FORGOTTEN-NY

New York is such a busy city that most of the people don’t pay attention to their community, and this is the main purpose of FORGOTTEN-NY.COM, to show all the places that sometimes we don’t even notice when we walk by or that we do not know existed. Most of these places are abandoned, falling apart or disappearing, but at one time they were an important part of the city and the community. All of the articles include photos of the buildings and details of them so we can appreciate and realize what the community is losing. We can also do something to recuperate those buildings or neighborhoods and bring them back to play an important role in people’s lives as once they did. Also take advantage of the diversity of culture that our city has.
For example, there is an article called “Yorktown” by Eine Kleines Deutschland. As the title says, it talks about this German neighborhood named Yorktown, located from about East 78th to 90th between 3rd Avenue and the East River, and the history of it. Around 1930 Irish, German and Easter European immigrants began to move to this area because there were more job and housing opportunities and there were a lot of massive transportation allowing them to move easily. And by the mid-20th century it became the largest neighborhood of German immigrants. There were German stores, restaurants, bookstores, and other facilities, making Germans feel like they were in their own country. They could freely celebrate their traditions and culture, because they all had that in common. But since 1960s this place became to deteriorate and many of these stores disappeared, at the same time their culture and traditions did. These closures were caused by the gentrification of the neighborhood which made many businesses to close because people could not afford to keep them up. Today, there still are some of these businesses that try to keep alive their culture. They still serve their traditional food; sell their decorations and candies and other of their traditional objects. Examples like this one make us realize how we can lose an entire neighborhood without even realizing it.