REVISITING the scene of the very first ForgottenTour in June 1999 FNY turns again to Brooklyn’s Broadway, formerly the main drag in Williamsburg, where the Vanderbilts looked across the river to Manhattan from…

Open House New York is a once-a-year extravaganza, a public celebration of architecture and design in New York City. Approximately one hundred different locales, many of which would never ordinarily…

WHEN I REVISIT Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue, I am going back to a stretch I have traversed thousands of times. Each day between September 1971 and the fall of 1980 (the latter…

I USUALLY return to my old pages unannounced. If I have something new on a certain subject I usually just drop it in without really notifying anyone; one day, you’re looking…

CONTINUED FROM PART 1 WHEN IT reaches Union Turnpike, the Jackie Robinson Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway in Kew Gardens, Queens Blvd. begins its slow process of winding down. Quiet…

WHETHER it wants to admit it or not, the Department of Transportation’s main function is the movement of motor vehicles; to enable them to move as quickly as possible. That means…

FIRST of all, we’ll get Houston Street’s derivation, and its unusual pronunciation, out of the way: The street from the Hudson River to Bedford had acquired its name by 1803, when…

THE BRONX borders Nassau County.Manhattan borders Queens. The Bronx borders Queens, too. Staten Island borders Middlesex County, New Jersey. Suffolk County borders Rhode Island! But these worlds never truly come…

Music Pagoda DURING my years in Brooklyn, before moving to Flushing in 1993, I developed a keen interest in Prospect Park, which was strange because, in my youthful peregrinations both with…

46th Street and 54th Road I SERIOUSLY doubt that half of any New York City guidebooks even mention the two areas in southwest Queens we’ll visit today, ensconced on either side…

IF THE 1989 Citibank tower on Jackson Avenue is Long Island City’s most recognizable landmark, the four ebony smokestacks of the Pennsylvania Railroad Powerhouse on 2nd Street and 51st Avenue marked Hunters…

The last of Ravenswood’s farmhouses, seen on the title card, was torn down in the unstoppable name of development in mid-2004. It stood at 31st Drive and 12th Street. NEVERMORE will there…