Forgotten New York

Forgotten New York is a website launched by Kevin Walsh in 1999 that explores the overlooked and lesser-known features of New York City. It highlights things like vintage building advertisements, old cast-iron lampposts, historic 18th-century homes, deserted subway stations, remnants of trolley tracks, lesser-known neighborhoods, and pockets of nature tucked away in the urban landscape. In 2003, HarperCollins reached out to Walsh to discuss transforming the website into a book, which was ultimately released in September 2006.

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Loeser's Brooklyn - Forgotten New York

5 days ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

THE thousands of subway passengers who pass through the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station daily, catching A, C or G trains, probably take little note of the abandoned side platform, which served shuttle trains en route to the Court Street IND station between 1936 and 1946, now the beloved NYC Transit Museum. Excursion trains from the Museum still use the adjoining platform tracks.
4th Avenue Sunset Park

6 days ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

BEEN quite awhile since I devoted a page to 4th Avenue in Brooklyn; many years ago, I walked it in Park Slope. That stretch of 4th has changed considerably in 19 years, so my post can be considered something of a time capsule. When I lived in Brooklyn for 35 years until 1993, when I bicycled in places like downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, DUMBO, I would use 4th Avenue as a quick way to get home to Bay Ridge.
Hell's Kitchen Mystery - Forgotten New York

1 week ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

I’M the first to admit when I’m stumped. In early February 2024, I walked 37th Street for my Forgotten NY Crosstown series, but like so many series I have shot the last couple of years, I haven’t got around to writing the page yet. However, I can’t resist highlighting this enormous brick building between 9th and 10th, so big it has two entrances with two separate house numbers, 438 and 448.
364 Van Duzer - Forgotten New York

1 week ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

FOR one, I’m glad Staten Island never got around to seriously numbering its streets. Oh, there’s 1st through 10th in New Dorp but even 5 and 6 are skipped in that scheme. Manhattan and Bronx were once the same county and share a street numbering scheme (and most Bronx streets are named, not numbered, east of the Bronx River; the eastern end of the Bronx joined NYC later than the west end). Queens had a numbering system imposed on it because its towns repeated names and numbers.
Fulton Transit Center - Forgotten New Yortk

1 week ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

DOES the Fulton Transit Center at Broadway and Fulton Street offer entrance to the greatest number of subway lines in the city? The BMT, IND and IRT are all represented, including the Broadway BMT, 7th Avenue IRT, Lexington Avenue IRT, 8th Avenue IND and Nassau Street BMT, with 12 different lettered trains, though the Z is a rush hour skip stop version of the J, while the W is a mini-N train that connects Whitehall Street with Ditmars Boulevard.
Astoria to Woodside - Forgotten New York

1 week ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

CATCHING up on some places I haven’t been yet, I decided to go over some well-worn territory for me at least, from Astoria to Woodside. From 2012 to 2018 I often volunteered as an office boy and occasional docent at Greater Astoria Historical Society (on whose board I serve), a decade when my paid employment was sporadic as a freelancer for occasionally months at a time.
Hollis - Forgotten New York

2 weeks ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

TOO often the decline in religious observance or demographic changes in neighborhoods have been documented here with churches and synagogues demolished in favor of uninspiring brick and glass residential towers. But if one knows where to look, there are examples of creative reuses where houses of worship were converted to other religions, maintaining their stated purpose. In the Hollis neighborhood of Queens, there are a handful of such examples.
Kingsbridge Hill - Forgotten New York

2 weeks ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

THE Bronx’ Kingsbridge Road runs from Marble Hill at the Bronx-Manhattan line (it’s called West 225th Street in Marble Hill) east and southeast to Fordham Road, following a meandering path defined at first by an animal trace, then a beaten path used by Native Americans through the woods, then a colonial-era road used by both British and American troops in the Revolutionary war. However, it used to be much longer.
The Other Avenue of the Americas

2 weeks ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

THE 1939-40 World’s Fair may have been more storied and better-remembered (now by few alive today), but the 1964-65 Fair had its whiz-bang moments as well…and I was there, eating Belgian waffles and wearing silly hats just like every other 8-year old in town. NYC has pretty much eradicated much of the 1964-65 Fair, other than its more daring, audacious structures. Here and there, you’ll see traces of the temporary, yet magnificent, buildings that were supposed to be the portals to the Space Age.
Subway Entrance Penn Station

2 weeks ago | forgotten-ny.com | Kevin Walsh

THIS forlorn subway entrance, with its rolldown aluminum gate (that I have never seen open) is actually all that remains of the old Pennsylvania Hotel, built in 1919, closed in 2020 and razed in 2023. The hotel was named for the railroad that operated the depot across the street, and slowly sank from preeminence to decrepitude. The gate can be found on West 32nd Street east of 7th avenue; the hotel once towered above it.