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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Harrison Alley - Forgotten New York

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

DUMBO, the section of Brooklyn beneath the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, was by and large an industrial and maufacturing outpost for most of its existence; only lately has it become a tourist destination and a location for office buildings and new high rise apartments. Except for its easternmost section, concentrated around Hudson Avenue and Plymouth and Front Streets, known as Vinegar Hill.
Chelsea Carriage House - Forgotten New York

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

HERE’S a Forgotten NY touchstone at #109 West 17th (west of 6th Avenue) I have come back to over and over since its location was pointed out to me by painted sign maven Frank Jump at Frank Jump’s Fading Ads. It’s a carriage house that possibly has the oldest samples of exterior lettering still extant in NYC.
Whitestone Poles - Forgotten New York

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

BELIEVE it or not a set of these metal “Whitestone” poles, complete with SLECO “cuplights” could be seen at the Queens side of the Roosevelt Island Bridge at Vernon Boulevard and 36th Avenue in Ravenswood well into the first decade of the 2000s, when they were finally relieved of service by new cylindrical poles. The were called “Whitestones” by Jeff Saltzman, who created Jeff’s Streetlight Site in the 1990s, as they were first employed on the Whitestone Bridge in the 1930s.
Dahl Court - Forgotten New York

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

In a realm where dead end alleys are few and far between, many years ago during my bicycle rides throughout Brooklyn I noted Dahl Court, a pleasant cul de sac between 18th and 19th Avenues lined on both sides with Tudors. It was likely built sometime in the 1920s or 30s, and a Mr. Dahl was likely the developer. Nearby highlights include Gravesend Park on 18th Avenue, named unusually since this is well north of Gravesend, and Washington Cemetery.
Ridgewood Democratic Club - Forgotten New York

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

Last week I posted an item about Stier Place in Ridgewood, whose highlight is the 1916 Ridgewood Democratic Club. Sergey mentioned he has some photos from the interior…INSIDE the Ridgewood Democratic Club, the walls feel like a museum of campaign graphic design, with posters for candidates who have won and lost over the past century. Longtime Democratic activist Tammy Osherov shared a photo of the wall featuring the poster for John F. Kennedy, the youngest person elected president.
Ed Koch Queensboro - Forgotten New York

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

As this sign at the erstwhile JFK Commuter Plaza…otherwise known as “Queens Plaza”, proclaims, the Queensboro Bridge was “renamed” for popular NYC three-term mayor from 1977-1989, Edward I. Koch, in 2011, with the official name now “Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.” But wait…Manhattanites especially have called it the “59th Street Bridge” for decades after its opening in 1909.
Brooklyn Roads 1904 - Forgotten New York

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

We don’t have time machines. Oh, the changes I’d make if I could go back in time. However, we do have photographs, archives and maps to show us what things looked like long ago. (Going back even further, we have fossils, but enough about me.) What you see here is an excerpt of southern Brooklyn from one of the first road maps ever made in the auto age, by Rand McNally in 1904. You can download the entire thing for free and zoom in to your heart’s content.
Stier Place - Forgotten New York

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

From FNY’s first Ridgewood page in 2005:In the first decade of the 20th Century Paul Stier built more than 750 houses in Ridgewood under his own name, and after he partnered with August Bauer, they together built 200 more. The area bordered by Fresh Pond Road and 71st, Putnam and Forest Avenues had at one time been called ‘Stierville,’ since that is where many of his homes were built. He sold his single-family houses for $5,600.
Walsh Court 1940-1980-2020 - Forgotten New Yoerk

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

THERE’S only one street in NYC officially named Walsh (my name) in NYC, the one-block Walsh Court between East 3rd and 5th (East 4th does not intersect) along the LIRR Bay Ridge Branch south of Foster in Midwood. There are probably a number of subnamed streets in NYC named for one Walsh or another, such as my full namesake, Kevin J. Walsh Way, named for a local electrical contractor at Midland and North Railroad Avenue in Grant City, Staten Island.
Taino Towers - Forgotten New York

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

At the corner of 122nd Street and Third Avenue in East Harlem is a set of residential towers whose appearance stands out among its neighbors. The name, flags and murals at the Taino Towers represent Puerto Ricans, . Construction on the towers began in 1972, as a federally-subsidized low-income project that resulted from many years of complaints from local residents about terrible housing conditions.