Interestingly I have been in the Fanelli Cafe just once, in early 2006, since I tend to be an aficionado of old-time saloons. Circumstances tend to dictate which ones I visit but hopefully, the occasion will come up again before too long.

Three separate institutions on the SW corner of Mercer and Prince: #94 Prince, Fanelli Cafe, and the neon Fanelli sign, which has seen generations of duty. #94 Prince, a 5-story brick building, looks a bit out of place next to its cast-iron front brethren — the building first appeared in 1857 when it was built by Herman Gerken, a German immigrant landowner. In both the previous wood building to occupy the site and the brick structure after, groceries were sold from a shop on the ground floor. At the time, alcoholic beverages including hard liquor were sold in general stores of this type. The rest of the building was divided among living and manufacturing space.

The ground floor at #94 Prince continued to be used as both a place to buy liquor and as a tavern through a succession of owners beginning in 1863. A Nicholas Gerdes operated the tavern from 1878-1902, and his name remains inscribed in the transom over the front door; his liquor licenses decorate Fanelli’s walls. Michael Fanelli arrived in 1922 with Prohibition in full thrall, operating the place as a speakeasy until repeal. (The “café” name was first used during Prohibition to fool the coppers.) The Fanelli family owned the bar until 1982 when it was sold to Hans Noe.

(information from Richard McDermott, who has voluminously researched NYC’s venerable taverns, including Mc Sorley’s on East 7th Street. Another thorough description can be found in Ellen Williams & Steve Radlauer’s Historic Restaurants and Shops of New York)

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).

A Victorian-era residence, the kind that have long been displaced in Flushing by boring, monolithic apartments and blond brick two-family homes (you know the type…concrete driveways and prominent water meters) has been preserved as a museum.

One of the rare survivors, a small, two-story house at 149-19 38^th Avenue painted pink and white, has not only been allowed to stand but has been restored to full Victorian-era glory.

It begins with its resident for 69 years, Betty Voelker-Orth, who was born in the house in 1926 and lived there until 1995, when she died from complications from an automobile accident. In her will, Mrs. Voelker-Orth, an English literature teacher, nature lover and birdwatcher, had left her house to the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Botanical Society and the Audubon Society with the proviso that it be converted into a museum, bird sanctuary and Victorian garden, a specific type of garden employing colorful tropical plants in season, along with ornamental elements such as urns, benches, gazebos and statuary. Mrs. Voelker-Orth left a good part of her fortune, which amounted to millions, to the prospective museum as well.

Completed in 2001, the Voelker-Orth Museum stands as both a testament to Flushing’s old Victorian history and as a small nature retreat. You may contact the museum at 718-359-6227. Though the museum is open for tours Sundays and Tuesdays from 1-4 PM, the back garden is amazingly open very liberally, Monday-Friday from 10 to 4, and Sundays during tour hours, 1 to 4. The tour is worth it because the interior has been preserved and looks like it did in the mid-20th Century.

A couple of blocks west, 38th Avenue takes a bend between two unnamed housing projects between 147th and 149th Streets. I had always thought that the bend appeared when the projects did. However, many years ago (I’ve been doing this awhile now) I was on a Flushing walking tour with the late Queens historian Jack Eichenbaum, who mentioned that the bend was there to get around a mansion. He probably said whose, but I forget.

You can do a lot of research with maps alone, though. I consulted this 1909 Queens map in Historic Map Works (which I try to evade nowadays, as they have made screen captures difficult by engineering an automatic zoom when I attempt it) but this edition by Bromley is invaluable). Before many Queens streets were numbered, they had names and while a healthy number of downtown Flushing’s streets have kept their old names, Lincoln Street was converted to 38th Avenue. You can see that it was interrupted by the estate of Robert E. Parsons. When the estate was divided into properties the mansion remained, but the city wanted to make Lincoln Street continuous; so, they simply bent it past the mansion, which still stood in 1940.

Parsons was a member of the family that originated one of Flushing’s first plant nurseries and for whom Parsons Boulevard was named.

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).

There’s a park trail in Van Cortlandt Park that was once a railroad. It can be reached by walking east through the park directly from the W 242nd Street stop on the #1 subway line, the last stop. Follow a line of telephone poles that boast extremely old lighting fixtures. When you reach an overpass, you have reached what is now known as the Putnam Trail. Go beneath the overpass and then make your way to the trail and head north.

The Putnam RR Branch, or “The Old Put” as it was called, originally ran from Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx north to Brewster, New York on the NY Central commuter line, now called the Metro-North. It diverged from the Hudson Line just south of West Kingsbridge Road. The branch had two stops in The Bronx: Kingsbridge and Van Cortlandt Park. The Putnam Branch itself was never electrified (hence the absence of remains of a third rail). There was, however, an electrified branch that diverged from the line just north of the Van Cortlandt Park Station and ran to Getty Square in Yonkers. Passenger service ended on the line in 1958, and the last fright train rumbled on the now-missing tracks in 1980.

Make your way north on the trail, which runs on an overpass over Van Cortlandt Park Lake. Pause to look down and see several old wooden railroad ties which are still in place on the side of the trail. In recent years, a bridge over a Van Cortlandt Park pond has been “improved” and its railroad ties removed.

Continue north on the path (it ultimately reaches far into Westchester County, though you don’t have to go too far to see today’s featured item). After about the length of a football field, you will see several gray stone pillars, thirteen in number, on your left. They are in varied shades of gray or slate blue — apparently they were partially repainted at some time.

In the 1910s, before the Grand Central Terminal was built, it was decided to test different varieties of stone to see what could stand up to the weather the best. These pillars were used to make the decision. The second pillar as you walk north (in the center in the above photo), made of Indiana limestone, contains the stone selected…not for its durability, but because it was cheapest.

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).

I was born in Brooklyn in August 1957 and thus, the Brooklyn Dodgers and I coexisted for approximately one month. I was not athletically inclined as a youth; I could play a little basketball in high school but that’s the end of it. I paid no attention to baseball whatsoever until the light bulb went on in early 1969, when I was 11 years old, and I began watching New York Mets games and got deeply invested, dropping into brief periods of, let’s say, ill humor when the Mets lost. The Mets, as you know, won the whole darn thing in 1969. When I met Art Shamsky a couple of years ago, I remarked to him I thought that’s what would happen every year! With the Mets, how wrong I was.

Above, 1969 Met teammates Cleon Jones, Jerry Koosman and Ron Swoboda stand in front of the newly christened Citifield entrance, now 41 Seaver Way, and hold a NYC Department of Transportation street sign that is now affixed to a lamppost on 126^th Street between Northern Blvd. and Roosevelt Ave. on the east side of the stadium.

The signs honor Fresno, CA, U.S. Marine and Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, the greatest player the star-crossed New York Mets have ever produced. Playing before the pitch-count era, he amassed 311 victories and 231 complete games, winning the Cy Young Award three times and winning 20 games in a season five times over a 20-year career with the Mets, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox. His arrival to the Mets in 1967 marked a change in the team’s outlook—formerly an aggregation of other teams’ castoffs, the Seaver-era Mets were renowned for pitching and defense. Hitting… well, just enough.

Yet the Mets haven’t served Seaver’s efforts particularly well. He was traded in 1977, still at the peak of his career, during a contract dispute. After the Mets brought him back for the 1983 season, he was inexplicably left off the Mets’ free-agent draft protected list and was promptly claimed by the White Sox. After the Mets’ new park, Citifield, opened in 2009, former Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon made the grand entrance to the stadium a shrine to Jackie Robinson—a historic major leaguer, but a Brooklyn Dodger. Seaver and other Mets standouts settled for pennants on lampposts outside the park.

Finally the Wilpons decided to set Seaver’s legacy aright in 2019 by commissioning a statue depicting him in action, renaming the stadium address for him as well as petitioning the city to rename 126^th Street as Seaver Way. Tom Seaver died of complications of Lyme Disease in 2020, and did not live to see his statue installed on April 15, 2022. He shared the spotlight with Robinson, as all teams celebrate his birthday on that date.

In many ways Jackie Robinson was the most compelling player in major league baseball history. He was selected by Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey to break the MLB color barrier in 1947 (no African-American had been employed by a major league team since at least 1901, the beginning of the “modern era” of major league ball) after a sterling athletic record at UCLA, where he had lettered in track, football, baseball and basketball. Rickey needed a can’t-miss prospect, as well as a person who’d be able to endure the inevitable racism that would arise in a sport where many players were from the deep South.

Robinson was a five-tool player who hit for average and power (averaging 16 home runs per year), possessed above-average speed, and was excellent on defense (second base for his early years). Advancing age and diabetes slowed him down in 1956 and 1957; the Dodgers traded him to the Giants, who like the Dodgers were moving to California, but Robinson chose to retire. Robinson passed away in 1972, shortly after addressing a World Series crowd in Cincinnati. He’s interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery, through which passes the parkway later named for him. In 1997 his uniform number, 42, was retired by every major league team, except for players already wearing it; the last one, legendary Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera (see below), retired in 2013.

No borough-wide memorial had been named for him until 1997, when upon the 50th anniversary of his ascension to the Dodgers, New York State designated the entire route of the Interboro Parkway in his name.

It’s indeed unusual that (to this day) so many great Red Sox players later came to the New York Yankees. Baltimorean Babe Ruth was one of the greatest pitchers of his era with the Red Sox from 1914-1919, winning 89 games and leading the Sox to three World Series victories (1915, 1916, 1918). Ruth’s nine shutouts in 1916 set a league record for left-handers that would remain unmatched until Ron Guidry tied it in 1978. He set the World Series record for consecutive scoreless innings, also since surpassed. With their roster depleted due to several players serving in WWI in 1918, the Sox had some holes in the lineup and put Ruth at first base and in the outfield when he wasn’t pitching, and he responded by leading the league in home runs in the so-called dead ball era with 11 in 1918 and 29 in 1919.

When Red Sox owner Harry Frazee balked at Ruth’s salary demands he sold Ruth to the Yankees, who chose to play him in the outfield exclusively (he pitched a handful of games, going 5-0) and throughout the 1920s he and the Yankees led baseball into the modern era with a power and scoring explosion unmatched until the steroid era in the 1990s. At first, Ruth stood alone, outhomering many teams at the time en route to ten home run crowns with the Yankees between 1920 and 1931. He was joined by some of the greatest offensive stars of the era that included Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and later, Bill Dickey. Ruth consistently had an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) of over one, a high mark for any player, never struck out more than 93 times (though leading the league in that category often) and even captured a batting title the year after he lost one in a year he hit .393.

Though it can’t be said for certain, Ruth’s fast lifestyle, poor diet and smoking cut his life short at age 53 in 1948. Though he had won numerous World Series with the Sox and the Yankees, one of his greatest desires, to become a major league manager, was never fulfilled. He has been played repeatedly in the movies by the likes of William Bendix, John Goodman, and in the “Pride of the Yankees” Lou Gehrig biopic, he played himself.

Today, Babe Ruth Plaza can be found on East 161st Street at the New Yankee Stadium west of River Avenue, relocated from the Grand Concourse at East 161st alongside Lou Gehrig Plaza; its beautiful bronze sign was also moved. Remaining at that intersection is a similar sign was elected for the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, whose brilliant career was cut short by the fatal nerve ailment that is unofficially named for him.

The greatest “closer” in major league history, Mariano Rivera piled up 652 saves during a 19-year career from 1995 to 2013. For those unfamiliar with the term, the “closer” is the last pitcher in a game in which his team wins and to be credited with a “save” he must enter a game with the tying run on base, at bat or on deck and with a lead, or pitches at least one complete inning protecting a lead of no more than three runs. Pitching three innings at the end of the game also earns a pitcher a save.

In 1995 the Yankees brought up a RHP hailing from Panama and started him a few games and the results were underwhelming. In 1996, Rivera had much more success as the 8th inning “setup man” for closer John Wetteland, and beginning in 1997 he was promoted to closer after Wetteland left as a free agent. He became about as automatic as possible and the Yankees were nearly certain to win the game when he pitched the ninth inning. Rarely, he would pitch two innings if the game went into extra innings. Rivera was so reliable that his rare failures over the years, such as allowing a game winning HR to Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar Jr. in 1997 playoff loss, a bloop hit to Luis Gonzalez to lose the 2001 Series or allowing runs to the Red Sox during their historic comeback in the 2004 playoffs, are perhaps more remembered than his successes. He did it all by employing one pitch, a “cut fastball” that is designed and gripped to drop out of the strike zone at the last second, forcing the batter to hit a playable ground ball.

In 2014, the Department of Transportation added an “a” to River Avenue and unveiled a co-naming for one block at East 161st Street honoring the perennial All-Star.

These are just a few on NYC’s “baseball streets.” Many more can be found on this Forgotten NY page.

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).

Technically in Nassau County, Stepping Stones Lighthouse is visible to Bronx residents from the south tip of City Island. The Victorian-era lighthouse is visible from the south end of City Island Avenue (officially known as Belden Point), especially from the seagull-frequented deck of Johnny’s Reef Restaurant. Stepping Stones was first constructed in 1877.

The lighthouse sits alongside Stepping Stones Reef in the middle of Long Island Sound. It was named by the Siwanoy Native Americans. According to their legends, the tribe used warriors, medicine, and magic to chase the devil out of present-day Westchester County, New York onto City Island (formerly Greater Minneford Island), surrounding him at Belden Point. The devil then picked up huge boulders lying there and tossed them into Long Island Sound, using them as stepping stones to make his escape. The natives named the rocks, “The Devil’s Stepping Stones.”

As with many lighthouses in New York harbor, the lighthouse keeper and his family lived in the structure, and rowed across the Sound between City Island and the lighthouse to bring children to school and pick up supplies. The lighthouse was automated in 1966, ending the need for a lighthouse keeper. It is currently under the care of the US Coast Guard.

Lighthouses of Southern New York Harbor

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).

As a member of the NYC Transit Museum, I’m entitled to a (slight) discount on its programs, such as excursions using older subway cars from the museum’s collection. Sunday, August 16 saw a trip from 96th Street and 2nd Avenue all the way south to the Rockaway Park station. The trip used a consist of R-10 cars which served from 1949-1989; R-16 (1955-1987); R-32 (you probably remember the corrugated stainless steel exterior, 1964-2020) and R38 (1966-2009). This trip, to my disappointment, did not use the crown jewels of the museum, Q-Types from the 1901s and Triplexes from the 1920s, which had wicker seats, overhead fans, olive green paint jobs, exposed incandescent bulbs, and a familiar musty smell. Those cars are more fragile, and the Museum did not want to risk a breakdown which would snag regular service.

By the 1940s and 1950s, subway interiors had settled into 20th Century Functional, with plainer gray paint jobs and plastic seats in various shades, and fluorescent lighting. It’s a long haul from the Upper East Side to the Rockaways using track connections generally not employed unless there is trackwork. I especially enjoy the ride across Jamaica Bay, the only place in the subways where, instead of the bleak darkness of a tunnel, you see water, water everywhere, with only islands, including Manhattan, in view.

The consist headed by an R-16 car arrives at Rockaway Park for a return trip to Manhattan.

The Rockaway Park station was the terminus of the New York, Woodhaven and Rockaway railroad and boasted a grandiose terminal on Beach 116th Street between 1882 and 1917 that was complete with a private suite for the railroad’s president. It was demolished in 1917 to make way for this more sedate brick building. The railroad became first a part of the LIRR and the trackage was sold to the NYC transit system in 1954; the building is now the terminus of the A train.

The R-16 interior featured “Subway Sun” ads by Amelia Opdyke Jones, a cartoonist who drew a slew of subway posters that gently and humorously called attention to the shortcomings of subway riders in the manners department. The posters were given a faux newspaper masthead called The Subway Sun.

“The Sun was introduced originally to warm riders to a fare increase, but the signs evolved to tout technological improvements, highlight travel destinations-”You too can reach the beach by subway!”-and most memorably, to promote straphanger etiquette. The most famous campaign, inked by Amelia Opdyke Jones, used Monopoly-like cartoon characters ­ the women often modeled after Oppy herself ­ to push good manners on a captive audience. Some considered it propaganda, but at least it was entertaining, and it gave the impression that management was paying attention.” ABC News

Oppy could be a bit overbearing and preachy; imagine what she would think of the overall shenanigans in subway cars in 2026.

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).

Sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm (1867-1943) was born in NYC and, assuming an interest in sculpture at a young age, studied under John Quincy Adams Ward (Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools) and Irish sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens (Art Students League of New York). His first major work was at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. In New York, he is represented by two works.

Above is the Women’s Health Protective Association Fountain, installed in 1909 at West 116th Street and Riverside, appropriate since that places it near Barnard College. The fountain consists of a stele with a fountain in front, with two marble benches on the side inscribed with the names of WHPA founders and associates. Charlotte Wilbour, whose name can be seen on the bench below right, helped to found the first New York City Woman Suffrage Association in 1870; it was among the first organization to agitate for female voting rights, which finally came to fruition in 1920.

Perhaps better known, though it has an unfortunate placing behind the lavatory buildings in Tompkins Square Park, is Zimm’s 1906 9-foot tall monument to the victims of the June 15, 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster in which over 1,000 people perished due to gross negligence on the part of the boat operators. Made of pink Tennessee marble, it features a relief picturing two children looking seaward. Funds were provided by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies. In 1991, it was restored by the NYC Parks Department with funds from SUNY-Maritime College in Throgs Neck, Bronx. The children are described: “They were earth’s purest, children young and fair.” A larger monument can be found in Lutheran All-Faiths Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens.

Apologies for relatively few Substacks lately; I am concentrating on researching a zoom tour about Revolutionary War monuments and relics in New York City, which will take place on Wednesday, August 26 at 7PM. You can register at the link.

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).

Few NYC neighborhoods have undergone as much change in the 21st century as Long Island City, especially in the Queens Plaza area, where a former industrial, light manufacturing and low-rise residential area has given way to high-rise glass-fronted apartment towers, none of which are “affordable” at least to me. In the early days of my website Forgotten New York in 1999-2005 I was able to chronicle the Queens Plaza are before change began to arrive. The “tip of the spear” was the sea-green (former) Citicorp Tower on Jackson Avenue, which now sits in a thicket of towers.

The Long Island Star building, housing the offices and press of the longtime newspaper The Long Island City Daily Star (founded 1867), stood at 28th Street and 42nd Road for decades until its demolition in 2008. The paper merged with Flushing’s North Shore Journal in the 1930s and soldiered on until 1968 as the Long Island Star Journal. The paper covered the opening of the first luxury apartments in Jackson Heights and the extension of the IRT Queensboro subway as far as Corona in 1917; published an interview with author Helen Keller, who lived in Queens in 1922; bannered the opening of North Beach Airport (now LaGuardia Airport) on the grounds of a former amusement park in 1930 and the opening of Idlewild, now Kennedy, Airport in 1948; and headlined the death of 29 passengers and injuries to 115 as two Long Island Rail Road trains crashed head-on in November 1950.

A verdigrised plaque of the Long Island Star’s founder, Thomas Todd (1835-1901), could be seen at the corner. Todd cemented the use of the name "Long Island City" years before the area officially incorporated as a city in 1870. Todd vanished mysteriously in 1901, and he was presumed dead; the case was never solved.

Star Tower LIC, a luxury 26-floor condominium building, was completed in 2019, referencing the long-gone newspaper in its name. According to its website,

“Residents of Star Tower enjoy an array of amenities, including a doorman, elevator access, private outdoor spaces, a bike room, children's playroom, community recreation facilities, concierge services, garage parking, a fully equipped gym, on-site laundry facilities, live-in superintendents, a media room, package room, and additional storage options. The building also features virtual doorman services and is designated as a smoke-free environment, enhancing the overall living experience for its residents.”

I’d love to know what happened to that Thomas Todd plaque!*

*I am told the Greater Astoria Historical Society has possession.

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).

Here's a photo of my friend, Doctor of Theology, rock writer and author Dawn Eden Goldstein and me, in a 2007 outing (I get frequenter haircuts now) in front of James Leeson’s gravestone in Trinity Cemetery in Manhattan’s Financial District. It’s the oldest cemetery on Manhattan Island and even has a smattering of burials from the 17th century. I chose this spot because Leeson’s tombstone is unusual in that it contains a coded inscription.

In January 1957, in his New York Times column, Meyer Berger revealed the curious code displayed on the top of James Leeson’s tombstone in Trinity Cemetery at Broadway and Wall Street. Leeson, who died in 1794, left behind an elaborate stone on which are carved Masonic symbols such as a compass and hourglass. (The “G” on Masonic symbols stands for “geometry;” some say it stands for God) At the top of the stone are a series of boxes and partly-rendered boxes, some with one dot, some with two, and others blank. For over a century, the significance of these marks was debated…was it a secret message or just ornamental filigree?

First, to find Leeson’s grave. When you’ve got your handy-dandy Valentine’s Manual of New York, printed in 1922 by the Henry Collins Brown Company, it’s a snap. It has a foldout color plate of Trinity Cemetery and a list of those interred; you’ll find Leeson to the left of Soldier’s Monument near Broadway in the north end of the cemetery.

Berger reported that in 1889, the Trinity Record (Trinity Church’s newspaper of the period) announced that they had solved the mystery, and it was fairly easy to figure out. Simply set up three tic-tac-toe boards, nine squares each, and place the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I in the first, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S in the second, and T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z in the third. Then, place one dot on each letter in your first tic-tac-toe board, two dots in your second, and none in your third. (Count I and J in a single square: in colonial-era orthography, the two letters were the same.) Using this system, Leeson’s final dispatch is spelled out quite clearly.

“I’d rather be in Philadelphia”, or “To know him is to love him,” perhaps? No.

The inscription says, “Remember Death.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this photo today, not without getting hassled by Trinity security. Fencing has been placed along the park paths so people cannot stray onto the grassy areas. Either the grass was getting trampled in a more consistently drought-y era, or the graves were getting vandalized by miscreants. In any case, you can’t just walk up next to the tombstones in Trinity anymore.

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)

I’d say no one outside Howard Beach knows where Coleman Square is, except the most obsessive map buff of which I am one. I hadn’t been in Howard Beach since I undertook a series of Queens walks during the pandemic year of 2020. In July 2026, I went back for a look-around. I got off at the Howard Beach A train station, which was massively built up when an AirTrain station was constructed to connect it to the JFK Airport terminals. Howard Beach is nearly completely residential and recreational, except for Cross Bay Boulevard and for this cluster of stores located on a section of what was 103rd Street but is now called Coleman Square.

Its businesses are numbered 1 through 10 instead of the usual hyphenated Queens addresses.The square features a bar, pizzeria, groceries, pest control, Chinese food, liquor store, auto body, dog grooming, nails, bakery, hair styling, car service, tax preparer and post office, in a concentrated area walkable from everywhere east of Shellbank Creek.

Seaman Bernard Coleman was killed at age 20 during WWI when, aboard the USS Texas, he was killed when struck in the head by boxes of ship’s stores. He was not killed in combat, but was the first “Howard Beacher” to die in WWI. A memorial to all area combatants killed in the USA’s 20th Century wars is located at 159th Avenue and Coleman Square. Coleman is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in Westchester Square in the Bronx. Photos of other area veterans also appear, affixed to telephone poles.

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)

Photo: Bronx and Beyond; Art, Architecture and History Facebook group

Recently (I can’t pinpoint when) new black and white standard-issue MTA signs have appeared in the White Plains Road Line 149th Street/Grand Concourse station, the new ones including Hostos Community College. However, the MTA sign shop made them a bit too short and so some of the station history has reappeared. (Since the MTA disdains nonstandard signage I expect this error to be dealt with and longer signs will be installed eventually.) As it stands, the old mosaic sign underneath’s “M” and “E” appear at the ends.

Photo: NYCsubway.org

The station was the first one constructed in the Bronx. Until the 1920s, the part of the station serving #2 trains was called the Mott Avenue station, and there are still several mosaic Mott Avenue signs on the platform walls that are now covered over by metal signs. These mosaics were still uncovered in the late 1990s.

1922 Hagstrom map

Jordan Mott built a tremendously successful iron works beginning in 1828 (the iron works continued to 1906), centered along the Harlem River from about 3rd Ave. to E. 138^th St. His handiwork is still seen all over town on airshaft and manhole covers built by the Mott Iron Works. Mott bought the original property from Gouverneur Morris II in 1849; Morris was asked if he minded if the area was called Mott Haven, a name it had quickly acquired. “I don’t care… while [Mott] is about it, he might as well change the Harlem River to the Jordan.” The iron works produced practical and ornamental metalwork used worldwide.

In 1850, Mott drew up plans for the lower part of the Mott Haven Canal, which followed an underground stream parallel to Morris Ave. and east of the Harlem River. When completed, it enabled canal boats using the canal to go up as far as 138th St., encouraging the local industrial development. It has since been filled in. Residential neighborhoods, such as the one that forms the Mott Haven Historic District, are not common in Mott Haven. After 1856, Mott Haven joined with several other villages to form the town of Morrisania, although the area still continues to be known by its original name.

The remaining Mott Iron Works buildings are still standing west of 3rd Ave. between E. 134^th St. and the Harlem River, and one is still marked with its old name.

Whither Mott Avenue? In 1909 the original section of the Grand Concourse was constructed between East 161st Street and the Mosholu Parkway. South of that, there was a fairly busy avenue running south from East 161st to East 138th called Mott Avenue. In 1927, the decision was made to extend the Grand Concourse south, in a rather narrower version incorporating the roadbed of Mott Avenue. Thus was the name eliminated from street signs and road maps, but not the subway station for several more decades.

Not all the Mott Avenue history has been expunged. There’s a brick building at the SW corner of the Concourse and East 149th Street, a modest building that’s one of the last that’s not one of the more recent Hostos Community College campus structures. It may have been a substation containing electrical equipment but I am unsure. It’s marked by some terrific green, blue and buff terra cotta identifying the station below as Mott Avenue, and it’s the last remnant of the station and street name. The building has been under renovation for years, and I’m happy to say that terra cotta sign has been lovingly restored.

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)

Ovington Avenue is one of Bay Ridge’s oldest cross streets, and it meanders gently against the grid that was later laid down around it, so it was never assigned a number. The Ovington family farm was located in the area since just after the colonial era; a group of artists and artisans purchased the farm in the 1850s, calling it Ovington Village, and Ovington Avenue was the road between the Athenaeum (concert hall) and the village. It was later built up and lined with spacious homes on 400-foot-wide plots. Family scion Mary White Ovington helped found the NAACP.

St. Nicholas Home, 425 Ovington, is a former nurses’ training facility; this building has been here nearly a century.

At present Stewart Avenue runs two blocks between 74th and 72nd Streets, and again from 71st to Ovington. It had run continuously but in about 1981-1982, tract housing was built on the segment between 71st and 72nd. It’s a mostly unpaved or dirt road from 72nd to 73rd but a close looks reveals that segment had been paved decades ago. The portion between 71st and Ovington survives because it’s used as a driveway by the owner of an adjacent house.

Before Bay Ridge was built up in the early 20th century, pathways from the colonial era were still the only way to get around, as the area was dotted with family farms and villages such as the Ovington settlement. The well-to-do were already building large estates along the shoreline as the black squares along Shore Road indicate. The present street grid was being surveyed in 1873 and while most east-west streets are not even shown yet, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Avenues were already in place, with a horsecar line along Third.

Remarkably, the street still exists today, one of the only unpaved streets in NYC.

Opened on October 21 1927 with Pat O’Mally in “The Rose of Kildare” plus four acts of vaudeville on the stage. This medium sized movie theatre had a beautiful Atmospheric style interior, where electric stars used to twinkle on the dark blue ceiling. The Fortway Theatre originally had a Kilgen theatre organ. There was a small stage in front of the proscenium. The theatre was triplexed in the 1970’s, and divided into a 5-screen multiplex in 1982.

The Fortway Theatre was closed by Loews Cineplex in June of 2005, and in June 2007 it was converted into a supermarket. Like many theaters, the Fortway doubled as a concert venue; Chuck Berry appeared here in 1972 touring behind his only #1 hit: “My Ding-A-Ling.”

A ForgottenTour group stands in front of the Lief Ericson runestone monument in Lief Ericson Square in 2015. I ran over 150 live tours in the five boroughs between 1999 and 2019. The monument was erected in 1939: Crown Prince Olav, who ruled as the popular Olav V of Norway from 1957-1991, dedicated this replica of a Viking runestone in Tune, Norway on a 1939 visit. The stone stands on Leif Ericson Square just east of 4th Avenue. (Tune, southeast of Oslo near the Swedish border, was incorporated into the town of Sarpsborg in 1992.)

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The Federal Hall National Memorial, at 28 Wall Street where it meets Broad and Nassau Streets across the way from the New York Stock Exchange, is an imposing Greek Revival building resembling the Parthenon in Athens. It takes its name from the old Federal Hall which stood here from 1701 until 1812. That building was New York City’s first City Hall; it witnessed Peter Zenger’s trial and acquittal in 1735 for libel against the royal government that laid the groundwork for the principle of freedom of the press; representatives of nine colonies met here to protest the Stamp Act in 1765; five sessions of the Second Continental Congress met here between 1785 and 1789; and Federal Hall served as the United States Capital from 1789 to 1790. Congress met for the first time on March 4, 1789 and tabulated the ballots for George Washington’s unanimous election, and on April 30 of that year, George Washington took his oath as president just about where his imposing statue by John Quincy Adams Ward would be installed in 1883. Ward depicted Washington with his right hand outstretched, puzzling some, but he’s supposed to be putting it on an undepicted Bible.

Federal Hall gradually fell into disuse and disrepair, and it was sold and subsequently demolished in 1812. Thirty years later, in 1842, the United States Customs House was built on the spot, joining the likewise Greek Revival U.S. Assay Office that had been built from 1823-1826. The old Assay Office was demolished in 1915, but it’s still recalled by a sidewalk plaque, and its façade was dismantled and later reconstructed in the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue.

John Quincy Adams Ward’s monumental Washington sculpture was dedicated in 1883. There is a smaller bas relief of Washington in prayer at Valley Forge on the right side of the steps, dated 1907.

Most intrigiung from a Forgotten NY point of view about the Federal Hall National Monument is a plaque on the Nassau Street end depicting the state of Ohio. With all the history that has occurred here since 1701…why Ohio?

The answer lies in America’s desire for westward expansion that would be later distilled by a phrase coined in 1845 by Democratic Review editor John O’Sullivan, envisioning an America that would extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, to be its “manifest destiny.” Yet as early as 1786, some Americans were already making plans to extend our boundaries west. An organization called the Ohio Company of Associates, consisting of former revolutionary war officers and Massachusetts soldiers, was formed that year to plan the purchase and settlement of lands along the Ohio River, sending Massachusetts attorney and minister Manasseh Cutler to negotiate with Congress, which would soon pass the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 that divided the western lands into territories. Cutler and partner William Duer negotiated two contracts that led to the settlement of Ohio with the first settlement at Marietta in 1788.

George Washington had already surveyed lands in the Ohio River Valley by 1770 (he is depicted doing this in the 2026 movie, “Young Washington,” in which clashes with the French are dramatized). After the Revolutionary War, those loyal to the union were not paid with cash but with warrants for land in this so-called Northwest territory. The Northwest Ordinance ceded ownership of the territory to the U.S. Government and so became the template by which western lands were settled and later divided into states. Ohio itself would become a state in 1803 with its first capital at Chillicothe. The plaque at Federal Hall commemorates the Ohio Company.

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)

When you are walking (bicycling perhaps) on the Hudson River Greenway in the median between north and southbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway, opposite Fort Tryon Park. you come upon a colonnade of 20 Doric columns supporting a shady canopy. The view is of the Hudson River and New Jersey Palisades, and you can look south to see the George Washington Bridge. It was tabbed “Inspiration Point” when it was built in 1925 and designed by architect Gustave Steinacher. When it was built, it was in Riverside Park opposite Riverside Drive; when the Henry Hudson Parkway was built in 1937, a short laneway allowed cars to park there, but as the Parkway became an ever busier traffic conduit, lanes were added and Inspiration Point became relatively inaccessible. Today it can be attained by walking/bicycling the Hudson River Greenway north from 181st Street or south from Dyckman Street. After several years in disrepair, the Parks Department restored it in the 1990s.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Manhattan”, written in 1925, works as a handy dandy travelogue of the five boroughs. But…since it was written over 8 decades ago, some of the landmarks mentioned have modern-day listeners scratching their heads and reaching for their NYC guidebooks! Take the fourth verse….sing along if you want…

We’ll have Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten Island too,
We’ll try to cross Fifth Avenue.

As black as onyx
We’ll find the Bronix (sic) Park Express,
Our Flatbush flat, I guess,
Will be a great success,
More or less.

A short vacation
On Inspiration Point we’ll spend,
And in the station house we’ll end.

But Civic Virtue cannot destroy
The dreams of a girl and boy —
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy!

“Civic Virtue” meanwhile is a large statue of a naked youth astride a pair of writhing mermaids, produced by Frederick McMonnies in the 1920s and placed at Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike in Kew Gardens in 1941, after a stint at City Hall Park. After Queens politicians complained about his presence, he was packed off to Green-Wood Cemetery and polished to perfection, leaving the fountain structure in Queens behind in ruins. The statue support is now known as Women’s Plaza.

Fun fact: Sterling Holloway, a familiar face on 1960s TV and the original voice of Winnie The Pooh, introduced the song on Broadway in “Garrick Gaieties” as part of a duet.

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)

270 5th Street, just off 4th Avenue in Park Slope, is a handsome brick apartment building in stark contrast to the mostly-glass exteriors on the apartment buildings sprouting up on the Park Slope-Gowanus border for the last decade. It has a secret that only Elsie The Cow, wherever she is, knows about. One clue is that the building is called The Milk Factory, though that’s not in evidence on the exterior as far as I can see.

As we can see in this 1940 tax photo from the NYC Municipal Archives, this used to be a Borden’s milk processing plant. It boasted a painted ad on its 4th Avenue side, and a large neon sign around the corner in an area that had multiple elevated neon signs for products like Kentile and Eagle Clothes. All have vanished save Bruno Truck Rental (it’s out of business but the sign remains) at Hamilton and 2nd Avenues.

It’s quite old…Borden constructed it in 1884 to process milk from the udders of 5000 cows. There were once dozens of milk plants in Brooklyn and elsewhere around town and as Suzanne Spellen explains in Brownstoner, the business could get cutthroat. This was a milk plant for nearly 90 years, until it was redeveloped as a co-op. As for Elsie, her mosaic in Flushing Meadows has vanished too.

Me, I’m a Lactaid guy. and I’m not even lactose intolerant. Lactaid puts a small pinch of sugar in, and it’s a smooth drink.

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)

It’s no secret that both Brooklyn’s and Queens’ street numbering and naming systems are a bit of a mess, confusing out- of-towners and residents alike. Brooklyn has several sets of numbered streets: numbers with no prefixes, and North, South, East, West, Bay, Beach, Plumb, Flatlands, and Paerdegat numbered streets, and I’ve likely missed a few.

Then there are the lettered avenues that run east-west south of Prospect Park in Kensington, Flatbush, Midwood, Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, and later extended into Canarsie. When they were first mapped in the late 1800s and early 1900s they began with A and included all letters up to Z, and ran from west to east with only occasional interruptions. Then, the developers took over.

Just south of Prospect Park, Dean Alvord, T.B. Ackerson, Lewis Pounds and others purchased large tracts of farmland where streets had only had rudimentary beginnings, if any at all, and built large, state-of-the-art homes on large plots, while placing utility lines underground — a new development at that time. Wishing to impart a dignified air to the street names, Avenues A through D in Prospect Park South, Beverly Square East and West, Ditmas Park and other developments got British-sounding names: Albemarle, Beverley (or Beverly), Cortelyou, Clarendon (Avenue C got two “C” names) Ditmas, Dorchester, etc. A couple of these new names, such as Cortelyou and Ditmas, honor Dutch families that had settled the area beginning in the 17th Century.

Avenue F became Farragut Road east of Ocean Avenue, honoring David Farragut, the Civil War admiral. However, the piece of Avenue F between Dahill Road and Ocean Parkway was never renamed, and neither were the pieces of Avenues A and B in Remsen Village, Avenue C in Kensington, or Avenue D in East Flatbush and Canarsie. The entire length of Avenue E was named for a local 17th Century landowner, James Foster. After World War I, Avenue Q took the name of Teddy Roosevelt’s son, Quentin, who was killed in the war.

Avenue G/Glenwood Road has always been baffling. It runs through what is now the landmarked Fiske Terrace/Midwood Park neighborhood through East Flatbush and into Canarsie. I’m not entirely sure when the switch was made from Avenue G to Glenwood. In 1890, Avenue G was mapped through what was then the junction of three separate Kings County towns: New Utrecht, Gravesend and Flatlands. All became part of the borough of Brooklyn in 1898.

By 1910, the developments of Fiske Terrace and nearby Vanderveer Park were well under way and the streets had been cut through. Some maps from the 1910s show “Avenue G” through Fiske Terrace and then Glenwood Road from Flatbush Avenue east. This map has “Ave Glenwood Road” but I think they left the G out.

By 1929, a Belcher Hyde atlas from that time shows Glenwood Road throughout, with no Avenue G anywhere.

Interestingly Avenue H also runs through Fiske Terrace, but it has never acquired an “H” name — it has always been Avenue H.

At Ocean Avenue at Glenwood Road, a pair of battered gateposts that once marked Fiske Terrace still stand. The sculptor chiseled in the letters with very small serifs, so the “G” crossbar is barely there, so it looks like Avenue C, not G.

However, it’s the last reminder of Avenue G. Of course, there are some nearby signs that have been sun-bleached to white, and naturally, those are the last signs that will be replaced if they are replaced at all!

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)

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)

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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.

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)

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.

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)

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.

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)