking off the bindery. Unlike the recent flimsy editions of the AIA Guide to New York City (whose pages separate from the glue binding soon after first [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Necrology Subways & Trains Tagged with: Astoria Hunters Point Queens Rockaway Sunnyside
Those of you who have followed FNY for a long time know about my predilection for lampposts — an affinity I am hard pressed to explain. I do know I have been a fan of NYC lampposts, and by extrapolation stoplights, fire hydrants, street signs, and other ancillary materials, nearly since birth. Their lore and history [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Street Lamps Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
In 2005 FNY did a 2-part survey of Queens Boulevard, a borough aorta running from Queens Plaza, the landing point of the Queensboro Bridge, all the way to Jamaica. Looking at that page again, I gave its liveliest stretch surrounding the elevated viaduct in Sunnyside short shrift. I hope to alleviate that with today’s page. [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
6/09. Catching up on some older stuff while I am gradually recovering from surgery. In December I was out for lunch and a short walk in Sunnyside, Queens and in just that brief time, mainly on Skillman and Roosevelt Avenues, I was able to find a number of examples of old-school signage…some of which looked as [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
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
In a sense Forgotten New York always goes back to lampposts. When your webmaster was six I noticed the wholesale replacement of old styles by new ones in Bay Ridge and later, all around town. I filled note pads and tablets with drawings of lampposts — never ones of my own design, but slavish imitations [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Astoria Newark Queens Sunnyside
It was a deep and dark December as the song goes, and I had just a couple of hours before I lost the light. I decided to walk the scarp that divides Sunnyside and Woodside, through Sunnyside Gardens, and into Astoria… He’s called the Woodside Doughboy and while there are 9 other figures in NYC, such [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Street Scenes Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Four Corners Staten Island Sunnyside Todt Hill
Todt Hill, Staten Island’s 412-foot tall mountain, is in the center of the borough and is at once wild, wide-open and untrammeled and manages, at the same time, to be one of Staten Island’s most exclusive and expensive areas…for people on both sides of the law. Join your webmaster as he climbs and ascends the [...]
Categorized in: You'd Never Believe You're in NYC Tagged with: Four Corners Staten Island Sunnyside Todt Hill
Paralyzing inertia is my archenemy. Despite accumulating a wealth of knowledge about the relics and remnants of the NYC of the past throughout my teens, 20s and 30s, I didn’t begin to amass a library of photographs of these kinds of things until I was 40 years old, and while over the next few years [...]
Categorized in: Street Lamps Tagged with: Bridges Queens Sunnyside
SUNNYSIDE extends from the Sunnyside Railroad Yards along Skillman Avenue in the north to the Queens-Midtown Expressway in the south between 30th and about 58th Streets. Originally slower to develop than its immediate neighbors, Long Island City and Astoria, Sunnyside was transformed into a bustling residential neighborhood by the opening of the Queensboro Bridge and then [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
WHETHER it wants to admit it or not, the Department of Transportation’s main function is the movement of motor vehicles; to enable them to move as quickly as possible. That means synchronized stoplights that are calibrated to provide uninterrupted passage for a lengthy distance. Such traffic lights often provide two minutes of green for the vehicles [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Walks Tagged with: Elmhurst Forest Hills Queens Rego Park Sunnyside
In Queens, the Long Island Rail Road has certainly left remnants of its golden era of passenger trains. The Rockaway Branch is still there, waiting to be reactivated or converted into something worthwhile, and Kissena Corridor Park in Flushing traces the ancient LIRR connection from the main line through Creedmoor to the Port Washington branch (at about [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned rail routes Hunters Point Queens Sunnyside
Continued from Part 1 This time, our survey of little-noticed Queens alleyways takes us from gritty, concrete-enveloped Long Island City all the way east to bucolic, rural Little Neck–which could pass for an upstate village or a small North Shore town, which, of course, it is! So let’s start in Long Island City and work [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Neighborhoods Tagged with: Astoria Boker Briarwood Charlotte College Point Cornell Corona Elmhurst Flushing Forest Hills Glendale Hawtree Linneaus Little Neck Queens Ridgewood South Jamaica Sunnyside Whitestone
Queens, in many ways, is the youngest of the five boroughs. It became a part of the city when its widely separated towns joined with the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan in 1898 to become the five boroughs. Part of Queens, though, wanted nothing to do with New York City and so the Queens [...]
Categorized in: Alleys Tagged with: Astoria Briarwood College Point Corona Elmhurst Flushing Forest Hills Glendale Little Neck Queens Ridgewood South Jamaica Sunnyside Whitestone
