Saturday, August 17th was yet another bright and sunny day for a ForgottenTour (as most have been in 2012 and 2013) and over 40 ForgottenFans turned up for a walk through the ancestral home of your webmaster, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Though I moved away in 1993, Bay Ridge will always be home, though just about everyone I knew has died or moved away, except for my dentist. But with the state of my teeth, that makes me a frequent visitor.
The tour went past Bay Ridge’s numerous historic sites such as St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were vestrymen; Fort Hamilton itself; John Paul Jones Park, with its numerous war memorials and one of the four remaining Rodman guns ever produced… the world’s biggest cannons; Fontbonne Hall, a former mansion where famed gourmand Jim Brady entertained Lillian Russell; the wildly fanciful “Gingerbread House”; a walk along the shore to view the distant Manhattan skyline; and we took in the view from Owl’s Head Park.
There are 5 remaining tours this year… next is in Manhattanville on Saturday, September 7th, meeting on the southeast corner of Broadway and 125th Street, with the admission $20 or $15 for Greater Astoria Historical Society members. Hope to see you!
–Flickr page of ForgottenTour #70 with photos from “Hubcap” Joe DeMarco
8/29/13