longgone

T FORGOTTEN NY, we rarely recycle photos, and as a result, we have hundreds of different photos now posted. But, there comes a time when you have to break the rules. Shooting new pictures for the contents of this page is impossible.

We're going to take a look at some of the items that have vanished...or at least vanished from view...since Forgotten NY went online in March 1999. Our first stop is in sleepy College Point, Queens...

A corner tavern flourished at 14th Road and 119th Street in College Point for over 125 years, known first at Witzel's, then Eifel's then as Flessels, before it closed for good in 1998. The site is now nondescript brick residential housing.

The house that Moe built. Frame houses in Bath Beach built by The Three Stooges...yes, the Three Stooges...were torn down shortly after they were noted in FNY in April 2003.

Gage & Tollner on Brooklyn's Fulton Street devolved into a TGI Friday's after nearly 120 years in business in April 2004.

A bank building in East New York, Brooklyn, denoting its old 26th Ward, was demolished two years after FNY was there in June 1999.

It didn't take long for the wrecking ball to pay a visit to this over-100 year old house in South Greenfield, Brooklyn, after we paid a visit in June 2002.

Harry Bennett's house, dating to the mid-1800s, was bulldozed in 2003, 3 years after appearing on our Gravesend page.

Bay 54th Street, and all the houses along it in Brooklyn's White Sands, are now a Home Depot.

This house, and its eccentric owner, are now gone from 12th Street in Astoria, Queens, with ugly tract housing as a replacement.

Little Miss Liberty was removed from her West 64th Street promontory in 2002.

The brick-paved Honeywell Street Bridge, and its collection of odd lampposts including a rare bishop's crook wall bracket, were replaced by a state-of-the-art, architecturally boring overpass over the Sunnyside Yards in Queens in 2002.

The Abandoned Luncheonette in Ozone Park, Queens, is now the demolished luncheonette.

Jackson Heights' Deerhead Diner was first "blown up" real good for an episode of Third Watch, then was converted to a dry cleaner.

River Diner, on 11th Avenue and West 37th Street near the Javits Center, closed its door in late 2003.

Recent years have seen the end of days for several of NYC's pole-mounted mailboxes. From l. to r., mailboxes on Union Turnpike, Queens, West 254th Street in Riverdale, Bronx, and Fingerboard Road, Staten Island, have all been replaced by boxy sidewalk models.


	The Department of Transportation likes "Corvington" long-armed boulevard cast iron poles...but not the older ones. They're installing new versions all over town, but allowing the classic ones, like these from (clockwise) Rockaway Blvd. in Laurelton, Mosholu Avenue in the Bronx, Dyker Park in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and Little West 12th Street in Meatpacking District, Manhattan, to rust and deteriorate; they all had to be discarded.



	One of the last remaining double mastarm/ incandescent light combinations, on the Brooklyn-Queens border at Eldert Lane and 95th Avenue, was removed shortly after this picture was taken in the spring of 1999.
The Woodie poles at the Clearview Golf Course in Queens disappeared in 2000.		The old-style stoplight at Crocheron Avenue and 171st Street in Auburndale, Queens hung in there until 2003.

The formerly woebegone Stillwell Avenue BMT terminal in Coney Island, with its managerie of ancient signage, has been torn down and is being replaced with a state of the art depot; hopefully, some of the old signage will find its way to the Transit Museum or back into the new station.

Even though the K train last ran in 1988, it was still advertised on 8th Avenue and 15th Street until 2002. There never was a direct connection to the NY Central (now Metro North) at the IRT 149th Street station, but a stop was a few blocks away. This sign has now been tiled over.

One of the larger Fletcher's Castoria painted ads, on Market Street south of East Broadway in Chinatown, was whitewashed in 2004; Joseph A. Keal's 1878 "Carriage Manufactory" sign in Duffy Square (Broadway and West 47th Street) was briefly uncovered in 1998-1999.

A dream deferred. Bob Diamond's Brooklyn Historic Railway Association restored several trolley cars and installed trackage in Red Hook...until the Department of Transporation, and his landlord, spoiled the party. We shot this scene in early 2000, but it's all gone now.

Though there's still a small stretch of trackage remaining of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit trolley line to North Beach (now the site of LaGuardia Airport) along old Bowery Bay (now Jackson Mill) Road a block away, this stretch, near 97th Street, is now completely covered by new housing.

The DOT relentlessly and ruthlessly replaces nonstandard signage; sure enough, these color-coded leftovers from the 1960s were soon taken down after this photo was taken in July 2000.

For many of NYC's items of interest, their existence is ephemeral; that's why there will always be...

Forgotten-NY.com

Your webmaster compiled these photos between 1998 and 2004 and wrote the page April 23, 2004.

erpietri@earthlink.net