FULTON STREET: East New York to Woodhaven, Part 1

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I’ve been on Fulton Street a lot. Over a decade ago I learned that the classic restaurant Gage & Tollner, at Fulton and Smith, had just closed, so I did a piece on it that evolved into a survey of ancient stuff to be found in the stretch between Adams and Flatbush Avenue. Not to [...]

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GRACE COURT ALLEY LAMP

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Grace Court and Grace Court Alley are twin dead-ends issuing from Hicks Street between Remsen and Joralemon Streets in Brooklyn Heights. Grace Court Alley, like Hunt’s Lane a block away on Henry Street, is a former stable mews where horses were sheltered. All of those former stables have long been comverted into residences, and expensive [...]

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CHINATOWN PHONE BOOTH

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The other day, FNY showed you one of the original Chinatown Deskey lamps. What’s not quite as remembered is that even the phone booths were also decked out with pagoda-esque ornamentation. This one was still around in the 1970s, as it sports a pushbutton dial instead of a rotary. You can’t do this kind of [...]

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FIREBOAT STATION, Fulton Ferry

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Now the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, this building, opened in 1926, was formerly used to berth fireboats and dry out lengthy firehoses, hence the tower. For years I was under the impression that this building was the Fulton Ferry waiting room, but the ferry ceased operations in 1924, a full two years before this building [...]

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GASLIGHTS of Brooklyn Heights

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Several years ago, a couple of dozen electrically-powered gaslamps were installed along the block bounded by Poplar, Henry, Hicks and Old Fulton Streets in Brooklyn Heights. A few have been removed, but most of them still burn brightly. This batch of gaslamps is largely a mystery– if someone knows the secret behind their origin, fill [...]

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MASON MINTS, Brooklyn Heights

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Oy, I may have covered this building before in One Shots, but time is the enemy these days, as it’s early to bed as I have a temp day job. If I ever get permanent work again, I’ll have to upend the post schedule even more dramatically. This massive factory building was constructed by Mason, [...]

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DESKEY CUPS

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The Westinghouse AK-10 luminaire, commonly known in the lampfan world as the “cuplight” because it could hold coffee if upended, has been a reliable performer since the late 1940s. In New York City, it’s proven to be a versatile pendant accompanist, as it has buddied up with castiron posts like bishop crooks, Type Fs and [...]

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BANK STREET, Greenwich Village, Part 2

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Continued from Part 1 The forecast was frightful one day in late January 2015, when forecasters were mentioning as many as 30 inches, or two and a half feet, of snow. I was skeptical of this, as it hardly ever snows more than a foot and a half at one time in New York — [...]

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ORIGINAL PAGODA DESKEY, Chinatown

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Many Chinatowns around the USA make full use of local decor, even down to the directional signs and lampposts, and beginning in 1964 or so, NYC began to add its own Chinatown flavor in its lampposts. The slotted SLECO, imagined by industrial designer Donald Deskey, first appeared on Broadway and Murray Street in 1958 and [...]

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TICK… TICK… TICK in Trebeca

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I had just finished a walk across the Manhattan Bridge after a shift in DUMBO and was heading west to the A train on Varick when I spotted this very faded ad on Franklin Street where it meets Church and the beginnings of 6th Avenue. Surprisngly, I hadn’t noticed it before. Still visible are the [...]

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BANK STREET, Greenwich Village, Part One

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The forecast was frightful one day in late January 2015, when forecasters were mentioning as many as 30 inches, or two and a half feet, of snow. I was skeptical of this, as it hardly ever snows more than a foot and a half at one time in New York — the city is tucked [...]

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SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX, Cooper Square

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Samuel Sullivan Cox appears as if he’s hailing a cab here at Cooper Square and Astor Place in 1924. Though Louise Lawson’s sculpture of Ohio Congressman Samuel Sullivan Cox has stood at Tompkins Square’s southwest corner at Avenue A and East 7th Street since 1924, it was initially placed the triangle formed by Lafayette Street, [...]

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ANOTHER IND CLASSIC, Upper West Side

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photo: Beth Goffe It’s well-known that the appearance of old street or subway signs on Forgotten New York is tantamount to those sign’s death knell and that by featuring them here, I am dooming them to a premature death. That may be the case. I feel it’s important to show them — their eventual replacement [...]

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CLASSIC IND ENAMEL REPLACED, Greenwich Village

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A couple of years ago, a classic enamel sign dating to the origins of the Independent (IND) Subway, built by New York City beginning in the 1920s to compete with Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT) and Interborough (IRT) subways, was uncovered when a newsstand was dismantled at an entrance to the West 4th Street station on the [...]

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FORGOTTENTOUR #87, Flushing Meadows, March 28th

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I’m beginning the 2015 ForgottenTour season exactly the way I started the 2014 season — in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair of 1964-1965! I have given two tours there the past two years and they’ve done extremely well, attracting over 100 ForgottenFans. We’ll be visiting relics left over from [...]

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TOKEN BOOTH, Midtown

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Gary Fonville passes along this photo of a decommissioned token booth at the 50th Street station serving uptown C and E trains. Before actual token dispensing kiosks were constructed in subway stations, they were very small rooms in which cash and a request for however many tokens were desired were slid under a depression in [...]

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EBINGER REMNANT, Sunset Park

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ForgottenFan Richard Schilling passes along this reveal at 5th Avenue and 60th Street, a prime spot for after-churchers looking for some dessert after Mass at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, a massive church on a hill visible from ferries in Upper New York Bay. Ebinger’s Bakery is spoken of in hushed, reverential tones [...]

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KISSENA BOULEVARD, Part 2

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Continued from Part One On a late winter Sunday in February 2015, cabin-fevered from weeks of cold and ice (I complain equally bitterly about summers when they are hot and humid for weeks on end) I took the LIRR to Flushing Main Street, exited the train and walked the length of Kissena Boulevard, which runs [...]

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DRY CLEANERS, Astoria

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This ancient storefront sign for a dry cleaner was recently revealed at 30th Avenue and 42nd Street in Astoria. This is the first post I have done via IPhone, using an app called Shrink My Photo. 3/7/15

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REYNOLD’S CAFE, Washington Heights

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Reynold’s, the longtime Irish bar on Broadway and West 180th Street in Washington Heights, has decided to call it a career after several decades. The cause, according to DNA Info, wasn’t a rent increase and in fact, the bar had applied for a liquor license renewal just recently. The bar was named for its longtime [...]

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GHOST TEMPLE, Lower East Side

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Built in 1850, this Gothic Revival structure, originally the Norfolk Street Baptist Church, at Norfolk Street south of Broome Street once housed the nation’s oldest Orthodox Russian Jewish congregation, founded in 1852. It has sheltered two faiths and has had several different names. The Norfolk Street Baptist Church’s congregation evolved into Riverside Church on the [...]

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TOYNBEE HOUSE, Lower East Side

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This striking Beaux Arts-style building at 311-313 East Broadway at Grand Street, with contrasting red brick and white stone trim, was built as a community center in 1904 (the date is inscribed at the roofline). The 5-story building contained a library, gym, club rooms, bowling alley and an assembly hall that held 125 people, and [...]

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VOTE IS IN… OUTSTANDING NYC WEBSITE!

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I’m honored and humbled (by the way, why do people say “I’m humbled” when they win an award? About twenty years ago, I was truly humbled at a bus stop at Nostrand Avenue and Avenue R when a miscreant winged an apple out of a moving bus window and it hit me in the coconut) [...]

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FORGOTTEN QUEENS AT Q.E.D., Thursday, March 19

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Queens Boulevard at Grand Avenue, 1933 Join me at Queens Q.E.D., a premier classroom and event space in Astoria, as I show images and rattle off stories from my collaborative book with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens. I’ll have a few books on hand for sale and can sign copies of Forgotten Queens [...]

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KISSENA BOULEVARD, Part 1

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On a late winter Sunday in February 2015, cabin-fevered from weeks of cold and ice (I complain equally bitterly about summers when they are hot and humid for weeks on end) I took the LIRR to Flushing Main Street, exited the train and walked the length of Kissena Boulevard, which runs from Main Street just [...]

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