TRES HUEVOS, 8th Avenue

Forgotten New York -

My title refers to a nickname radio legend Don Imus gave himself awhile back because he was born with three testicles instead of the usual complement. I may be a little unobservant, but I seem to be seeing fewer and fewer pawnshops around New York City these days, so this one on 8th avenue and [...]

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CLEARVIEW, THE RIGHT WAY, Long Island City

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There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and the recent installation of Clearview street signs in Long Island City illustrates the point perfectly. The signs at 37th Avenue and 34th Street use the boldface version with the normal width, with white racing stripes at the top and bottom of the sign [...]

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HOT BIRD, COLD WORLD, Cobble Hill

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The “Hot Bird” chicken franchise originated in the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, with three prominent, yet simply designed, painted ads scattered around western Brooklyn. The barb-b-que franchise clucked its last in the 1990s, leaving behind some large painted signs, a plain white, red and black ad on Court Street south of Atlantic Avenue, shown here; one [...]

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FRANKLIN AVENUE SIGNS, Crown Heights

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After a walk east on Bergen Street from Cobble Hill, the sun was beginning to addle my pate, so I made for the subway on Eastern Parkway down Franklin Avenue, a neighborhood in transition from lower middle class to yuppification. There is an interesting mix of old school awning signs and new ones indicating upscale [...]

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CIRCLE ROUTE through New York’s Villages, Part 2

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CONTINUED FROM PART 1 On a midweek summer day in 2014, to relieve boredom and get some exercise as much as anything else, I walked a large circular route through lower Manhattan, beginning and ending in Greenwich Village but also entering SoHo, the Lower East Side and the East Village along the way. Sometimes I [...]

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GLOBE NEON, East 29th Street

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I’ve been photographing old neon signs around town for over 15 years, but until now, I haven’t paid attention to the manufacturer, and as often as not, the manufacturer name is inscribed on the sign, such as Globe Neon on the neon restaurant sign at the Campanile Restaurant on East 29th near Madison Avenue. I’ll [...]

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ADAM ALLYN, COMEDIAN, Trinity Church Cemetery

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Trinity Church Cemetery, at Broadway and Wall Street, is one of Manhattan’s oldest cemeteries. (The oldest may be the First Shearith Jewish Cemetery on St. James Place just south of Chatham Square.) The first mention of this space as a burial ground was in 1673, over twenty years before the first Trinity Church was built [...]

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NEWARK LAMPS

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Newark, NJ has installed some new faux-retro streetlights in its downtown area recently, but unfortunately, that’s served as the death knell for several grand old cast iron specimens along Market Street along Cabrini Park, just east of Newark’s Penn Station. These poles were irreplaceable; I’m just glad I found out about them before the unavoidable [...]

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BROOKLYN LIGHTS

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This magnificent specimen, albeit missing its glass reflector bowl, is one of thousands that formerly lit downtown Brooklyn’s side streets. Before and just after Brooklyn’s consolidation with Greater New York in 1898, Brooklyn had different species of cast-iron lamps, which somewhat resembled Manhattan’s Corvingtons, Bishop Crooks, Type Fs, etc. but were wildly different as far [...]

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CIRCLE ROUTE through NYC’s Villages

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On a midweek summer day in 2014, to relieve boredom and get some exercise as much as anything else, I walked a large circular route through lower Manhattan, beginning and ending in Greenwich Village but also entering SoHo, the Lower East Side and the East Village along the way. Sometimes I will just draw up [...]

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CHERRY STREET BRIDGE, Lower East Side

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Cherry Street, which is named after a long lost cherry orchard, is one of the streets that run northeast in lower Manhattan, paralleling the East River up to Corlears Hook, where the river turns north. Cherry Street is accompanied by East Broadway, Madison, Monroe, Henry, a bit of Water, and South. In 1789, when the [...]

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FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, Upper West Side

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The First Baptist Church’s congregation’s history goes back to 1745, first occupying a loft on downtown William Street in 1753, then its first proper church building on Gold Street in 1760 under Rev. John Gano, who had baptized George Washington and later was a founder of Brown University in Rhode Island. A second Gold Street [...]

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UNEEDA BISCUIT, Stapleton

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The National Biscuit Company was formed in 1898 by a merger of the midwest American Bakeries and the eastern New York Biscuit Company, while these companies, in turn, had been formed by mergers of much smaller local bakery firms. The next year, 1899, Nabisco, as the firm came to be known, controlled hundreds of bakeries [...]

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FALL OUT, Astoria

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I was stalking up 33rd Street in Astoria, on my way from a nutritious Whopper at Burger King to my biweekly penitence at the Greater Astoria Historical Society when I spotted this marvelously bricked building at 28-25. They didn’t settle for the usual Flemish bond here. Probably everything you see here has an architectural term [...]

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WOLFSON GLASS, Richmond Hill

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Here’s a handsome surviving awning sign employing black and brick red vinyl letters against a white background on Jamaica Avenue at 121st Street. These type signs were quite durable and held up for decades under all kinds of weather. However, signs like this as well as movie marquees with individual lettering have become scarce — [...]

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BEAVER ROAD, Jamaica

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Almost ten years ago, I walked Jamaica and shot a number of photos on curving Beaver Road, which skirts the northern edge of Prospect Cemetery before making an unusual curve southwest to 150th Street. I was vaguely aware that it defined the edge of a now-filled in pond, and when I went to research the [...]

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FORGOTTENTOUR #81: STAPLETON, STATEN ISLAND

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On Saturday, July 12th, 2014, 15 ForgottenFans took advantage of yet more pleasant weather (sunny, 85 degrees), taking the ferry and Staten Island Railway to Stapleton, Staten Island, where we walked for about 3 hours, viewing the mostly 19th Century architecture of Harrison Street and St. Paul’s Avenue. We were served refreshments at the home [...]

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MARBLE CEMETERIES, East Village

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Aimlessly meandering through the East Village during the spring (2014) wondering what was going to happen next, I noticed that I was on lower 2nd Avenue near East Houston Street, and I realized I hadn’t gotten a good photo of the New York Marble Cemetery gate and entranceway. It’s one of the more obscure alleyways [...]

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UNIDOR LEFTOVER, Flushing

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I was surprised to see a remaining Unidor 400, manufactured by McGraw-Edison, on Northern Boulevard and Crocheron Avenue in Flushing. Until 2009, New York had a brimming bounty of lamppost luminaires manufactured by several different companies, with lights dating all the way back to the 1930s. In 2009, however, NYC did a massive purge and [...]

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NANCY REAGAN’S HOUSE, Flushing

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Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and Place, remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life. Ann Frances Robbins was born on 7/6/1921 at Sloane [...]

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Micheal Watson

Micheal Watson