It’s hard to believe it, but it’s nowhere near as easy as it used to be to ride a horse in Central Park (unless you are a mounted policeman). The only…

One of the most enjoyable things I do with Forgotten New York is finding unheralded and unknown infrastructure. A light post representative of a long-lost genre … a building with a…

Cherubs have always (for me at least) been some of the more bizarre touchstones in the Christian tradition. Sometimes they are depicted as full-bodied babies with wings. Other times, they are…

Even as NYC’s Department of Transportation has been installing retro Bishop Crooks and retro M24 longarm Corvingtons, and even some scattered reverse scroll Type F’s and Lyres around town (forgive me,…

New York City at times perversely secretes its more picturesque parks in places where it’s nearly impossible to find them. One of them, Peter Detmold Park, reclines along the Franklin Delano Roosevelt…

I’ve been aware of Dennet Place since I first started perusing Hagstrom maps, specifically September 1968 (age 11) when I acquired my first one, at Gertz on Jamaica Avenue, in precincts…

New York City and United States history can be gleaned from the most mundane, unexceptional places. There’s a tiny street on the Cobble Hill-Red Hook border that exists in two sections,…

The abandoned courthouse has stood silently on Beach Channel Drive and Beach 90th Street, just east of Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, for several decades, awaiting either the day when it…

Your webmaster recently took advantage of an amazing coincidence — a day off combined with pleasant weather — to walk 14th Street from west to east and then enter Stuyvesant Town to plunder…

Having heard that Columbia Street, a lengthy stretch that runs along the Brooklyn waterfront for much of its route, was finally free of construction after three years of rough driving,…

Hidden deep in Staten Island’s Rosebank neighborhood is the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto, a 30-foot high shrine made of concrete spangled with smooth round stones, glass marbles, shells, plastic flowers.…

I know what you’re thinking…Shea Stadium…Radio City Music Hall? Is he running out of Forgotten places to root around in? Not even close. The modus operandi of FNY, besides finding…