Gravesend

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…

I was slouching around Gravesend for a couple of hours the first day of June, after taking the D train in from Manhattan. I was going to stay longer but…

I know, this is hardly Forgotten, but complainers and purists, bear with me today. In June 2019, Forgotten New York’s tour of Gravesend was the best-attended of the year with…

I was fascinated by a couple of photos I saw at the NYC Transit Museum when I visited it in January of the Brighton Line, a steam rail line that…