This is intended to give some direction to the places no more fan page project and make a couple announcements. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t love looking at old photos and discussing their history. I think of them as a window into our past. Whether you love old department stores like Klein’s stores, old amusement parks like Kiddy City, or old wooden lamp posts on parkways, these pages should be for you. We love the history, and we delve into a lot of related topics.

There is Much More Is Still To Be Found
There’s loads more photo images out there still waiting to be found, and we have only tipped the iceberg of what’s to be seen. There are newspaper pages, tax archives, private collections, and much more lying in wait. Just look at the incredible parkway photos posted to the fan page by Steven Waldman. We are now getting a look at Long Island Parkways past as they have never seen before. A look at the videos posted by Robert Martens shows us roads, buildings, and cars from a bygone era.

More Members To Come
There are no doubt more people out there who would love to discover the history of our pages. Everyone loves old pictures, everyone loves discussing them, so hopefully we can get the word out to them. While the growth has been continuous and steady, I think it can be much greater. The more people who join, the more photos we will find, as the individual contributor is one of the greatest sources of material we have. Who knows what photos the next new member might bring.

Great Contributors, New Friends
Each person who contributes seems to have their own specialty, so as a group, we have become a pretty strong bunch. I am very lucky to have met online the many people I have thanks to the group and page.

Try To Credit Wherever Possible

Please try to make an effort to credit the original contributor or taker of the photo. Whoever originally took or found that photo probably put some effort into it, we should give that work some credit.

Keep It Civil
Just about any discussion is welcome, but personal attacks are out. Factual corrections are encouraged, and while current political commentary is allowed, it is not encouraged. This is intended to be a place to escape a little bit. One advantage here is that people of any political ideology can find common ground about the photos and the history.

Don’t Worry About Definitions
The goal is to share things about history and what they tell us. If a photo is of something not in New York, or not a place, or is still standing, it is still fine to post. The title is a general guide post to the content and material.

A New Page
Old Images of New York 
Presenting an old photo page that doesn’t suggest things on it are gone. This way the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building photos can seem to fit in better, again, open definition, not strict guidelines. I know I’m walking a fine line with the two pages, but the goal is to bring as many people in and keep the photos coming, hopefully a second page will help facilitate that. I’ve already got a few hundred photos up there now for you to look at.

Please Note
Feel free to post photos in either page, I just thought we should have a more New York oriented photo fan page in addition to places no more. Please join the new page and stay on board at the places no more page as well.

Some of The Places No More Pages

Long Island and NYC Places No More Fan Page
Fan page started in 2011, now with 2,000 plus members

Long Island And NY Area Places That Are No More Group
New Facebook Group with 400+ members.

Things That Are No More Group
Old technology, toys, etc.

Photo Americana
More General photography and history ( launched by Richard Woitowiz).

Old Places No More Group – Over 8,500 Members
The group that started it all, but is being archived and has not been upgraded by facebook.

Old Images of New York
A new group intended for old photos of our area.

 Rockaway Playland  1902-1985
Lasting into the 1980’s, Playland was still hanging on after many other local amusement centers had long since disappeared. Still hanging on after the Rockaways themselves had stopped being as a resort area. Much of the demise of the park and the town can be pinned on our old friend Robert Moses.

Moses was directly responsible for taking away a chunk of the park for his 1930’s ill fated Shore Front Parkway project (Moses really wanted a parkway to run all the way from the Rockaways to Montauk Point, this was to be the Rockaway section of it). His effect on the taking out the rest of the park was more indirect but just as effective. It started in 1929 with Jones Beach, which took beach travelers away from Beach Channel Drive and over to Ocean Parkway. Moses’s slum clearance program in the 1950’s uprooted the poor from the inner city and brought them to the Rockaways. Their presence removed any attraction for the area as a resort. By the time Playland was sold to housing interests in 1985 the area had few summer visitors. It hung on in its last years as an amusement attraction alone.

Rockaway Playland Photos

 RKO Keiths Movie Theater 1928-1983?
Probably the most palacial theater ever in Queens, it was majestic and beautiful. It was sold in 1983 to a developer who was arrested shortly after making illegal changes to the property. The Keith’s was open for 45 years as a great movie house, but has stood for another 28 years as an unused and sad reminder of what it once was. In that time it has neither been replaced or restored.

The New Save The RKO Keith’s Facebook Group

 A Great Flickr Photo Set

The Keiths, looking west on Northern Blvd, October 18, 1936 (NYPL)

 Forest Hills Stadium and Long Island Arena 1923-?
The US Tennis Open was played here once a year until 1978. As late as the mid 1980’s the stadium seemed to be doing well, it had a tournament of its own and other events to host, but it was not to last, the sponsors moved away and the tournament was no more. After one last attempt at concerts in the 1990’s, the stadium has since stood vacant. It now faces a tenuous future, with developers eyeing the place for their housing plans.

Rego Forest Preservation Council Page on the Stadium

September 2010 NYT Article

Queensborough, Page 2, July 1932, Courtesy of Queens Chamber of Commerce and Michael Pearlman

The Top 20 Places, numbers 20-16 can be found here

OK, here it is, the “Places That Are No More” Top 20 Places list. I’m basing this on several different factors including how many people went to the place, how important it was to those who went there, and if it offered something that could not be replaced.  Thanks for viewing and I hope you enjoy the list.

The Oak Beach Inn, 1969-1999 

Young people went to the OBI to party, politicians went out of their way to shut it down. Owner Robert Matheson is remembered for his feuds with Nassau County, but he was also a brilliant club promoter. He started out in the 60’s renting existing clubs and within a few years had four of his own. It was at the OBI that the Long Island Iced Tea originated. Local leaders probably think they triumphed in getting the place shut down, but we are now without one of the most festive clubs we ever had.

* Scandal at the OBI, The Matheson Inspired Book 

WLIR Radio, 1970-2004, and Malibu Night Club, 1979-1996
Malibu was the club everyone danced to, and WLIR was the station everyone played … new music. Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, pick your favorite. If you really wanted to be cool, this was the station to listen to, with the volume on high. Malibu was shut down when the town of Oyster Bay refused to renew the clubs lease in 1996.

* * WLIR Tribute Page

The Red Apple Rest, 1931-2006
The Red Apple Rest has been closed for five years now, and it is not likely to reopen. The volume it once thrived on heading to and from Catskill hotels is gone a lot longer than five years. Ironically, traffic has recently picked up on that stretch of road, due to the popularity of the Woodbury Commons outlet stores just north of it, but it is probably too late to resurrect The Rest.

* Recent Blog entry on the Red Apple Rest

* The Catskills Institute

Worlds Fair, Flushing Meadow NY, 1939-1940

This is a photo from the fair’s controversial World of Tomorrow by GM, in which the car and bus seem to be the only methods of transportation still around. In the real world of 1939, a subway spur was built for the fair, as well as bridges and parkways, but only the bridges and parkways seem to still be around.

There are plenty of places on the internet to view 1939 fair photos. The above shot is taken from  here;  other photo links, Television of the Worlds Fair , New York Times, New York Public Library.

Broadway’s West Side, Downtown Hicksville, Demolished 1967
The buildings on the right side of the street in the photo below were once part of a thriving downtown, and are now gone. They were intentionally destroyed by a New York State agency that decided a four lane highway was more important than a  flourishing downtown. The trade-off has not turned out well for the town, and I think the ensuing years have only borne that out.

* 1989 NY Times Article on Downtown Hicksville which mentions problems caused by the widening.

… coming soon … more Top 20

1954 Phillip Morris
There are a lot of now ironic looking cigarette ads out there. I thought this one was interesting because it claims to use scientific technology to protect you from harsh irritants.

–
Fokker Aircraft, Circa 1930’s
The name sounds like something from Meet The Parents, but actually it was an aircraft company that was a  force in the industry in the first half of the 20th century.

–
Hoebich Studebaker, 1940’s
I couldn’t find much besides this postcard. I don’t know if anyone ever joked about the name during its time.

Asbestos, early 1930’s
It’s easy for us to see the irony on this one, but at the time, nobody had any reason not to think it was a great building product, and as a facebook group member said, if you still have it anywhere in your house, and it’s not exposed, it is should still be ok.

If you want more of these, we ran another series a little while back here.

It’s hard to miss the irony of the fact that two Robert Moses gems are now in various states of disrepair themselves. Two relics from the master builder, the man often portrayed as destroying the urban landscape, now face a destruction of their own. Two creations from his empire are starting to look dangerously close to ruins themselves.

These pieces are treasures to the New York City area and should not be allowed to go so terribly astray from what they once were. When Jones Beach opened 1929 it offered the first real chance for the population of a city to go to the beach and escape the heat of the city. It was revolutionary in its approach to what a park could do. Orchard Beach completed in 1936 was just as beautiful in its own right, and within New York City itself.

Orchard Beach, south locker entrance today

Now, more than 70 years after they were built, today’s New York Times paints a picture in The Bronx of a beach that barely resembles the one built in 1938. I was there recently and its not hard to see the signs of a lost past. The estimated cost of full restoration is $50 Million, and the ghosts of outmoded design a formal restaurant; and laundry for rental towels are places remain closed up for good. The Times piece states than a circle for food trucks, some open-air showers and a few bathrooms would suffice. The $50 million does not seem likely to come.

While in not nearly as bad shape as Orchard Beach, Jones Beach is having troubles of its own, Alexandra Parsons Wolfe, Director of Preservation Services at Society for Long Island Antiquities understates the urgency in her report when she says in  “better care” needs to be paid to Jones Beach’s defining features. A look at the pitch and putt area below shows that it doesn’t seem to be getting any care at all. Her report is 50 pages long and goes on to show troubling page after page.

Jones Beach Pitch and Putt Then and Now

Historians have given much attention in recent years with respect to the legacy of Robert Moses, books have been written arguments made, cases presented. Well here are are two real pieces of Robert Moses legacy which need a restoration in a much more physical sense. Improvements would make our visits to these beaches a much more positive experience. These are places many of us visited hundreds of times in our youth, and we have great memories of those visits, the next generation should be allowed to have its share of the same.

Jones Beach Preservation Society

City Island Historical Society – An illustrated talk by Deborah Wye is scheduled here on Sunday September 25 at 2:00 PM.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was a significant one. With ‘that day’ still fresh in our minds, yet at the same time thirty six hundred or so days ago, we now have a chance to look at the time since 9/11 with enough perspective to have some sense of how things are playing out.

For many years the lack of progress at the 9/11 site was a source of frustration. What did it say about us that we couldn’t rebuild something there? Now, we can now look to a nearly completed new single World Trade Center Tower as a sign of achievement. The building is in an entirely new entity of its own. It really remains to be seen if New Yorkers will come to embrace the new tower the way they once did the twin towers, but it is definitely something significant that has been built to replace what once was.

It was of great importance to see the twin fountains memorial on the World Trade Center site. This honors the 2753 or so lives that were lost on 9/11, and it was special to see Presidents Obama and Bush there together to help dedicate the site, making it a non partisan show of unity for the country. To have a physically completed monument, on the sites of both the original twin towers, as well as in Shanksville PA, is an important representation of both our desire to pay homage to the lives that were lost and our ability to build something to represent them.

The fact that this September 11th came on a Sunday and not a weekday seemed to give the day added importance. There have been some 911 anniversaries in years past that have gotten less notice, because they fell on weekdays. We had more time to reflect and give this one its just due. More of us could watch the ceremonies at the World Trade Center site. I am concerned that future  9/11’s, the ones that fall on weekdays, will not get the attention they should.

With that in mind I believe the date which now shapes our consciousness more than any other should be made a national holiday. On Sunday we collectively shared the moments of silence of when the planes hit, the buildings collapsed, and of the names of those who perished. It would mean a little more to us, if we could stay home to honor them. One thing more clear now than before is how important this day is. I think a national holiday is something that should be considered as we look forward to future remembrances.

The fact that there has been no major terrorist attack on our soil in these ten years is a monument to 911 in and of itself. We refer to this era as post 9/11, but the truth is the terrorist environment changed long before that date.  The World Trade Center was first bombed in 1993, the USS embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed in 1998, the Cole in 2000.  911 wasn’t the day the world changed, it was the day we became aware of it. All too often in the past we would underestimate the threats, we have not made that mistake since.

One source of strife for the day came from Major League Baseball who did not allow the New York Mets to wear first responder hats. Joe Torre speaking on the part of major league baseball said that it wouldn’t be consistent with what other major league baseball teams wore for the day. All I can say to the Mets and Torre is, you now have about 360 days before the next 911 to work this out and come up with something better. Figure it out and don’t let this happen again, we all are supposed to be on the same team.

Overall the ceremonies before the games played on 911 were well put together and very moving. In general it can be said that as a nation we came together this year, just as we did ten years ago. There have been many issues upon which we have not all agreed, but protecting our country and honoring 911 has not been one of them. If the loss of life ten years ago can be said to have stood for something, I think we did a pretty good job of showing it on 9/11/11.

Posting historic photos and memorabilia on the internet is somewhat of a paradox. The use of modern technology to discuss old times is in contrast. Facebook, blogging, posting photos, all new. The Polo Grounds, Motor Parkway, the RKO Keiths, all old. We are in effect using all that is modern to get a better grip on all that is old.

LIE, July 13, 1977, during NYC Blackout

A comment that I often see posted about an old photos is, “times were simpler then.” I usually laugh when I see it. I cough it up to human nature, and just move on. We all long for simpler times. But is it true? Were the olden times really more simplistic than they are now? It is a notion to which who’s truth I have always doubted.

I have always felt that it’s just human nature to think of older times as simpler times. Sure, when we look at an old photo things appear as if they were simpler, but were they really? Billy Joel once said that the good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow aint as bad as it seems. Within a few years we may think of today and all its problems as ‘the good old days’ and feel the same way tomorrow about today as we do today about yesterday.

The past was never simple, we definitely do tend to look at it simplistically. Looking back we have certainly had our problems, we have had our recessions, depressions, world wars, cold wars, urban crises, oil crises, noreasters, hurricanes, brown outs, black outs, none simple. But all that said, was the past nevertheless simpler in at least some way?

Perhaps yes. Today we live in a world where we are accustomed to having high speed computers with high internet. Both my business and my past time reside on the internet, so I spend a lot of time on my computer, and its hard to pull me away. There is always one more thing I want to do or need to take care of. So when the power went out this week after Hurricane Irene rumbled through I found myself in an unfamiliar place, offline.

Well, I was really only mostly offline, I still have a Juno dial up account which I use in emergencies, but compared to high speed internet it’s the dark ages. I can only do one thing at a time and it took a long time to do it. I have to concentrate on each task, wait for each screen to load, and move along at a snails pace. I got a lot less done, but the truth was, it was simpler. I did not have to think about the ten windows I had open on my computer. I did not have to think about the five tabs I had open on my browser, or the three pictures I wanted to post, the answer was simple, I could do none of those.

The Back of an old Modem, (recycledgoods.com )

Thanks to high speed internet and high speed computers, it feels like we can do a lot more, and the perception is sometimes that we can do whatever we want. Perhaps for the first time in history the technology can go faster than our brains can. The computer is here, just waiting for us to do something with it, we just have to figure out what it is. One problem is we still can only do one thing at a time. Maybe if we slow down we can actually accomplish more, and maybe, it would be a little simpler.

It looks like a category one hurricane may be heading into the heart of New York City. As a person who spends a lot of time looking at old pictures, the only thing I can predict is that a few years from now we will probably be looking at photos of Irene when the next one is coming.

Hurricane Belle damage, Freeport, 1976

As a person in my 40’s who grew up on Long Island, I have a few hurricane memories of my own. In 1976 I was nine, and we were warned Hurricane Belle was coming. It was supposed to be bad (I always thought it was spelled Bell, had more of a ring to it that way). Anyway, my parents battened down the hatches, I helped, and in a way it was all very exciting, something unusual was going to happen. But Belle turned east at the last minute and in Queens all we got was a big rain and a small breeze. For New York City  the much bigger weather events of the next couple of years were three huge snowstorms that hit in ’77 and ’78. It would have been nice if Belle could have lived up (just) a little closer to expectations. For a while a lot of us in Queens thought hurricanes were just a lot of hype.

My next hurricane experience was in 1985 as a college student at Stony Brook University. Gloria was more than hype. I remember the wind and the rain. I liked to think that the eye had passed right through campus, but looking it up it appears it passed through Commack to our west.  On the campus itself the damage didn’t seem devastating, but it was a different story in the surrounding towns. I saw a lot of trees down and there was no power anywhere.

Hurricane Gloria damage, Fire Island, 1985

As a person with extremely limited weather knowledge, it looks like a hurricane with roughly the strength of Gloria’s is going to hit us. Winds were approxamately 80 miles an hour when Gloria made landfall between Long Beach and Fire Island, they are predicted to be about the same for Irene. The big difference is Irene’s path looks to be more to the west. This will do some serious damage, but it will probably not be completely devastating.

More Hurricane Links

Current CBS Local Forecast

Hurricane Precautions from About.com

Hurricane Tracking Site From Stormpulse

NYC Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder

History of Long Island Hurricanes

Long Island Hurricane Summary

And Wrightsville Beach NC Precautions (maybe they know what they are doing better in NC when it comes to hurricanes)

Before the World Trade Center, 1950. The blue square became the World Trade Center

When you think of the southern part of Manhattan over by the Hudson River you probably think of the World Trade Center. But for most of the 20th century, it was known for something quite different; it was the place to buy radio electronics. Before the World Trade Center was built, this area was 12 small city blocks, and from 1921 into the 1960’s, it was filled with small store after small store selling radios. It was known to most people as Radio Row, and it contained the largest collection of electronic stores in the country.

Browing Radio Row (sonicmemorial.org)

Like the internet, radio was a great advancement that allowed large numbers of people to communicate at the same time, and like the internet, it had a huge growth boom. The first radio stations were launched around 1919 and 1920, people wanted to listen to them, but didn’t know where they could find radios. That’s when Harry Schneck opened his ‘City Radio’ store at 63 Cortlandt Street, (where Tower Two would one day stand). Word got around quickly about his radios, and he began selling them in droves.  The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that 100,000 radios were sold in 1922 and that it was ten times that in two years. Many of those radios were sold at Radio Row. In later years, as electronic technology advanced, so did the Radio Row offerings, it remained the place to be.

Radio Row, Cortlandt and Washington Streets, 1935

The area had a few restaurants, furniture stores, florists, and even a clothing shop called Merns, run by Seymour Merns, who would later become more well known to us as Sy Syms. But the reason people came to lower Manhattan was to get radio equipment.

“Find what you want, buy it and get out of my store, there are other people waiting” was how one shopper remembered the buying atmosphere. According to the Quarter Century Wireless Association, storefronts were crammed with radio equipment. There were televisions, tape players, short wave radios, tuning fork oscillators, stopwatches, alarm clocks, televisions, washing machines, dryers, and anything else you could dream up. There were boxes of raw materials lying around in case you wanted to make a creation of your own.

What One World Trade Center Looked Like Before 1973

Before One World Trade Cener, 1933

The picture on the right is of Dey Street between West and Washington Streets. This is right in the where the north tower of the World Trade Center would stand. The photo is looking northeast (see map in the lower right hand corner).

The beginning of the end for Radio Row came when Chase Manhattan bank chairman David Rockefeller moved to create a center of trade in lower Manhattan. At first he looked at the east side, near the Fulton Fish Market, but his plans quickly moved west. The area here could more easily be acquired and built to tie in with the many rail lines nearby. This included the Port Authority Trans Hudson (or PATH) line which would go right to the center. David’s brother, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller helped use the power of eminent domain to take over the area, and 12 city blocks were swallowed up into one single World Trade Center superblock. Radio Row and its businesses put up a valiant protest to stop the project, led by radio shop owner Oscar Nadel. Nadel pursued every legal avenue and organized regular protests to get media attention. He claimed that the city was making it impossible for the small businessman to succeed within its boundaries. By 1966, most of the area had been cleared for the future World Trade Center.

One World Trade Center, The Tower, 1973 – 2001 

One World Trade Center, 1971

Although the building began in 1967 and the towers were deemed completed in 1973, the construction of the World Trade Center never really ended. The Windows on the World restaurant was added at the top of Tower One in 1976. The surrounding buildings of the World Trade Center block–World Trade Centers 3,4, 5, 6, and nearby 7–were added in the 70’s and 80’s. The World Financial Center, a huge complex to the west, was added in the late 80’s and 90’s. The area did in many ways truly grow into being the center of world trade. Financial firms such as Marsh and McLennan, Cantor Fitzgerald, and Bank of America occupied multiple floors in Tower One by the end of the century. Major financial firms and exchanges moved into the many of the new area buildings.

When you look at it in photos, Tower One (or the north tower) can be distinguished from Tower Two (or the south tower) by the 360 foot antenna which stood on its roof. You can use the positioning of the two buildings  to tell where the shot was taken from. If Tower One is behind Tower Two, the shot was taken from the south. If tower one appears closer, the shot is from the north. If Tower One is to the left of Tower Two (as in the above photo) the shot was taken from west, and if its to the right the shot was taken from the east. That antenna was used to broadcast every television station in New York City, as well as most of its radio stations. Although it’s pretty much impossible to tell, Tower One was six feet taller than Tower Two.

Tower One was at the heart of the World Trade Center bustle of traffic. It was close to the World Financial Center and unlike Tower Two, its basement was an open walkway. Only its elevators were blocked off by security. Tens of thousands of people walked right through Tower One every day.

At first many New Yorkers didn’t like the way the Towers looked–they didn’t seem to fit in with the skyline, some thought they looked boring, others too gaudy. But over the years, the city seemed to warm to them. As nearby buildings went up it seemed to fill them in, and the towers started to look like they were meant to be there.

When The Windows of The World Restaurant opened in ’76 it marked the first time people could really embrace the towers. Between the fine dining there, and the observation deck, and open 110th floor at Tower Two, the buildings offered the best, most spacious most luxurious view in the city.

While nothing can be compared to the 2,751 lives that were tragically lost at the World Trade Center September 11th, 2001, the damage to buildings and infrastructure was enormous. Besides the two towers, at least another ten area buildings had to either be destroyed, condemned, or simply collapsed from the weight of the towers falling on them. Even now, ten years after 911, just as the personal wounds remain, so do the physical ones. The work of rebuilding is far from complete. A new single World Trade Center Tower One is in the process of going up, with other World Trade Center buildings to follow.

One World Trade Center, What Will Be

One World Trade Center, 2013

The new World Trade Center One (also referred to as the Freedom Tower) will be located a little north of where the old Tower One stood. This is because the original footprints of both  towers are sacred ground forever to be memorialized by two new waterfall monuments that will stand where the buildings once did. These are to be initially dedicated on September 11, 2011, so we should be seeing them in use for the first time in a few days. A picture of the new North Tower Waterfall Monument is below.

Nobody would argue the construction of these buildings has been slow, but it does appear progress is being made. The lower Manhattan construction command center currently projects a completion date for the new Tower One of November 2013.

The base of the Freedom Tower will be the same dimensions as the original towers. The observation deck will be at 1,362 feet: the height of the tower, and the roof will be at 1,368 feet: the height of the original Tower One.

I was hoping to do a story on all the buildings in the vicinity but I found this to be enough of a task. I’ll try to get to a look at other area buildings later. 

One World Trade Center Monument, to be dedicated 9/11/11

More Resources

Places No More Fan Page WTC Album

Audio Download Radio Row NPR piece

Radio Row piece by Syd Steinhardt

A look At Arrow Electronics on Radio Row 

My look back at 3 World Trade Center

My look back at 4,5,and 6 WTC

Current WTC construction map

NY Places No More was was named a finalist in the CBS New Yorks Most Valuable Blogger Awards of 2011! The nomination is in the local affairs category. Is it possible that this blog is doing something correct, something right, maybe even something worthwhile? Hold that thought. Whether or not it it is, it’s still very nice to get positive recognition and know that people like what they are seeing . The places no more fan page has been gaining about fifty fans a week for a few months now, THANK YOU! for helping to spreading the word, it is bringing  a lot of new people in.

The other blogs nominated in the same category as Places No More are truly super blogs. They are well organized, well written, and with great topics. I would be very surprised if we beat them in the voting, and I consider it an honor just to be listed next to them.  Nevertheless, we  still might as well try to go out and win,

So here is the plan …

Please vote for  NY Places No More at the CBS local site when you can. You can do it once a day, so vote, daily, or when you remember. The voting ends September 9th. One thing this blog has going for it, it has gotten a lot of help and support from a lot of people, so please keep it coming,.

Award
The prize for winning best blog is a $50 Amazon gift card. With that card, I declare my intention to use it to buy the followng books which should be required reading:

Fresh Meadows, Images of America    $14.95 At Amazon.com (By Fred Cantor and Debra L Davidson)

Forgotten NY       $14.99 at amazon.com (By Kevin Walsh)

Queens Then and Now   $16.32 at amazon.com (By Jason D Antos)

New York Rises The Photography of Bridges By Eugene De Silignac     $26.58 at Amazon.com

Well, now I am out of money. But this is just the beginning of an essential reading list for the New York history student. If you have a book you would like to add to the list, please do mention it in a comment.

The Nominees

What We Have To Offer
When I first started this, at the suggestion of successful blogger and my brother Scott Berkun, the blog was to be a simple catalog listing, old movie theaters, shopping centers, bowling alleys amusement parks, and other area favorites. I would list out pages of these, add pictures where I could, and that was to be it. All in all a nice concept, but a little bit narrow minded.

Luckily, as people found me online, things progressed. We began to reinterpret what we were doing. The purpose of the blog grew, the meaning changed. I’m not going to go too far into detail about it because my last entry touched on a lot of these same topics. Suffice it to say the blog still does look back at the past but often with the intent of finding some meaning from what we see back there. Whether it is a look back at Penn Station or Alley Pond Park, we can see what it means to lose some of our treasures from the past, and try to preserve the ones we still have. So yes, I do think we are doing something worthwhile!