HARPER HOUSE, Gramercy Park

Forgotten New York -

#4 Gramercy Park West is a pleasant 4-story brick mansion with a porch framed by intricate metalwork (that it shares with the adjoining #3 GPW) that has an indirect connection to me, despite my utter inability to afford such a place. It also has two prominent lamps flanking its entrance, which help identify what it [...]

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ROBERT MORRIS APARTMENTS, Jackson Heights

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The Queensborough Corporation, beginning in the 1910s and continuing on to the 1930s, built a magnificent series of apartment buildings between 74th and 90th Street and from Roosevelt Avenue north to Jackson Avenue, now Northern Boulevard. The buildings boast vast inner courtyards (invisible from the street) and the complex once had its own golf course and [...]

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THE LAST JAHN’S, Jackson Heights

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Jahn’s chain of ice cream “shoppes” once covered the NYC metropolitan area with a heady combination of lactose and sucrose. The first Jahn’s was opened way back in 1897 in Mott Haven, Bronx by John Jahn, which (disappointingly) is pronounced “John JAN.” His three children, Elsie, Frank and Howard, opened Jahn’s in Jamaica, Richmond Hill, and Flushing [...]

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WASHINGTON WAS ALSO HERE, Tribeca

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200 Hudson Street is one of those huge loft buildings with hundreds of windows built in early-to-mid 20th Century seen frequently in Tribeca lining Hudson and Varick Streets. The building sports a historic plaque on its Desbrosses Street end, taking note of yet another one of George Washington’s many frequented areas, before, during and after [...]

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PRINCE’S BAY, Staten Island

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In February 2005 I was a Staten Islander for a week! I may have told this story before in one of my Staten Island pages, but I like telling it. At the time I was still hard at work at what has proven so far to be the signature achievement of my life, the publication [...]

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THIRD OR 3RD?

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When the Third Avenue El was extended into the Bronx in the 1890s, Manhattan’s 3rd Avenue was as well, taking over the routes of several separate streets over which the el was built. However, New York County, of which the Bronx was a part in the 1890s, treated 3rd Avenue differently on street signs in [...]

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MOTT HAVEN CANAL, Bronx

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By SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten New York correspondent  A nondescript row of auto repair shops located on East 138th Street stands on the former site of a South Bronx ship canal that was in operation until about 1905. Let Sergey take it from here…   You won’t find any Asian cuisine here, but as with Canal [...]

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ELMHURST HOSPITAL SUBWAY SIGN

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Elmhurst Hospital, Broadway and Baxter Avenue, is marked by a stencil sign on the Manhattan-bound side of the Elmhurst Avenue local station on the Queens Boulevard IND, serving R and M trains. The hospital is about 4 blocks away from the station. This sign notes the hospital’s original name. City Hospital was founded in the [...]

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REED’S MILL LANE, Eastchester

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As most FNY fans know I have been an aficionado of old street and road maps, and have been ever since I obtained my first Hagstrom street map of Brooklyn and Geographia Co. “little red books” that listed all Brooklyn streets, addresses and intersections. I later learned that Geogaphia had a Little Red Book for [...]

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MEMORIAL OF THE “FOUR HUNDRED”

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The New York City of the years following the Civil War was a time of great population growth, as immigrants from around the globe flocked here for new opportunities. In addition, an influx of wealthy arrivistes from the Midwest began to challenge the existing social establishments and its founding families, of which Caroline Webster Schermerhorn [...]

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ROXBURY CROSSING “T”, Boston

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I’ve always preferred Boston’s “T” route maps to the MTA’s in New York (though apparently the locals disagree with my assessment). One one large surface, you have a line map, a system map, and a local street map. With some exceptions, you have to look in several different walls or surfaces for these maps in [...]

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HOLIDAY TRAIN 2015

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Feeling somewhat under the weather with some laryngitis today (12/19/15) so it’s time for a quick FNY page of images I got on one of this year’s MTA Holiday Train runs, which occur on all four Sundays in December. As in previous years they are using a trainset made up of cars that originally ran [...]

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HAMMELS, Rockaway peninsula

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BY SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten NY contributorThe “forgotten” appendage of the city, the Rockaway peninsula has a number of communities strung together by an elevated subway: Far Rockaway, Wavecrest, Edgemere, Holland, Seaside, and Rockaway Park. Among the smaller neighborhoods, Hammels lacks its own el station, sandwiched between a revitalized Arverne and a resilient Holland. Not much [...]

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HOLIDAY HANDBAGS, Midtown

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The application of gold leaf on glass is becoming as lost an art as are painted ads on buildings. Nestled above #5 West 31st Street up until recently was an etching advertising the former location of the Heimer-Brier Co., handbag wholesalers, who were in business there from 1950 to 1971. Prior to that, the Heimer [...]

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COLONIAL HOME IN FLATLANDS

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At 1640 East 48th, near Avenue M in Brooklyn’s Flatlands section, is the colonial-era Stoothoff-Baxter House, one of a handful of Dutch Colonial homes remaining in eastern Brooklyn (Flatbush, Flatlands, Canarsie, East New York). It was purchased, or inherited, by Irish immigrant John Baxter in 1796 after previous owner Garret Stoothoff passed away. By 1812, Baxter [...]

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FRIENDS CEMETERY, Prospect Park

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Quaker Hill, along Center Drive near the park entrance at Prospect Park Southwest and 16th Street contains a cemetery that was established by the Society of Friends before Prospect Park was built. The cemetery was originally loacted between 11th and 12th Avenue and 9th and 14th Streets, which were demapped in 1866; by agreement, the [...]

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MACHINE AGE DESIGN, IND Subway

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We’re fortunate to have a subway system old enough to have several different design schemes imprinted on it. The Earth is about five billion years old, old enough so that critters from several paleontological ages are still running or swimming around, like jellyfish, honey bears, Galapagos turtles and Vince McMahon. Similarly, when the subway first [...]

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BROOKLYN RAPID TRANSIT WWI MONUMENT, Bushwick

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The Brooklyn City Railroad was first incorporated as a horsecar line in 1853. Later, trolley lines drawn on street rails by overhead electric wires replaced the dobbins and the BCRR became the largest company operating streetcars in Brooklyn, with lines fanning out to the far reaches of Brooklyn such as East New York and Bushwick, [...]

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CANARSIE LANES

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I’ve been round these parts before — in fact, I’ve done a survey of Canarsie’s still-numerous, but dwindling number of alleys before, in 2008 as a matter of fact. However I didn’t get to all of them then, and even after this trip in October 2015 I still won’t have photos of each and every [...]

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WASHINGTON, DC FIRE CALL BOXES

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Fire alarm call boxes were first installed in Washington, DC in the 1860s– around the same time they first appeared in NYC — and largely resembled and worked the same way as their NYC counterparts. Ornamental posts like this first appeared in the 1890s: Fire call boxes had a simple pole and protected light on [...]

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INNERWYCK? — Whitestone

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By SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten New York correspondent With the ongoing public debate going on regarding the future of the Steinway Mansion, whose yard space has been reduced and is being developed into warehouses, it is an ideal opportunity to look back at another old-time Queens dwelling that did not make it…   Innerwyck was the [...]

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CHARLTON PLAZA, Greenwich Village

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Along with Prince Street, which it “becomes” once it crosses 6th Avenue, Charlton Street is a remnant of British rule in NYC; it is named for British physician Dr. John Charlton, who arrived with the British army in 1762, but later sided with US patriots. He treated Chief Justice John Jay. On the west side [...]

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MARCHI’S RESTAURANT, Kips Bay

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The east end of East 31st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues is one of Manhattan’s rare tree-lined streets, consisting of brownstone and brick townhouses punctuated by the 1904 Church of the Good Shepherd. This was once the slaughterhouse/waterworks district, and unlike today, these buildings in the early 20th Century housed folks of modest means. [...]

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EIGHTH MAN, Greenwich Village

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The Village Alliance has a photo on the display windows of a (temporarily) abandoned storefront on West 8th between 6th Avenue and Macdougal Street a panoramic view of West 8th looking east from 6th in, I’d say, about 1935, 1945 at the latest. Even though autos have been commonplace on NYC streets since the Roaring [...]

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KODAK SIGNS

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By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent Kodak is a perfect example of how corporate miscues can bring a once mighty and ubiquitous company almost to the point of extinction.  Kodak as we know it was started in 1888 by George Eastman, with headquarters in Rochester, NY.  The company prospered with products that were easy to use [...]

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RIVERSIDE SOUTH, Manhattan

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BY SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten New York correspondent  On the map of Manhattan, the first decade of the new millennium has given the island a new set of streets, with seemingly identical-looking and astronomically priced residential towers built atop a former rail yard. Located north of Hell’s Kitchen and south of Riverside Park, not exactly the Upper [...]

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AMERICAN CAN BUILDING, Gowanus

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The intersection of 3rd Avenue and 3rd Street in Gowanus on the edge of Park Slope is an unlikely architecture mecca. The former home of the Brooklyn Improvement Company, founded by engineer Edwin Litchfield for the express purpose of dredging the Gowanus Creek, then a fresh stream, and making it vessel-worthy, is still standing at [...]

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FORTWAY THEATRE, Dyker Heights

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Though my usual movie theater growing up in Bay Ridge was the Dyker on 86th Street and Gelston Avenue, as a kid I had four theaters to choose from: the Dyker (where I saw a double feature of Trog and one of the Christopher Lee Draculas), the Harbor on 4th Avenue and 93rd Street (where [...]

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CATHEDRAL PARKWAY STATION

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When the Cathedral of St. John the Divine began construction in 1892 at Amsterdam avenue and West 110th Street, the city believed that the occasion required a grand, wide boulevard to approach it from the east and west in addition to Amsterdam Avenue, which received its own name just two years before when the numbered [...]

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JOHN F. KENNEDY FERRY

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It costs usurious and confiscatory amounts of money to get to Staten Island from Brooklyn or New Jersey by auto on any one of four bridges, but getting there by boat from Manhattan is free of charge. I ride the Staten Island Ferry on weekends for the most part, which is when I go to [...]

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TROLLEY POLE, Canarsie

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This massive, rusty pole with a pair of crossbars at the top has been in place on Glenwood Road near Rockaway Parkway for almost a hundred years, and pure inertia keeps it there. I suppose one of these years the city will get around to removing the remaining cluster of poles that supported trolley wires [...]

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