THIS week I’m continuing with explorations of north-south streets in Chinatown, Little Italy and the Lower East Side. Having already covered Christie Street and Eldridge Street, I’ll complete the trio today with Forsyth Street from its north end at East Houston south to its junction with Eldridge at Division. As I explained on the Eldridge Street page, Forsyth and Eldridge were once parallel all the way, but the city made Forsyth curve to the southeast when the Manhattan Bridge was built from 1903 to 1909. Streets in this area honor War of 1812 heroes, as the streets were built shortly following that conflict, and Forsyth was named for North Carolinian Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Forsyth, who perished from war wounds acquired in Canada; Forsyth County, NC also honors him.
Like Christie Street, Forsyth borders Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a corridor park running six blocks between Canal and Houston in the early days of the Depression. I will touch on the park only briefly, as Sergey adequately covered Sara Roosevelt Park on this 2020 FNY page; I will borrow some of his Forsyth Street descriptions here.
At Forsyth and Houston, the Gatsby Hotel has gained some engaging artwork on the Forsyth Street side in recent years. The modern building, which replaced a tenement building several years ago, has been a Howard Johnson Express and the Gem Soho; its new name, of course, invokes the Jazz Age depicted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” a novel celebrating its centennial in 2025. The slim work has been depicted on film numerous times and in early 2025 had been adapted as a Broadway musical.
The iron birds on the lampposts at Houston and Forsyth are meant to evoke one of Chinatown’s most crowdpleasing features, the Hua Mei Bird Garden:
Every morning, rain or shine, and before the alternate-side parking regulations kick in, the Hua Mei birds and their owners converge in a pine grove just south of Delancey Street. The Hua Mei Bird Garden is at the northern tip of one of the segments of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park, between Forsythe and Chrystie streets, and surrounded by a chain-link fence and marked with a sign in Chinese and English: “Respect the Birds. Respect the Plants.” [City Lore]
However: as you saw, the birdcages aren’t on Houston, but Delancey, 3 blocks south.
The massive former PS 91 at Forsyth and Stanton; since partitioned into the Jeffrey C. Tenzer Learning Center, Auxiliary Services for High Schools, Cascades High School and the Lyle Center Satellite Academy.
From the Municipal Archives, a look at Forsyth south from Stanton in 1931, showing streetcar tracks and the brand new Sara Roosevelt Park on the right.
Have a look at who will be playing at the magnificent Kings Theater on Flatbush Avenue on this plastered poster on a Forsyth dumpster. Even this oldtimer knows Diana Ross, Jack White, Kraftwerk. The Kings was gorgeously restored and reopened in 2015; long after the ForgottenBook came out in 2006. Here’s what I wrote about it in the book:
Loew’s Kings, on Flatbush and Beverley, is one of those gigantic, baroque movie palaces like the Paradise on the Grand Concourse, St. George in Staten Island or Keith’s on Northern Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, whose fortunes have gone from riches to rags and have, to varying degrees, have had the glad rags reapplied, though Loew’s, unfortunately, is behind the curve of the other three.
|
The Kings was built in 1929 and could hold all of 3,676 theatergoers. It featured lighting schemes enabling theater managers to change the mood in the theater depending on the time of day and whether the days’s offerings were in preshow or intermission. Ornamental plaster castings took the form of carved wood or marble; there were dozens of oil paintings and statues of mythological figures. Allan Abel, in his 1995 book “Flatbush Odyssey,” describes the Kings interior as “Xanadu designed by Kubla Khan on crack.” In its early days it presented both motion pictures and vaudeville acts, but by 1935 the baggy pants comics had shuffled off. Erasmus Hall High School held commencements at the Kings for many years. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the Kings suffered a slow decline. During a 1974 showing of Blazing Saddles, the projector caught on fire; finally, after featuring Marathon Man, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and Exorcist II: The Heretic, the Kings closed its doors, though it has opened on occasion for movie shoots. A musical, Flatbush Follies, was mounted at the Kings in 1978 for one night, but never finished when a fire broke out. There are rumors that Magic Johnson may have wanted to purchase the Kings and add it to his theater empire, and he may be interested to know that there’s a basketball court in the basement. It was built for the Flatbush Avenue Theater Ushers League. Yes, movie ushers once had a basketball league.
Sergey Kadinsky: [At Forsyth and Rivington] is the former Public School 20, one of many historically-inspired schools designed by C.B.J. Snyder. In 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis this former school became the Rivington House, a 219-bed nursing home for patients afflicted with this incurable virus. In 2015, the facility closed and was sold to a politically-connected nursing home operator who then sold it to a private developer who had dreams of a luxury condo conversion here. Investigations and controversy ensued. In 2019, a mystery LLC purchased the building, which is leased for 30 years to Mount Sinai Hospital as a clinic.
Behind the unassuming facade at #150 Forsyth is East Side Studios, where acts like the late Lou Reed, John Zorn, Carlos Santana, Sting, Eric Clapton, Laurie Anderson, Mariah Carey, Cindy Lauper, Keith Richards, Peter Frampton, Beyonce, Herbie Hancock, Violent Femmes, System of a Down have all recorded tracks. The studio was founded in 1972 and moved for Forsyth after several years on Allen Street.
Economy Candy has a Lower East Side rival at Roni-Sue Chocolates at #148 Forsyth. I really should have gotten a hot chocolate and sipped it on a park bench on this chilly December 31. Maybe next time. Rhonda Kave opened the shop in 2007. The shop also holds cooking classes for dessert treats. Your dentist and cardiologist will thank you for the business.
A look at what Sergey terms as the “Golden Age Center, an unremarkable Modernist facility completed in 1964.” A look at Chrystie Street toward the rear reveals wildly different architecural styles from 1900-2020.
#195-199 Chrystie has a grim history. The property once served as the city’s second African Burial Ground, after the first one in the Civic Center was closed and desecrated with development. This cemetery received burials from 1795 until 1853. Most of the remains were reinterred at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, which hosts relocated graves from a few other small cemeteries that were decommissioned in favor of urban growth.
The Spanish Delancey Seventh Day Adventist Church offers hints of its Jewish past with stars of David on its windows. It has been “dumbed down” considerably from its original appearance; but perhaps over-ornamentation can be hard to maintain, as well as a fire hazard. Its designer, J. Cleveland Cady, also had the American Museum of Natural History and the old Metropolitan Opera House on his resume. Built in 1890 for a missionary church, it had no luck converting Jewish immigrants and soon became a palatial synagogue. The owners wisely rented out the first floor to storefronts.
Sergey: In the 1960s, the synagogue had few members, as younger generations moved uptown, out of Manhattan, and towards the suburbs. The church purchased this shul in 1971. Under its current owner, services here still take place on Saturdays. In 2016, the church offered its site for development, with the provision to retain the first three floors.
The name “Garfield” around town, on buildings and street names, as at #104 Forsyth south of Delancey, likely honors President James Garfield (1831-1881) who was assassinated after only 6 months in office; he was succeeded by Vice President Chester A. Arthur, a New York native with a statue in Madison Square. Daytonian in Manhattan blogger Tom Miller gives us a detailed history of The Garfield Flats.
In spots, the ancient wrought iron fence protecting Sara Roosevelt Park from Forsyth Street is in place; elsewhere, chicken wire suffices.
Seems to me that Sara D. could use a makeover. The city didn’t bother to replace parks’ iconic hexagonal honeycomb-style pavings after a recent digging by a utility company; instead, a haphazard pave job, and resultant uneven footing, makes do.
Note the terracotta ornaments on #98 Forsyth and the much plainer 3-story brick building adjoining it. That building is much older and could go back to the 1820s. The taller building,
98 Forsyth Street was built in the late 1800’s as a five story catering hall. Named Pearl’s Mansion, it was one of three premier catering halls in New York’s Downtown. It is beautiful and very ornate! We spent more than three years researching and restoring these original amenities. {Harris Levy]
Harris Levy is a fine linens purveyor.
Grand Street passes through SDR Park. The Grand Street subway station, opened in 1968, is one of a handful of NYC subway stations opened after 1950; others can be found in the Rockaway peninsula, Jamaica, Queens and the 2nd Avenue Q train extension. The station was part of a major realigning of the subways created by a connection between IND and BMT systems at Chrystie Street, allowing IND trains to cross the Manhattan Bridge and the 6th Avenue and Nassau Street lines to connect. The former two-toned Metropolitan Transit Authority logo is still in place.
Entering Chinatown now, traveling south of Forsyth. This market storefront at the NE corner is one of many in the region with red and gold (yellow) signage.
A trio of vintage buildings on Forsyth south of Grand that appear unrenovated for decades. Except for the cars, this photo could be from the 1960s or earlier.
Facing Hester Street at Forsyth is the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Intermediate, or Junior, High School, Chinatown’s answer to the Guggenheim Museum. Sun (1866-1925) was the founder and first president of the first Chinese republic, after the 1911 overthrow of the dynastic system that had ruled China for millennia. The guidebooks ignore this unusual building, and school websites don’t discuss architecture. The campus interrupts Forsyth between Hester and Canal, so I do not know the architect; it wasn’t Frank Lloyd Wright.
The last couple of decades, the chopped cheese, a sandwich made with ground beef, onions, cheese and seasonings
served on a toasted hero roll and topped with condiments, has become a staple in NYC’s corner groceries and bodegas; this is the first instance, at Hester and Forsyth, I’ve seen a bodega actually named for it.
Seen here from Forsyth and Canal Streets, the grand Manhattan Bridge plaza, which fronts the Bowery at Canal Street, was completed in 1916 and is the design of John M. Carrere and Thomas Hastings, who also built the New York Public Library at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. They looked to two classic European monuments for inspiration: The Porte St-Denis in Paris (the arch) and the Giovanni Bernini Colonnade at St. Peter’s Church in Vatican City.
The Porte St-Denis and Porte St-Martin in Paris are triumphal arches that celebrate military victories by “the Sun King”, Louis XIV. The St-Denis arch was completed in 1674 by sculptor Nicolas François Blondel. Bas-reliefs on the top and sides commemorate war campaigns and victories. Both arches greatly influenced the later Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Manhattan Bridge arch, which is a close homage.
#30 Forsyth, south of Canal, has always been festooned with signage, for some reason. In the 1940s, it was jewelry (the Bowery and Canal Street area was and still is to a lesser degree a jewelry district); today, the signs in Chinese are, you got it, in red and yelllow.
The south ends of both Eldridge and Forsyth Streets are punctuated by fanciful houses of worship. On Eldridge, it’s the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a.k.a. The Museum at Eldridge; on Forsyth, at #27, it’s St. Barbara’s, a Greek Orthodox palace deep within Chinatown territory. Constructed in 1892 as the Kol Israel Anshe Poland synagogue when the Lower East Side was heavily Jewish, and before that part of Kleindeutschland “Little Germany,” it became St. Barbara’s in 1934 during a time when Greek immigrants carved out an area stronghold. See Bedford + Bowery for a full recounting of this fascinating cultural succession.
It doesn’t look like it would fit, but an elevated train once crossed beneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass here at Forsyth and Division Streets; the el was built low enough in the 1880s so the bridge could be built atop it. Here, Division used to be the epicenter of the fashion world. The el split into the 2nd and 3rd Avenue Els at Chatham Square; but by 1956, all trace of both were gone.
I got some interesting images on Division on the way back to the train, but those will wait for another day.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
2/23/25