ONE of my favorite pastimes is to pore over old maps, especially of New York City, and note what is still there and what has disappeared. In the mid-19th Century,…
Gravesend
-
-
HIDDEN histories abound in New York City’s street names. In Gravesend, a one-block street, Boynton Place, connects West 7th Street and Avenue X between 86th Street and the MTA’s Coney…
-
GRAVESEND Neck Road was once a major east-west artery in Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay in the days of carts and wagons. “Neck Road” as it’s called by locals and the MTA…
-
In July 2016 I made my way to the Del Rio Diner, Kings Highway and West 12th Street, having heard of its impending closure. NYC’s classic diners have been shutting…
-
In 1640, Dutch provincial governor William Kieft prosecuted a war upon the indigenous Native Americans that resulted in more than 1,000 Indian fatalities in Manhattan and western Long Island. It was…
-
THE owners of a house at Van Sicklen Street and Corso Court, a private cul de sac south of Gravesend Neck Road in the heart of Gravesend, have preserved this…
-
THE Van Siclens, who spelt their name in two ways as was common in the colonial era before spellings were codified, settled in western Long Island in the mid-17th Century…
-
RYDER-Van Cleef House, constructed in 1840 by Lawrence Ryder, stood at 26 Village Road north before it was moved to #38 in 1930. A Ryder daughter married a Van Cleef,…
-
As I am writing this in early August 2022 we’re in the midst of a long slog of hot, humid weather which is increasingly the trend in NYC as cool…
-
I’m informed by Gravesend historian Joseph Ditta that this large mystery object on the west side of Ocean Parkway and Avenue U in Gravesend has finally been removed by the…
-
THIS is the Samuel Hubbard House, which may now justifiably be called the John Antonides House, at #2138 McDonald Avenue north of Avenue T. The right side of the house…
-
MORE than most other Brooklyn neighborhoods, Gravesend features short, one block streets known as Courts and Places. While a couple of them are “legacy roads” that existed in the colonial…