NEW YORK CITY once had four main trunk elevated lines: the 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 9th Avenue Els. Of these, the Third Avenue gets the most of meager press attention…
Kevin Walsh
Kevin Walsh
My name is Kevin Walsh. After a 35-year residency in Bay Ridge, where I witnessed the construction of the Verrazano Bridge as a kid (below) I moved to Queens to be closer to my job as a copywriter/graphic designer at a well-known direct marketer in Long Island and then a compositor at the Queens Times Ledger. I had been noticing ancient advertising and street furniture for years, but it wasn't till I moved to Flushing and saw the ancient remaining Victorian and older buildings that stand among the cookie cutter brick apartments that I put two and two together and noticed there was no one out there who was really calling attention to the artifacts of a long-gone New York. Forgotten NY was named one of Forbes' Best City Blogs sites, and in good company: Gothamist and Newyorkology. FNY has been profiled in all of NYC's daily newspapers, and has been mentioned by name in columns by the New York Times' Christopher Gray and David Dunlap and by the New York Sun's Francis Morrone. It has twice been named to the Village Voice's Best of NYC list, most recently in 2006. It has also been cited by PC Magazine's Top 99 "Undiscovered" websites. Forgotten NY is always in great debt to its contributors, especially Forgotten NY correspondent Christina Wilkinson, retired NYC bus driver Gary Fonville, Mike Olshan, Jean Siegel and many other Forgotten regulars. See my Forgotten Fans page for just a few. FNY averages between 1500-2000 unique vistors daily, and 4000-5000 daily visits overall.
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FORGIVE the relatively poor angle on this shot of Whitestone Lanes, at Whitestone Expressway and Linden Place, technically in Flushing. (It actually looks better by night than by day.) I…
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TUCKED away in Bayside along Long Island Rail Road tracks at 42nd Avenue between 215th Place and 216th Street is a private cemetery originally belonging to the prominent Queens County…
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FACING the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. 64th Street is a former state militia armory that serves as the headquarters of NYC Parks. As a landmarked building, its history…
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In 1940, Diamond’s Dry Goods held down 2516 Mermaid Avenue, west of West 25th Street in Coney Island. The name was displayed in a diamond-shaped motif with a window display…
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LARGE cast-iron stoplights I call “Wheelies” first began to show up in the late 1920s as wide boulevards began to appear and traffic got heavier. They appeared on narrower roads as…
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FOR years, I’ve noticed that many liquor stores in the five boroughs have the same signage they must have had decades ago…whether they’re ceramic, painted signs or my favorite, NEON.…
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In the mid-1760s, NYC had sufficiently grown that the Episcopalian parish of Trinity Church began to expand uptown, and built St. Paul’s Chapel in 1766. When a giant fire broke…
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SADLY I have never visited Big Nose Kate’s, a saloon way out in Rossville, at 2484 Arthur Kill Road, tucked near the huge Old Bermuda catering hall next to the…
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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…
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I got this photo at the dawn of Forgotten NY in the winter of 1998 at Bedford Avenue and North 4th, when Williamsburg was still an industrial/ethnic Eastern European stronghold,…
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WHEN I lived in Bay Ridge, I would frequently bicycle down Ocean Parkway from Church Avenue to Coney Island. It boasts a world-class bike path and it’s flat as a…