Dwellings

Forgotten New York’s purpose is to highlight neighborhoods, objects and aspects of New York City that have gone ignored or unnoticed by other guidebooks, websites, and articles.

FNY has been profiled in all of NYC’s daily newspapers, and has been mentioned by name in columns by the New York Times‘ Christopher Gray and David Dunlap and by the New York Sun‘s Francis Morrone. It has twice been named to the Village Voice‘s Best of NYC list. It has also been cited by PC Magazine‘s Top 99 “Undiscovered” websites. For its 20th anniversary, Kevin and FNY were profiled in the New York Post (Hana Alberts) and AMNY (Lisa Colangelo). Forgotten New York won the first annual Outstanding Website award from the Guides Association of New York City in 2015. I appeared on Frank Morano’s Other Side of Midnight radio show on WABC on May 9, 2022, on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC October 23, 2006, and numerous additional media appearances in the USA and Canada.

I plan on using Substack for occasional new material and to highlight relatively recent posts. While I have highlighted former workplaces in Forgotten New York, I have never listed the various buildings around town in which I lived. I don’t like to move around much, and once I settle somewhere, I hang around for years rather than pack up all the books and research materials I have amassed over the years.

Seen above is 8302 6th Avenue in Bay Ridge. I have actually had two stints in this building. After my birth in Maimonides Hospital in Borough Park, I lived here from 1957 to late 1982. My father immigrated from Newfoundland in the late 1940s when he became aware that a union with Canada was imminent; but most of my father’s side remained in Canada, except for his sister, my aunt Mary, who immigrated at the same time. My mother was born in Troy, NY and met my father there. In the late 50s, they married and went to Brooklyn, where my aunt had already moved.

The building is named “Tilden Court” and was constructed around 1925, likely the first structure on the plot. This part of Bay Ridge was sparsely settled until the early 20th century. The name is a mystery to me, as Tilden Avenue is several miles away in Flatbush. A reference to Samuel Tilden, who lost the presidential election to Rutherford B. Hayes in the late 1800s?

Our apartment here was a two bedroom on the first floor in the rear of the building. One of the bedrooms had a dandy view of the side wall of the apartment next door on 83rd Street, but my bedroom had a view of the sky and the back gardens of ground floor apartments in that building.

Like my current place in Little Neck, the toilet was the first thing you saw when entering, as the bathroom was at the end of a lengthy central corridor, and on either side of the bathroom were the two bedrooms. The kitchen was immediately to the right of the entrance door. It was too small to fit a refrigerator in, so the fridge went in a widening of the central corridor facing the living room, which had a pair of windows facing the center courtyard. One feature the living room had that I have not had in any subsequent apartment was a pair of glassy “French doors” that separated the living room from one of the bedrooms.

I’ll count 193 Green Street in Greenpoint, though I only paid a month or two $275 rent for a second floor apartment here. It was the first place I rented after obtaining the first a string of jobs in the print industry, second shift at Photo-Lettering in Midtown. Businesses and agencies used to buy type from type shops, which produced publish-ready print materials that were “stripped in” (i.e. glued onto) boards which were then photographed and reproduced.

I found the accommodations too Neanderthal. As was the case with many of NYC’s older apartments, the bathtub was in the kitchen, with the toilet in a small alcove adjacent to the kitchen. It was a railroad-style apartment as each room was accessed from the other. Another major drawback was its lack of electrical outlets. I wasn’t happy with it and broke the lease. Mary, my girlfriend at the time, visited and it may have led to her decision to break things off soon after, the place was that bad. She lived at 931 Newkirk and I thought the anagram of the numbers in the addresses was a good omen but it wasn’t. Greenpoint in 1982 wasn’t the Greenpoint of today.

Soon after I found a one-bedroom for $300 at 654 73rd Street in Bay Ridge, which is the building on the left, one of a string of attached townhouses with three floors, two apartments on each. Speaking of numbers, I was amused that “654 73” are consecutive scrambled numbers.

I remember this place fondly, I was on the top floor, in the place with two windows on the left, in another railroad flat. I could look out of the window and see the Gowanus Expressway, but also a good deal of 73rd. Since it faced east, I saw the sunrise and also moonrise when that occurred evenings or nights. When I first moved in, it was to an apartment on the second floor, but I was soon given an opportunity for the more spacious apartment on the third.

The reason is that the adjacent place on the 3rd floor was occupied by a crazy lady who was giving the landlord (who lived on the first floor) a lot of guff. The landlord figured that with my schedule on the second shift that had me returning home anywhere from 3 to 8 AM, I’d be bustling about which would tick her off so much she’d move out. It worked!

I liked the apartment, even though it was drafty because of old uninsulated windows. I had plenty of sun from both the front and back rooms. It was entered via the kitchen, which was the center room. I used the back room as a “music room” with my stereo and records, and the front room as the bedroom. In the winter I could see the Verrazzano Bridge from the back window. I put a thick blue carpet in. I was in my 20s, life was good. Then the second landlord told me he needed the place for his daughter.

It turned out that was a ruse. When I met the landlord’s wife on the street shortly after, she asked me to move back in at a much higher rent after they had renovated the place. But I said no as I had already found a ground floor apartment here, at 7024 10th Avenue at 71st Street. I only occupied it, though, from late 1990 to late 1991. It was the most spacious apartment I ever lived in, two bedrooms and a large front room in addition to the living room. It was like putting on a shirt two sizes too big and the rent, about $725, was too much for my print shop salary. The side windows were insufficiently protected and I suffered a burglary when I wasn’t there. I made the decision to move out when…

… I discussed my rent predicament with my father. He tipped me about a much cheaper one bedroom for $585 that had opened up at my old building, 8302 6th Avenue. I eagerly grabbed it. My place was on the ground floor, last two windows on the right on 83rd Street. One of the bedroom windows, though, faced the wall of the next building over. My tenure was mostly uneventful though I once again suffered a burglary. The TV set was reappropriated by the neighborhood youth for community use, as well as a parka, and the stereo was wrapped up and ready to be shipped out, but the burglars must have been interrupted. In 1992, I began working for Publishers Clearing House in Port Washington, Nassau, which necessitated a 2.5 hour commute each way on two subways and the LIRR. I also had a part time job evenings on West 26th Street, which necessitated another move.

In March 1993 I moved in here, 4306 159th Street, my first apartment in Queens. At first, I had a small third floor apartment, but was unsatisfied with it so I moved into a more spacious place on the 4th floor when it became available, and faced east again, the first two windows on the left. The other windows faced the inner courtyard, but the top floor got full sun and the apartment could get very warm in the summer, as I only wanted to air condition the bedroom.

The Long Island Rail Road is a few blocks away on Northern Blvd. and 163rd Street, and I could easily get to Port Washington and then Midtown again, when I joined Macy’s after the stint at Publishers Clearing House ended. One day in 2006, I left the apartment one morning and found $116 on the sidewalk, which signaled a change in fortunes, as I published my first book and rejoined Publishers Clearing House, but my second tour wasn’t as fun as the first.

I was satisfied in the apartment, though, and remained for 14 years, until July 2007.

I had had my eye on Westmoreland Gardens, a complex two blocks from the Long Island RR on Little Neck Pkwy. since the mid-1990s, a grouping of apartments surrounding a central courtyard, very green and coniferous. I couldn’t afford a place, though, as I was restricted by perennially low salaries in the print business. I did get a modest inheritance from my father, who passed away in 2003, and used some of it for a 60% down payment on a one bedroom here in 2007. It is the most spacious place I have had, except for the place on 10th Avenue. I hope to remain here until I’m carted off to assisted living.

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)