Kevin’s Substack

NY's Independence Avenues

Kevin Walsh — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:48:39 GMT

There are three Independence Avenues in New York City, a lengthy one and two short ones. The first one, depicted above, runs through the far northern Bronx in Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale, running through both urban and rural territory. It begins at Palisade Avenue at Henry Hudson Park and runs north in narrow and wide sections to just past West 247th Street and then from Spaulding Lane north past Wave Hill to a dead end past West 24th Street; there is also a short pice at the end of Arlington Avenue. Independence Avenue is quite wide in spots, and a trickle through the woods in others.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn’s Bath Beach, patriotically-named Independence Avenue runs in two pieces, one from Bay 8th Street to 15th Avenue, and another between 15th and 16th Avenues between Cropsey Avenue and Shore Parkway. The street was built on landfill also used to support Shore Parkway and was not named or built up until after World War II. It may be a remnnt of a longer road called Warehouse Avenue.

The third Independence Avenue is at the south end of the Staten Island Mall, a road connecting Richmond Avenue and Forest Hill Road.

At the present time, Fort Independence Park represents the only public green space that is directly adjacent to the Jerome Park Reservoir in Van Cortlandt Village in the Bronx, running along Sedgwick Avenue between Gouverneur Avenue and West 238th Street. There’s an original gatehouse here and sticking your nose through one of the holes in the iron door produced a chlorine smell — one of the few evidences of water at the reservoir in 2009.

“As Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington ordered the construction of outer defenses throughout the Kingsbridge area. Fort Independence was built under the direction of Colonel Rufus Putnam in 1776 to protect the American army and to safeguard the line of the Harlem River. An entrenchment ten feet wide and three and a half feet deep surrounded the austere fort. From its elevated position, the site commanded an extensive prospect of the surrounding countryside. In the fall of 1779, the fort was destroyed by British forces led by Sir Henry Clinton.” —NYC Parks

NYC acquired the land by condemnation in 1895 and this became a NYC park in 1915, the same year cannonballs from the old fort were unearthed. The park acquired its name with this circumstance. Fort Independence street snakes around the hills west of the reservoir.

Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)

Birth of Hillside

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:06:36 GMT

If anything, in 1931 Winchester Boulevard was a bit more developed than Hillside Avenue out in Hollis Hills. Both were dirt roads that got muddy in a hurry after the rain. Not much going on here that year, but looks can deceive. A forlorn service station stands on Hillside at left. But consider that “Model Homes” shack on the right. Already, developers had their eyes on this stretch of Hollis Hills near the Creedmoor Hospital complex, which replaced the Creedmoor Rifle Range of the 19th Century. Street names like Winchester, Musket and Range pay tribute to it.

Already, gateposts marking what would be 233rd and 234th Streets have been installed. And, note the buildings off to the right.

Those Spanish Colonials…unusual for Queens side streets this far east…are still there, on 233rd and 234th Street. Undoubtedly the development had a name, which I have yet to find. If you look at this section in 1940sNYC the area had been built up, with paved streets and curb trees, all in the span of nine years.

Today, Hillside Avenue begins at Myrtle Avenue in Richmond Hill and roars east out to East Williston in Nassau County, finally merging with Jericho Turnpike. But as this newspaper clip proves, it opened east past Braddock Avenue in Hollis Hills officially in 1934, three years after the unpaved track we saw previously.

Fox Oaks Marker

Kevin Walsh — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:15:08 GMT

Flushing’s history in the colonial era was closely intertwined with plants. The Prince family established a commercial plant farm, or nursery, in western Flushing in 1737 along Flushing Bay. The business was at first limited to apple, plum, pear and other fruit and flowering trees, and later expanded to shade and ornamental trees. After the Prince business slumped during the Revolutionary war, he gained ground again and by 1789, President Washington had heard of him, and accompanied by Vice President Adams, paid a visit. According to accounts, though he seemed unimpressed with the gardens, he purchased a fruit tree.

The Quakers, which established a tenuous foothold in Flushing with Englishman John Bowne in the mid-1650s, were subject to official harassment by New Netherland’s director general Peter Stuyvesant; Bowne was hauled back to Holland for a time to answer for his ‘crimes.’ Stuyvesant’s attitude later eased, and was rendered null in 1664 when the British claimed New Netherland and the Dutch, with no stomach for war, acceded.

A stone marker across Bowne Street from the Bowne House, carved into a rough pyramid, reads: “Here stood the Fox Oaks, beneath whose branches George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, preached June 7, 1672.” The marker was placed by the Flushing Historical Society in 1907; the Queens Historical Society headquarters at Kingsland Manor is located cross Bowne Street. The trees where Fox preached stood until 1863 (191 years), but Bowne Street is still crowned by oaks.

Duane Park, Tribeca

Kevin Walsh — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 23:34:21 GMT

This weekend I completed 12 miles of walking, shooting several Tribeca cross streets and also documenting some of Greenwich Village, and walking the Brooklyn Bridge into the City Hall area. I think I got started too early in the day when I walked Duane Street. In June I figured I’d have sun whenever I wanted, but the sun was still too low and several shots were fuzzy or blurry with reflected sun. I think I will use Google Street View when composing Forgotten NY pages for these streets, substituting them for substandard photos.

When I am here I always check on Duane Park at Hudson and Duane to see how it’s doing. Duane Street splits in two in Tribeca, with one half ending at Hudson Street and the other half continuing east into the Foley Square area. Between the two halves, you’ll find Duane Park, a spot that has been green since the very beginnings of New York City. It was originally part of a Dutch farm dating to the mid-1600s that later was owned by the Duke of York of England, who gave it to Trinity Church, which owned vast amounts of property in lower Manhattan. The church sold it to New York City for the grand total of five dollars in 1797. Since the park predates lower Manhattan’s street grid, Duane Street was purposely divided to get around it when it was cut through in the early 1800s.

For such a tiny park--it’s only .115 acre in size--Duane Park has had several redesigns over the years. In 1870 it was given trees, a lawn, shrubs, bluestone curbs, and a new iron fence. In 1887, Parks Commissioner Samuel Parsons Jr. and Calvert Vaux, who had co-designed the much vaster Prospect and Central Parks with Frederick Olmsted, designed a new plan featuring pedestrian paths. In 1940 there was yet another plan, featuring more concrete, fewer trees and a new flagpole, and finally, in 1999, Duane Park reversed course, adding more plants and returning to Parsons’ and Vaux’s plan, while keeping the flagpole.

18th Old and New

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:57:21 GMT

I wanted to take a walk up 5th Avenue from 18th Street to Central Park recently, which I had not done for Forgotten New York for awhile; results will pop up on that website in due course. To get there, I got on a downtown #1 at 34th/Penn and got off at 18th and walked over. The 7th Avenue line was extended south along 7th Avenue, Varick Street, West Broadway and Trinity Place to South Ferry in 1918.

By that time, the terra cotta subway signage and appointment conceived of by the Interborough Rapid Transit’s original station designers Heins & LaFarge had given way to somewhat cheaper mosaic tiling designed by artist Squire Vickers, who took over as chief subway designer and was responsible for later IRT, BMT and IND station signs. The tiled station ID tablet at 18th Street is one of those. Vickers mostly stuck to subdued earth tones, heavy on brown, green and dark blue; later BMT stations on the Canarsie and Flushing Lines (built as a joint IND/BMT line) used more of the spectrum. Note that the strip along the roofline is also a continuous mosaic tablet.

Toward the south end of the station it changes character somewhat, as 7th Avenue stations were extended south in the mid-20th Century to accommodate longer trainsets. In the 1990s, the walls on this extension were updated and redecorated. The roofline mosaic tiles were not extended, though, and unicolored tiles resembling the ones used in IND stations were employed instead.

18th Street was among the first older IRT stations to receive new mosaic tiled station tablets. (On the Broadway BMT, original mosaic tablets were covered over with new concrete blocks and simplified Helvetica/Standard signage; most of the ones in Manhattan were removed in the 1990s when stations were renovated.

The new 18th Street signs are of poor quality and appear to be a computer rendering imitative of the older tablets. I’ll give them a C for nice try, but they’re nowhere close to the Squire Vickers originals.

Harrison Street Houses

Kevin Walsh — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:46:33 GMT

Though the massive yet quite mundane Independence Plaza now dominates the old Washington Market area, there’s a break in the action at Greenwich and Harrison Streets, where you will find a smattering of tiny Federal-style townhouses, six facing Harrison Street. These houses were all built from between 1790 and 1820 and have been conferred designation by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Yet, three are not in their original locations: they were once about a block away, on Washington Street. (Two, 27 and 27A Harrison, were built by Jonas McComb, one of the designers of City Hall).

NYC Municipal Archives

After the Landmarks designation in the early 1970s the three, 331, 329, 327 Washington, were jacked up and towed by truck to their present location on Harrison Street, west of Greenwich. The three remaining Harrison Street houses, 29, 31 and 33, have always been there. The first floors of most of these buildings had been given over to commercial establishments, but all the houses were given complete restorations by the Herbert Oppenheimer architectural firm, restoring their old Federal fronts and new interiors after a couple of centuries of wear and tear.

The same buildings today, renumbered, are on a short slice of Washington Street that is a dead end running south from Harrison Street. During the Washington Market era the buildings were thoroughly commercialized, but now they have been returned to their residential origins and have kept a piece of their original street as well.

Now dominating the area is the architecturally vapid Independence Plaza.

Cox's Travels

Kevin Walsh — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:28:37 GMT

Samuel Sullivan Cox appears as if he’s hailing a cab here in this Municipal Archives photo at Cooper Square and Astor Place in 1924. And dig that lyre-top lamppost and original IRT subway entrance kiosk, which had disappeared by the 1950s, but a replica version was constructed there in 1984.

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, 4th Avenue and Astor Place in 1881, in the spot where Tony Rosenthal’s “Alamo,” the revolving cube, stands today. It was apparently moved from Cooper Square shortly after the photo was snapped.

S.S. Cox (1824-1889) was a Democratic Party member of the House of Representatives from Ohio from 1857-1865, and from New York from 1869-1889, when he retired. He championed the Life Saving Service, which patrolled the coast looking for shipwreck survivors; the Service became part of the US Coast Guard in 1915.

He is remembered with the statue, placed while he was still in Congress, for his involvement with the US Post Office. He introduced legislation that assured paid benefits, 2 weeks’ vacation, and a 40-hour work week — innovative in that era — for postal workers. Letter carriers from 188 cities inscribed on the monument, raised $10,000 for its creation.

Risking Fisk

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:11:18 GMT

Fisk Avenue/69th Street on the #7 Flushing Line has been remanded to history. It was originally named for a casketmaker.

69th Street in Woodside and Maspeth hasn’t been known as Fisk Avenue for several decades…except on the 69th Street platform of the #7 Flushing Line el, where the ancient name had been retained, these days for tradition’s sake than for any other reason. Other stops on the #7, such as Rawson (33rd), Lowery (40th), Bliss (46th) and Lincoln (52nd) also appear on platform signage. When the line opened in 1917, the Queens Topographical Bureau was at the very beginning of a borough-wide street numbering plan that wouldn’t be complete until the late 1920s, and when els and subways were built, the old names were kept so neighborhood oldtimers wouldn’t get lost. The old names stuck fast…although in other parts of town, like on the Astoria and Rockaway Lines, old street names have recently disappeared after station renovations.

The Flushing Line stations are currently undergoing renovations, with new platforms, railings, lighting and electronics…and signage. Older names on the stretch east of Woodside, like 52nd Street/Lincoln Avenue and 69th/Fisk Avenue, will not be retained.

So, Fisk Avenue was renamed 69th Street in the Roaring Twenties, taking its place between 68th and 70th Streets. But as this Dripps map excerpt from 1852 shows, Fisk Avenue has been there a long time, running between North Road (most of which is now Laurel Hill Boulevard) and Maspeth Plank Road (now Grand Avenue). The road in the center, Old Penny Bridge Road, was straightened into Maurice and Calamus Avenues.

I have circled an item at the very top of the map at North Road: Fisk Foundry. Its story begins in Oxford, Mississippi in 1844 and the decease of one William Fisk. The rest of his family lived in Chazy, New York on Lake Champlain and in the era before widespread embalming and refrigeration, there was no way to transport the remains the many hundreds of miles between the two locales. A young stove and boiler manufacturer had a solution: William Fisk’s brother, Almond. The younger Fisk brother, using his training and abilities in watertight stove manufacturing, devised a metal coffin that would prevent microbes from entering and decomposing the remains.

The new coffins were marketed at first toward the wealthy and were displayed in the US Capitol rotunda (not the present Capitol, which would be dedicated during the Lincoln Administration). The first major “customer” was the family of ex-President James Madison, which purchased one for the remains of deceased First Lady Dolley Madison. Later, the metal coffins were marketed to prevent illnesses such as cholera as well as a deterrent to grave robbing.

in 1845, Fisk and father-in-law Henry Raymond constructed a factory in an area soon to be known as Winfield, in today’s Woodside, and constructed a road south to the Maspeth Plank Road, which led to ferries to Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it still exists today as a portion of 69th Street. The firm continued to manufacture stoves as well as iron coffins and the company became quite successful, surviving the destruction by fire of the original factory in 1849. Unfortunately Almond Fisk suffered severe injuries from fighting the fire and perished at the young age of 32 in 1850; his remains returned to Chazy in one of the iron coffins his firm manufactured.

The firm was renamed W.M. Raymond and continued to build iron stoves and coffins; Abraham Lincoln was laid out in one, after his 1865 assassination. The foundry, at Fisk Avenue and Laurel Hill Boulevard, closed in 1889.

That’s not quite the end of the iron casket story. In 2011, a plot at 47-11 90th Street, near Newtown High School, was being developed when excavations revealed an iron casket with a female African American body inside. Research and census records revealed that the interred person was one Martha Peterson, who lived at the address of and was a housekeeper of William Raymond, father-in-law and business partner of Almond Fisk. The remains highlighted a heretofore unknown African American community in Newtown. The plot was once a cemetery overseen by the congregation of St. Marks AME, and is under consideration for designation by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

A Brief History of Fisk’s Coffins [Iron Coffin Mummy]
Elmhurst’s African American Burial Ground [Juniper Park Civic]

Riis of Richmond Hill

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:20:17 GMT

Danish-born crusading journalist and photographer Jacob Riis (1849-1914) made his home in Richmond Hill, Queens, beginning in 1886. In 1887, Riis photographed the squalid, inhumane conditions prevalent in New York City’s tenements, and his 1890 book “How The Other Half Lives” has become an influential text to the present day. His cause was taken up by Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who encouraged legislation that would help ease the burden of NYC’s poorest. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography.

In his autobiography Riis wrote of finding Richmond Hill: “It was in the winter when all our children had the scarlet fever that one Sunday, when I was taking a long walk out on Long Island where I could do no one any harm, I came upon Richmond Hill, and thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen, I went home and told my wife that I had found the place where we were going to live.…I picked out the lots I wanted. So before the next winter’s snow, we were snug in the house, with a ridge of wooded hills, between New York and us. The very lights of the city were shut out. So was the slum and I could sleep.” Riis’s house was placed on the National Register for Historic Places, but such a designation does not protect a property. The home was torn down in the mid-1970’s and replaced with a row of attached brick houses. Today two remaining beech trees planted by Riis in the backyard remind us of the tranquil neighborhood that put his mind at ease.

New York City, at one time or another, has had three settlements named Richmond Hill. The one in Manhattan, in what is now the West Village, and the one in Staten Island, in what is now Richmondtown, have pretty much been absorbed into new neighborhoods. Queens’ Richmond Hill has been more enduring. In 1869, developers Albon Platt Man and Edward Richmond laid out a new community just west of Jamaica with a post office and railroad station, and Richmond named the area for himself (or, perhaps, a London suburb, Richmond-On-Thames, a favorite royal stomping ground). It became a self-contained community of Queen Anne architecture west of Van Wyck Boulevard (now Expressway) that remains fairly intact to the present day. Journalist/activist Jacob Riis as well as the Marx Brothers were Richmond Hill residents in the early 20^th century.

Albon Man also donated land for the Church of the Resurrection, facing 118^th Street just south of 85^th Avenue, Richmond Hill’s first church. A small wooden Gothic Revival building was built by architect Henry Dudley in 1874; this structure is preserved within the present French Gothic stone building, which was finished in 1904, though further extensions continued until 1926. Social reformer Jacob Riis was a parishioner, and New York State Governor Theodore Roosevelt attended Riis’ daughter Clara’s wedding to Dr. William Fiske on June 1, 1900. The seal of the President of the U.S. can be found above the entrance on the back wall of the church.

In 1932, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses deemed it proper to create a Jones Beach for the hoi polloi, a means for the masses to enjoy a suburban style beach without the hip-hooray and ballyhoo, the screaming barkers and roaring roller coasters of Coney Island. He found such a space on the western end of the Rockaway peninsula, on the former locale of the Rockaway Naval Air Station. The park was named for Jacob Riis.

A bust of Riis was originally placed in a prominent position on the Riis Park boardwalk when the park originally opened. It was stolen in 1964 and never recovered. However, in 2011, students of the Aquinas Honor Society at Immaculate Conception School in Jamaica Estates raised $10,000 for a new bust by Brooklyn artist David Ostro.

Forest Parkway

Kevin Walsh — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:25:42 GMT

Woodhaven and Ozone Park were settled in the 1600s by Dutch and English settlers, who gradually eased out Native Americans; Woodhaven became a racing hotbed in the 1820s when Union Course, at what is now Jamaica Avenue and Woodhaven Blvd. was built in 1820s. Centerville and Aqueduct Race Tracks would follow.

From the 1830s to the 1850s, what is now East New York and Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, and Woodville, Queens, were developed by Connecticut businessman John Pitkin. To avoid confusion by the Post Office with an upstate New York State town in the days before zip codes, Woodville residents voted to change Woodville’s name to Woodhaven in 1853.

Famous former residents of Woodhaven include: actor Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”), composer George Gershwin (“Porgy and Bess,” “Rhapsody in Blue”), pop star Brian Hyland (“Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”), showman Danny Kaye (“Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and many others), and actor Barry Sullivan (“The Bad and the Beautiful”).

Two French immigrants, Charles Lalance and Florian Grosjean launched the village as a manufacturing community in 1863, by opening a tin factory and improving the process of tin stamping. As late as 1900, the surrounding area, however, was still primarily farmland, and from Atlantic Avenue one could see as far south as Jamaica Bay, site of present-day John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Forest Parkway, one of Queens’ best-kept architectural secrets, was developed as a showpiece of sorts as Woodhaven was being developed in the early 20^th Century:

“This, the only 80-foot wide residential street in Woodhaven, marked the center of the Forest Parkway development of 1900. Though only six blocks long, Forest Parkway was macadamized from the start, and big homes on 40-foot minimum lots were built to line itgs length. Many of these survive today as doctors’ and dentists’ offices. A few are still private residences.” –Queens historian Vincent Seyfried

The exterior of Woodhaven’s post office, built in 1940 on Forest Parkway just north of Jamaica Avenue, may look somewhat utilitarian and mundane, but it is a prime example of the streamlined Art Moderne style, with its enameled panels. A look inside will reward you with a view of a Works Progress Administration mural by Ben Shahn, shown above.

This building, 86-20 Forest Parkway, was the first building to be designated under the Queensmark program.

According to the NY Times, the program was begun by the Queens Historical Society in 1996. Designated members of the selection committee survey historic or architecturally interesting neighborhoods, seeking buildings worthy of recognition, and this building was the first chosen under its aegis. Unfortunately, a Queensmark does not carry the official weight that a NYC Landmarks Commission designation does, so this building could be easily torn down if sold to a developer.

In 1901, the Scottish philanthopist/industrialist Andrew Carnegie Foundation gave $5.2 million to New York City for its libraries across the five boroughs. This started a remarkable project that would go on to build 1,680 Carnegie libraries across the United States and another 800 plus in Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world. In NYC, Carnegie gave to the boroughs according to population. Since Queens was the least populated borough at the time, they got the least amount of money. The Queens Library trustees were able to go to Carnegie himself and present a plan that gave them more money, enabling the library to build seven of the eight libraries planned for the borough.

Carnegie paid for the buildings, but the city would have to buy or acquire the land, buy the books, and provide for maintenance and upkeep, in perpetuity. Carnegie helped set up the library commissions and boards.

The Woodhaven branch of the QPL was the last building to be constructed under the Carnegie aegis, opening January 5, 1924. The architect was Robert F. Schirmer, who with J.W. Schmidt also designed the Library’s central building in 1927, which is now the Queens Family Courthouse.

While her tree grew in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, neé Elisabeth Wehner (1896-1972), largely wrote the novel, which takes place in nearby Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, in this beautiful Colonial Revival house with a very unsual fence treatment at 85-34 on Forest Parkway near Jamaica Avenue. She herself lived in Williamsburg and attended Girls’ High School, where her childhood experiences influenced her book.

An actual New York State Education Department sign from 1936 was installed in front of this Queen Anne building at Park Lane South and 85th Street. It doesn’t designate this building per se, however; it designates the first building in Queens to be numbered under the street and house numbering plan instituted by the Queens Topographical Bureau in the 1910s. The building stood on the opposite corner across 85th Street but has since been demolished.

Many years ago, when Queens was a collection of small towns divided by acres of farms and fields, every town and city had its own street naming and numbering system. This was all right when Queens (then also comprising what is now Nassau County) was a separate and self-governing county. Once Queens consolidated with New York City and subsequently became slowly urbanized, this was a situation that could not be allowed to stand as a plethora of Washington Streets, Main Streets, and 1st and 2nd Streets found themselves in the same street directory in the city ledgers.

And so, the Queens Topographical Bureau, under the guidance of C. U. Powell, was set the task of unifying Queens’ street system in the 1910s. To do this just about every street in Queens was assigned a number, except those in historic areas such as Flushing; some existing major roads kept their names, but were assigned the honorific Boulevard or Parkway to replace what was a mere Avenue or Road; the Jackson Avenue – Broadway combination was renamed Northern Boulevard, for example, while Little Neck Road became Little Neck Parkway. Numbered Avenues, Roads, Drives and Courts run east-west, while Streets, Places, Lanes and Terraces run north-south. Streets run from 1 to 271, and Avenues from 2 to 165: why Queens does not have a 1st Avenue is a mystery.

Queens also has a unique way of designating house numbers: the first one, two or three digits are the street number while the last two, separated with a hyphen, are numbered between that numbered street and the next. For example 95-01 would be at the corner of 95th Street while 95-35 would be at the corner of the next street, 96th, while the house numbers would begin anew with 96-01.

Brooklyn's Marylanders

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:25:46 GMT

A State Education Department of New York sign, created in 1952, hangs in front of an American Legion hall at 3rd Avenue and 9th Street, stating that remains of the 1st Maryland Regiment, which engaged the British during the battle at the nearby Old Stone House (which is now a museum) in August 1776 and enabled the main line of US troops to escape relatively undecimated, are buried there. The sign is not quite correct, as some say that evidence points to those remains existing beneath a parking lot a block away at 3rd Avenue and 8th Street.

The leader of the find-the-Marylanders group is Bob Furman, a Brooklyn historian and president of the Brooklyn Preservation Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining brownstone Brooklyn’s look and feel. “The evidence is quite strong,” Mr. Furman said. “I’m confident enough that I tell everyone I know.”
But Mr. Furman has no way to test his theory. Right now, the site he is targeting is a vacant, concrete-covered lot studded with weeds and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The owners, who say they are interested in developing the property themselves or selling it to someone who will, have rebuffed his inquiries about conducting an archaeological probe on the site. NY Times, 8/26/12

I was heartened to see that the State Education Department sign, which had been sun-faded and illegible, has been given a restoration and new paint job in NY state colors of blue and gold. A few years ago, Forgotten New York did a series on remaining and now-lost State Education signs around town.

The supposed burial site is on a parking lot on 8th Street directly behind the American Legion Hall, part of which has now been developed with a new building. It would be interesting if an archeological dig could be performed to settle the issue for good and all, but that’s less likely now.

The Lost Railroad

Kevin Walsh — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:23:22 GMT

Why is there a wrought-iron rendering of a locomotive on the Kissena Park fence at Kissena Boulevard and Rose Avenue in Flushing? There’s a reason it’s there.

A lengthy gash of green known as the Kissena Corridor can be seen on Queens maps, running from Flushing Meadows-Corona Park at its western end all the way east to Cunningham Park at Francis Lewis Boulevard on the east. The Queens Botanical Garden between College Point Boulevard and Main Street forms its western end, while a narrow patch is slotted between Colden Street and 56th Avenue/56th Road.

The gash “widens” into Kissena Park proper, which is divided into a “parklike” northern section and a more “natural” southern section, between Kissena Boulevard, Rose Avenue, Oak Avenue, Booth Memorial Avenue and 164th Street. East of that, the Kissena Corridor’s narrowest sector runs from Fresh Meadow Lane to the Long Island Expressway, after several blocks’ interruption by the Kissena Golf Course between 164th and Fresh Meadow Lane.

The Kissena Corridor is there because it is the ancient right-of-way for a long-vanished railroad. In the early 1870s, Scottish immigrant and department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart purchased plots of land from local farmers and built the Central Railroad of Long Island as a means to connect western Queens with a new development of his, Garden City.

The railroad was a financial failure and survived for just a few years, yet the railroad, built over 140 years ago, still survives…after a fashion… as a park, which matches its fate with that of the High Line on the west side of Manhattan.

Just as we’re speculating about what would happen if the Long Island Rail Road Bay Ridge freight line through the heart of Brooklyn and into Ridgewood, Queens, could be fitted for mass transit as the Interborough Express, or perhaps the old Ozone Park to Rockaways LIRR branch, abandoned since 1962, could be used again for rail, it’s fun to speculate what would have occurred if Stewart’s line was a success. It would mean a direct connection from the LIRR Port Washington Branch to Garden City, serving the Queens communities of Fresh Meadows, Hollis Hills, Bellerose and Floral Park; the street grid in those areas, after over 140 years, still allows for a a railroad right-of-way!

Read much more on the Central Railroad of Long Island here at Art Huneke’s Arrchives.

Meanwhile, here’s more on Kissena Boulevard.

Chelsea Soda Secret

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 11 May 2026 15:01:05 GMT

Pad Thai Lounge, at #114 8th Avenue across from the Port Authority building, has a secret. Pad thai is a generic term for a popular food in Thailand consisting of stir-fried rice noodles, egg, bean sprouts, shrimp, peanuts, and seasonings; the name comes from the Thai term phad thaj, roughly “fried dish from Thailand.” It is also the name of a restaurant, Pad Thai Lounge, at 114 8th Avenue just off West 16th Street in Chelsea. I passed the restaurant during routine perambulations, and noticed that the proprietor has preserved something on the sidewalk sign, a much older sign from a previous tenant with a generic sign designating it as a lounge/restaurant. Dating the sign is difficult…

…because it employs a “privilege sign” (in which a sign was sponsored by an advertiser) that used the main 7 Up logo that was in use between 1943 and 1972, the longest-lived logo the lemon-lime soda has ever employed, and frankly, it’s the best; none before or since have been this iconic. Thus, the sign could have been installed during any year from 1943 to 1972, a good 29 years. (I’m not wrong: the gap from 1943 to 1972 was infinitely longer, temperamentally, than between 1972 and 2001.)

The Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda was originated in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg, but that name was of course too unwieldy and 7 Up was adopted in 1936. Theories abound about the name; some speculate that seven main ingredients are used, and others say that “7” is the atomic mass of lithium citrate, which was used in the drink’s production until 1948. Lithium’s mood-altering nature is well-known and has been used in psychological treatments. 7 Up was originally marketed in 7-ounce bottles, which is likely the true reason.

I do not know if you can get 7 Up with your pad thai at the Pad Thai Lounge.

Jerome Pumping Station

Kevin Walsh — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:39:35 GMT

For some time I had wondered about this lengthy one-story peaked-roofed building at Jerome Avenue and Mosholu Parkway in the shadow of the high-rise Tracey Towers in Bedford Park, Bronx. I had no idea what it was called and thus, was stonewalled in researching it. Thanks to a go-to source, the Facebook group Old NYC Photo Dump, I have my answer: It’s called the High Pumping Station or Jerome Pumping Station.

The building was constructed from 1901 and 1906 as part of the Jerome Park Reservoir complex. It formerly featured a high brick tower which has since been torn down (I am not sure when). These towers traditionally held voluminous tanks storing water.

A look at the complex interior pumping mechanism shortly after the building went into service.

The Jerome Park Reservoir stands on the site of Jerome Park Race Course, and was named for the organizer of the American Jockey Club, Leonard Jerome (1817-1891). The Huguenot French-American was also a financier, stockholder in the New York Times, and founder of the Bronx Academy of Music. When a main Bronx artery, Central Avenue, was constructed in 1874, Jerome’s wife Kate cast bronze “Jerome Avenue” street signs and had them positioned at intervals along its length. Eventally the City officially adopted the name. Among his four daughters was Jennie Jerome, who became the mother of British statesman Winston Churchill.

Utilitarian structures from the early 20th Century were constructed when their architects still adhered to ornamentation and attractiveness. Standing on Avenue V just west of 86th Street in Gravesend is one of NYC’s very few decorative structures associated with its sewers, all due respects for the gigantic Digester Eggs of Greenpoint. It resembles one of the Beaux-Arts subway entrance buildings designed by Heins and LaFarge back when the subway originally opened in the first decade of the 20th Century. The Avenue V Pumping Station was constructed between 1911 and 1916, at the tail end of the Beaux Arts era, designed by architect Albert A. Martin and was eligible for NYC Landmarks designation in 1998. It was given a $210M dollar restoration in 2015 that repointed the brickwork and touched up its terra cotta trim and Spanish tiled roof.

The Strangest Alley

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:37:10 GMT

The strangest alley in New York City can be found on the north side of Morris Park Avenue between Matthews and Muliner Avenue in the Bronx, where a new basic brick two-story office building has been recently built. But it has a secret.

On the opposite side of Morris Park Avenue, a “Graham Place” sign is affixed to a lamppost. But there is no apparent Graham Place…

…until you walk through the entranceway seen at bottom right of the above photo.

Two dwellings, #191 and 193 Graham Place, come into view…

…and to not confuse cab drivers and postal workers, the two buildings’ back entrances also have Muliner Avenue street numbering, adjoining the Matthews-Muliner playground.

So, what’s going on here? In 1905 this was part of a subdivision called Hudson Park. Sorry I could not capture more of the map, but Historic Map Works’ copyright protections cause immediate zoom when a screen shot tool attempts to capture it. You can see two streets, Graham and Delancey; both survive, because Cruger Avenue, now called Muliner Avenue, was extended south and a dogleg was added to Delancey Street (now Place) to meet it. Graham Street, now Graham Place, remained a dead end and today, just two dwellings on it remain.

Before a couple of years ago, Graham Place was a trickle of a sidewalk leading from Morris Park Avenue to the two houses. However, that new brick office building was constructed in its place, with an opening leading to its dwellings, making it invisible from Morris Park Avenue—unless you know where to look.

The Graham it was named for has been lost in the mists of time.

U.S. Street, Vinegar Hill

Kevin Walsh — Fri, 01 May 2026 03:53:24 GMT

From the Facebook site Old NYC Photo Dump comes this image of U.S. Street looking north from Little Street. This intersection no longer exists, but I know where it was. As a kid I pored over street guides and atlases while the other kids were out playing stickball. One of the areas I concentrated on is now called DUMBO and its eastern end, Vinegar Hill. There are, or were, a number of hidden streets and alleys rattling around in that attic, most of them now built over. U.S. Street was one of them.

This early Hagstrom shows the dead end U.S. Street angling east from Little Street at Marshall. By the 1960s, everything north of John Street had been taken over by Con Edison, which protects the territory like Fort Knox; I have never been in there. Little Street has now been cut back to one block between Evans and Plymouth.

This 1929 Belcher Hyde excerpt shows U.S. Street (I do not believe it was ever spelled out as “United States Street” with some properties on its south side. The house you see in the top photo is represented by a yellow box.

Even if Con Ed did not occupy the area north of John, U.S. Street no longer exists, as the Red Hook Wastewater Treatment Plant, part of the Navy Yard, now sits where it was.

The plant was designed in 1972 to be a 70 MGD facility, however escalating energy and construction costs made it necessary to re-examine the 1972 design. The design of a 60 MGD plant began in August 1980, and construction began in November 1983. In 1989, the plant began providing full secondary treatment. [NYC.gov]

Triborough View

Kevin Walsh — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:38:50 GMT

After hearing of the shocking damage to the First Reformed Church in Astoria Village, I recently walked in the area to document the damage and walk some streets in the area I haven’t been down. I was surprised to obtain some interesting views of the Triborough Bridge I hadn’t seen before, such as this one looking west on 24th Road from 21st Street.

Though a Harlem and East Rivers span from northern Manhattan to Queens had been talked about since the Queensboro (Ed Koch) Bridge had opened in 1909, it took enormous political will and engineering expertise to connect the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan and Randalls Island, and though ground for the bridge was broken in 1929, substantial work didn’t commence until 1934, with the complete bridge opening two years later. The complete story of the Triborough Bridge can be found in Sharon Reier’s excellent book, The Bridges of New York (Dover, 1977).

The main span is 1380 feet (421m); it is the longest of the Triborough’s three spans, and the total length including approaches is 2780 feet (847m). Unlike the other two spans, it contains just one narrow sidewalk, on the north side. The towers are 315 feet (96m) in height. The architect, Othmar Ammann of Switzerland, chief engineer for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the Port Authority, assisted in the design most of the City’s great bridges of the 20th Century: The George Washington; Triborough; Bronx-Whitestone; Throg(g)s Neck; and Verrazzano-Narrows.

According to legend, a sign on the bridge once read, “In event of attack, drive off bridge.” Since the bridge roadway is the equivalent of 15 stories from the river, that advice would have meant certain death.

One of Forgotten NY’s most successful tours was held in 2011, when we traveled all three spans of the Triborough (since co-named the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) as well as Wards and Randall’s Islands, going from Harlem to Astoria.

Another look at one of the main towers, seen looking west on 24th Avenue and 29th Street across from Bohemian Hall.

Ghost of a Garden

Kevin Walsh — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:39:23 GMT

I had always been curious about that sharp-angled building on 6th Avenue on the NW corner of West 11th Street, in the shadow of the Jefferson Market clock tower.

Thanks to Facebooker and historian Gary Weiss, I have my answer. This is an insurance map of the area from 1854, with north on the right and west on top. Amos Street was renamed to West 10th Street several years later. As you can see the alleys Patchin and Milligan Places were already in place…along with another alley, Garden Row, which plunged southwest from West 11th. The orientation of its five buildings necessitated an angle in the corner building at 6th and West 11th; that building still stands. That building, #461 6th Avenue, was constructed by Aaron Patchin in 1852.

Patchin Place was created in 1848 or 1849 when Samuel Milligan, the owner of the parcel, decided to build ten townhouses facing each other across an alley. One (#4 Patchin Place) was built as a standalone building, with the rest attached to each other. Milligan’s daughter Isobel married his surveyor, Aaron Patchin, and his name was affixed to the alley. A smaller cul-de-sac issuing from 6th Avenue around the corner was named Milligan Place. It has been thought that the houses were originally built to house (mostly) Basque waiters at the now-demolished Brevoort Hotel on 5th Avenue, but the Brevoort was built in 1855. However the alley may well have been occupied by the workers at some point.

The presence of a “Florists’ Garden” and Garden Row here in the mid-1850s may have pointed to a garden and flower district in Greenwich Village at that time.

All trace of the garden and the alley has been replaced by PS 41 on West 11th.

Lost at Bellevue

Kevin Walsh — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:22:06 GMT

On the east side of Bellevue South Park between 1st and 2nd Avenues we find a short, two-block street called Mount Carmel Place. This street harks back to a Forgotten New York experience. I seemed to recall a church facing the north end of the Place on East 28th Street in the late 1990s when I first started canvassing streets to scout the website. Indeed a church did stand there: the Our Lady of the Scapular Church, established by the Carmelite religious order, in 1889; the church, as well as its accompanying priory, were razed in favor of the Berkley Apartments, which went up in 2000.

Devotional scapulars may be worn by individuals who are not members of a monastic order. The devotional scapular typically consists of two small (usually rectangular) pieces of cloth, wood or laminated paper, a few inches in size, which may bear religious images or text. These are joined by two bands of cloth. The wearer places one square on the chest, rests the bands one on each shoulder and lets the second square drop down the back. [wikipedia]

The church, and its priory, played a role in the Irish independence movement of the late 1910s and early 2000s: smuggled Thompson machine guns were hidden in the priory, bound for the old sod, before they were seized by the US Government; and revolutionary Eamonn de Valera (born in NYC but emigrated to Ireland with an uncle at age two), later the prime minister and later president of Ireland (until age ninety!), sought refuge in the church in 1921.

The Carmelite order were chaplains at Bellevue Hospital from 1889 through 2007. Only this short Place remains of the legacy of the Carmelite order, the Carmelite church, and their service there.

At Mt. Carmel Place, we are in the shadow of Bellevue Hospital. The Bellevue Hospital complex on 1st Avenue is deeply rooted in NYC lore and legacy as the place where drunks were brought from late night binges. In an era when hospitals are shutting all over town, it’s one of the few full-service hospitals remaining in lower Manhattan, especially with the shuttering of Greenwich Village’s St. Vincent’s in 2010.

The original hospital opened as an almshouse in 1736 on the lot now occupied by City Hall. In 1811, New York City purchased Belle Vue farms, which [was] located at 27th Street and 1st Avenue. The land became the Bellevue Institution, in effect, a community center with an almshouse, a pesthouse, a soap factory, a greenhouse, a penitentiary, a school, a morgue, a bakehouse, an icehouse, and a shop for carpenters and blacksmiths. The institution was dedicated in its entirety in 1816.
Bellevue had already established a reputation for innovative medical technology by the mid-1800s, and treated soldiers from both the Civil War and the Spanish American War. Bellevue doctors pioneered the use of hypodermic syringes (1856), performed the nation’s first cesarean section (1867), and developed the first hospital-based ambulance service (1869). Specialized units holding 2,700 total beds, a variety of outpatient clinics, and four schools were founded as the hospital expanded. During World War I and II, Bellevue organized hospital units to serve overseas. Today, the hospital is affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine. [NYC Parks]

Going way uptown from 29th Street, 5th Avenue is interrupted for four blocks at Mount Morris (Marcus Garvey) Park by a tall rock outcropping that was never leveled by developers and engineers, as were most of other of Manhattan’s high hills. It’s indeed a tall hill: walking to the crown provides a good workout. One of the park’s main gates is located on Mount Morris Park South (120th Street) and is marked by the initials BH. What’s that, you say? Neither Marcus Garvey or Mount Morris has “BH” as initials?

The reason there is a BH on the gates is simple. The gates originally surrounded a portion of Bellevue Hospital downtown on 1st Avenue in Kips Bay, and were removed during a renovation in the 1950s; they were subsequently installed here, BH and all.

Date at 28

Kevin Walsh — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:06:45 GMT

In my opinion subway design reached its apotheosis in the original 28 subway stations, designed by architects George Heins and Christopher LaFarge, engineered and built by William Barclay Parsons and opened to the public on October 27, 1904. The original line ran from City Hall to 145th Street and is now a part of today’s #6 line, Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle, and #1 line.

Recently I walked crosstown on part of 29th Street and most of 31st Street. To get there I took the relatively new Long Island RR connection to Grand Central and then the #6 downtown to 28th, where I checked on its downtown terra cotta station ID panel.

Who knows why Heins and LaFarge decided to place a large Grueby Faience station name tablet in the 28th Street station…it’s a local stop, not a major stop by any means (though other local stations like Bleecker have elaborate entablatures as well). When one of them was lost at some time in the past, it was decided to replace it with a truly hideous mosaic copy (I’m not showing it here, just the original).

As Jim Naureckas reports in New York Songlines, Robert Shaw played a thief who commanded NYC cops to deliver a $1 million ransom for a hijacked subway car in the 1974 thriller “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” at the 28th Street station. The station also was home to the system’s first robbery on opening day. It would not be the last. 28th was home to New York’s Tin Pan Alley, where songwriters and song pluggers played and sold tunes to prospective customers; the street is now the epicenter of NYC’s Flower District between 6th and 7th Avenues, and also home to clothing wholesalers and further west, forms the northern boundary to a small neighborhood home to sewing machine wholesalers and showroom dummy manufacturers. Perhaps they come to life at night, like in the Twilight Zone.