It’s hard to say why, but the definitive history of Flushing has yet to be written. Plenty has been written about Flushing’s rich past centuries ago, with its struggles over…

On the Queens-Nassau border between I-495 and Belmont Park, Hometown USA and Sodom come together in a haze of auto parts stores and multi-lane SUV speedways. Queens’ communities of Glen Oaks, Floral…

CONTINUED FROM GREEN-WOOD HEIGHTS PART 1 5th Avenue The stretch of Fifth Avenue along Green-Wood cemetery is by far its quietest, sandwiched between its incredibly bustling areas on either end: Park…

I confess. “Green-Wood Heights” is a name concocted by real-estaters stumped about what to call the area on the NW side of Green-Wood Cemetery between Park Slope and Sunset Park. Some…

1-2-3 skiddoo 123rd Street, for some reason, is the scene for many venerable College Point architectural survivors… Its neighbor at 13-11 123rd is rather less recognizable. It was built by Jacob Salathe,…

College Point, excluding Broad Channel (which is on its own eponymous island) and the towns along the Rockaway Peninsula, is the most isolated neighborhood in Queens. It is separated from…

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The Vogt family still occupies the house at 13-17 123rd that forebears built in the 1850s. College Point by Victor Lederer   Its neighbor at 13-11 123rd is rather less…

CONTINUED FROM JACKSON HEIGHTS/EAST ELMHURST PART 1 Name That Plane Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology, between Ditmars Blvd., 23rd Avenue and 90th Street, has quite the little collection of…

In a borough largely ignored by NYC’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the magnificent garden apartments of Jackson Heights are a happy exception. Today’s Jackson Heights is a neighborhood of handsome six-story co-operative…

Forgotten Fans wave with Minerva In what was undoubtedly the best weather ever for a ForgottenTour (sunny and 68) forty Forgotten fans (and one heckler!) converged on Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery, a…

When I first started researching NYC history I assumed that Sheepshead Bay was named for its one-time resemblance, in outline, to a sheep’s head. After all, that’s how a peninsula on…

CONTINUED FROM SHEEPSHEAD BAY, PART 2 We’ve run out of letters The town of Flatbush, absorbed into Brooklyn in the 1890s, had its own tidy street naming system: East and West…