The story of a forgotten New York blog that started with a lamppost

The hobby of Kevin Walsh, who has been fond of infrastructure and urban research since the age of five, has been reflected on the website and in a book called Forgotten NY. And it all started with the fact that in the Bay Ridge area, old cast-iron lampposts were replaced by modern ones, the newspaper writes. AM New York.

Blog Forgotten NYLaunched by 20 years ago, it was one of the first to talk about the rapidly disappearing objects of old New York - street signs, historic buildings, brands and lampposts.

He also offers walking tours around the city with a study of its hidden gems.

About blogger childhood

Today is Walsh 62 of the year. His childhood passed in Brooklyn, where the blogger’s interest in infrastructure began.

“It started between 1959 and 1964, when everything across the street across from his house was demolished to build the Govan Expressway that led to the bridge,” Walsh said. - My father, like me, was an avid photographer. He took many pictures of the construction of the bridge. We were on the first bus that crossed that bridge in November 1964. "

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Walsh and his father studied New York for a long time, until the metropolis became truly fashionable.

“I've always been fascinated by mailboxes, lights, lampposts, old advertisements and more,” he added.

website Development

Walsh managed to truly reveal his potential in the late 1990s, when the Internet became popular. Then people could set aside half an hour and read something. It was the era of blogs and the Internet in the Wild West, a kind of gold rush among publishers when they subscribed to bloggers, one of whom was Walsh.

He added that he immediately received a good response from visitors, "because it was one of the few sites that did such things."

Today, Walsh works in the Columbus Circle area.

“When I first started going to Williamsburg at the dawn of Forgotten New York, it was like a ghost town. Now it's like Coney Island, everything is busy here, ”Walsh recalls.

Popular tours

According to him, the most popular was a tour dedicated to relics of the World Exhibition, which was held in 2014 year.

There was also a tour in Inwood, which brought together 35 people, and Gravesend, which attracted 40 people.

At the same time, the tour around the Govanus Canal, which, according to Walsh, was most likely to become popular, united only 14 people.

Speaking about plans for the future, Walsh shared that he would like to release another book and an application that will unite all these tours. However, he said, "these things are expensive." Among the plans of the blogger is to continue to shoot on camera and do what he is doing now.