Results tagged “abandoned”

Remember that free building in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens? Unsurprisingly, the whole thing was a prank. Reportedly a local resident was fed up with the rundown building (located at 205 Parkside Avenue) and decided to put up a sign and a Craigslist ad advertising it for free. The prankster told the Daily News: "We want to see something positive happening with the building [not just a] festering rathole on what could be a lively thriving commercial strip."

First the Upper East Siders were ranting about sidewalk congestion, and now the Upper West Side is joining in on the complaint chorus. A writer for West Side Spirit has a bone to pick with enclosed sidewalk cafés; because what else are you going to get worked up about these days? La la la, there are really no other problems except dining establishments jutting out on to public property. Really, nothing.

A worker for a Queens daycare center was a little daycareless Friday when she left a four-year-old girl behind on a 42nd Street subway platform. Jailyn Howard and her twin sister were part of a group of children on a field trip to Manhattan, supervised by a lone employee of the Whitney Foundation, a daycare center run out of a house in Jamaica, Queens. According to one account, the worker, Roxanne Jack, was distracted by a fight between two of the children while herding them on board. But Jailyn's cousin, who was also on the field trip, tells CBS2 that Jack was preoccupied and rushing: "She was telling us to hurry up, hurry up. Because she has to be somewhere... All of a sudden she knows Jailyn is missing and she started just panicking." Fortunately, Jack and the kids got off at the next stop and came back to 42nd Street to find Jailyn in the care of police. CBS2 reports that the Whitney Foundation does not seem to be a licensed daycare center and "if that is the case," mom Janel Howard says her kids won't return there. Because it's okay to be negligent as long as you have a license!

     

Far Rockaway has gotten a Mad Max treatment over the years. Nate Kensinger has some amazing shots of the eastern edge of Queens, which "was once a flourishing summer community. Today, its landscape is like the half-abandoned city of Buffalo, with vast empty lots and a large number of abandoned homes. In 2008, according to the NY Times, the Far Rockaway's city council representative called his district 'ground zero' of the subprime mortgage crisis." It's hard to picture the beach bungalows before they were boarded up, in their old time glory when the area was dubbed The New Hamptons. Maybe the Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association can bring them back to life.

       

Our very own Jake Dobkin braved some disintegrating buildings in Harlem this past weekend. Both the ballroom (in the first photo) and the school (shown in all other photos) are located in Central Harlem about 10 blocks apart from each other, and are clearly abandoned now. He notes of the former: "This building looked like it had been empty for twenty years. Trees were growing out of the floors and poking out of dozens of holes in the roof. All the windows were gone, and the floors that weren't covered with snow were thick with dust and the skeletons of dead pigeons. There wasn't any evidence of human habitation-- no footprints, homeless encampments, or graffiti."

     

What's more intriguing than an abandoned island with a rotting castle sitting just north of New York City? Bannerman's Island sits in the Hudson, just about 50 miles north of here, and American Heritage explains "this island fortress was once the private arsenal of the world's largest arms dealer," Frank "Francis" Bannerman.

Why would a triplex in the West Village, measuring about 3360 sq ft, go abandoned for decades? More importantly, what's inside? amNY takes a look at the mystery of 43 MacDougal Street, which has had locals rumor-mongering about it for ages.

"I heard that it used to be a hangout for the mafia, and there was a police shootout there, and they had to close it for evidence," said Tal Kon, 22, who has lived on the picturesque block for a year.

Continue reading "43 MacDougal Needs a New Lease on Life"

Another heartbreaking tale of animal abandonment reached our inbox this weekend, but this one could have a happy ending. Here's the story:

While walking my dogs this afternoon I found a cat with magical green eyes, a cat that looks to be a housecat, who has lived her entire life safe and cared for, suddenly now abandoned on the New York winter streets in her cat carrier with the door open left to die.

Continue reading "Abandoned Cat Needs Home"

An attempt by NYC Transit to communicate accurate bus arrival times has been partially abandoned out of concerns that it just was not feasible to accomplish by the MTA. A pilot program has been in place on six separate bus lines, but those notification services have been scrapped because the digital displays at bus stops were just not capable of providing accurate information to riders. While in the planning for a dozen years, the actual equipment wasn't rolled out until this past October. NYC Transit doesn't know when its notification system could come back online.