Banksapalooza! - Part One - SI Bank & Trust Stapleton

   For those too young to remember or new to the Island, in the early seventies, Stapleton was a bustling shopping district.  It had already passed its best days but it remained vibrant and thriving.  Stores ran all the way down Broad Street from Targee Street to Water Street (save for the vast and abandoned Piels Brewery site).  All around Tappen Park there were more stores packed with customers.
  Probably at least once a week my mom trekked down to Stapleton with me and my sister in tow. We didn't have a car so it meant a nice walk down Cebra and Beach Streets.  Once there we'd always hit Woolworth's and John's Bargain Store.  There were lots of other places she shopped at as well, too many to mention them all in fact.  Of course, the highlight for me was where we'd always end up; the Stapleton Library.

   Depending on the weather, at the end of our excursions, we'd take the bus up the hill.  That meant the No. 5, which we'd catch at the foot of Beach Street in front of  Ying Wah Chinese Restaurant.  It would drop us at the corner of Cebra and Ward, only a few yards from our house.
   To get the bus we'd often walk past the magnificent Staten Island Savings Bank building on the corner of Beach and Water Streets.  It seemed so gigantic and imposing when I was little.  It's still impressive though it doesn't seem as large anymore.  It also suffers from the general grubbiness of the present day Tappen Park surrounds.  There are no other important businesses in the area and little to no foot traffic.  It seems a wondrous beast from a distant time stranded on a once vibrant but now empty shore.

 
   This is simply one of the finest looking buildings on Staten Island.  For a full history of Staten Island Savings Bank and the creation of this building, I recommend the Landmarks Commission packet.

   Set in recesses alongside the columned entryway are busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.  Presumably, their presence was to let folks know honesty and thrift would prevail within the walls of the bank

   This shield sits on top of the spiked, iron gates of the bank's entrance.  Bees and hives have long been symbols of industry, while owls of wisdom.  Again, design elements were used to instill confidence in the bank.

   Along the two street sides of the bank, great stylized dolphins hold lamps aloft over the sidewalks.  These, more than the anything else, are the strongest image of this bank for me.  They're like those illustrations of sea monster on old maps.  It's the loss of this sort of elaborate detail that makes much modern architecture such a dull thing.

  This ornate lamp hangs from the roof of the entrance.  It's hard to see, but it's got a CFL bulb and looks distinctly cheesy.

   Stapleton's glory was finally ground out as the eighties dawned and the crack epidemic took hold.  The badness that had started when the breweries closed and the growth of newer shopping locations was accelerated.  Middle-class Stapleton families decamped to neighborhoods and states perceived as safer.
   By the mid-eighties, the long holding action fought by residents and community organizations such as the Stapleton Civic Association and the Stapleton LDC, proved fruitless.  Though they had scored notable successes in refurbishing Tappen Park, including building the gazebo, they were unable to stave off darkness.  One by one shops closed and were replaced with lower quality ones or not at all.

 
   A composite of shots from about 1990, this picture leaves out the OTB to the left.  111 Water Street, the almost featureless building between the bar and the Discount Center, is Beth Israel's methadone clinic.  That as much as crack was part of the narcotic stake through Stapleton's heart.
   Later there was a pawn shop.  Between those various establishments it was some sort of sadsack, one-stop shopping strip.  
 

Beauty Demolished - Barrett Triangle

   I spent the first three years of my life living in an apartment on Stuyvesant Place.  I went to Curtis for high school.  For much of my life between the St. George Library, Borough Hall and Brighton Heights Reformed Church, I've spent a lot of time in St. George.  One of the most resonant images of that neighborhood for me isn't any of the places I've listed above, but, instead, the statue standing behind the bus shelter.  Until today I don't think I ever knew the area it stood in was called Barrett Triangle.  I vaguely remember reading the inscription on the plinth and seeing the name "Clarence Barrett" but I had no clue to who he was or what made him commendable.

   According to the always useful NYC Parks website, Clarence Barrett was born in Rahway but brought to the Island as a child.  He studied landscape architecture and served as an officer in the Civil War.  He fought during the siege of Mobile and the siege of Richmond.  After the war he became a notable landscape architect and sanitation engineer.  Eventually he entered public service, serving as Police Commissioner and then Superintendent of the Poor.

   In 1915, nine years after his death, this heroic statue (crafted by Sherry Edmindson Fry) was unveiled.  It was presented to the city by his widow.  Do rich, public servants do that anymore?  

   Originally, as you can see in the old-timey pictures below, the noble warrior pointed southish not northish and stood several feet away from where he now stands vigil.  He was also the centerpiece of an attractive bit of hedge-surrounded greenery that served as an additional part of the original entrance to the St. George Library.  I don't remember when the dull, gray addition was pasted on to the building, obscuring the grand doorway and obliterating the stairs, but I have vague childhood memories the stairs (which may be totally made up and I'm just remembering pictures).

   The NYC Parks' page states that in 1945 the statue was moved to its present position and the water fountain on its backside disconnected.  I'm assuming that's when the shelter was built.  As a Curtis alum I admit the shelter is memory-scape but I really wish they'd never replaced the original Barrett Triangle.

     Closeups of the statue.  Pretty cool, huh?

  .

Crime Scene: Mariner's Harbor, 1921

   So, in doing research for an upcoming post called "Banksapalooza!", I discovered a ninety year old crime in Mariner's Harbor.  That quaint little bank building pictured above was one the center of a six-hundred thousand dollar defalcation.  That's around eight million dollars in today's debased currency.
   The bank, the Mariner Harbor National Bank (being called a national bank simply means it's chartered under federal regulations not state ones), was once a thriving local bank.  According to the articles I read in the New York Times, in 1921, the establishment had more than 2,000 depositors.  I don't know if that's good or bad, but it sounds like the bank was fairly substantial.
   I won't go into super detail, but the head cashier (bank controller), Sylvanus Bedell, got himself involved in the machinations of a wealthy schemer.  From there he found himself making all sorts of investments, described by the Times as wildcat schemes.
   Bedell's first and biggest crime involved the Johnson Shipyard Corporation of Staten Island and it's president, Robert Magruder and his son, Donald D. Magruder.  One of the furthest afield was a $10,000 investment by an Atlanta based engineering firm in order to buy the yacht Taro for deep-sea diving experiments.  They failed and the money was lost.  He also helped a florist from Staten Island invest $65,000 of the bank's money in projects that failed.
  Mr. Bedell testified in 1923 that he had first gone wrong when he helped the senior Magruder convince the federal government his firm was on a firm financial standing in order to be awarded shipbuilding contracts in 1917.  Mr. Bedell said it all started when he bought ten shares in Johnson Shipbuilding and was later made treasurer of the company at $25 a week (about $425 today).  By 1920 he was being paid $200 a week (over $2,000 today).  Over time he cashed about $500,000 worth of checks of bad checks for Magruder.  Magruder claimed the firm would make good the money when the federal payments came through.  Unfortunately, a bank auditor discovered a problem.  From there it all started to come out and poor Sylvanus Bedell found himself arrested and penniless.

Some Filler - Bay Street - 1931 vs. TODAY

   I've been trying to get better at posting stuff, but my usual bugaboo, laziness, has too often got the better of me.  I am working on a post about Staten Island's North Shore Norwegians.  I'm just waiting to hear back from several people I've e-mailed.  Hopefully, it'll mean pictures and details about another community that was once much more substantial that it is today.
   My dream after that is to work on one about the Germans of the North Shore.  Perhaps, more than any other ethnic group whose time has come and gone on Staten Island, the Germans built and molded much of old Staten Island.  If you've got any information about them I'd love to hear from you.

   So here are some pictures of Bay Street past and present.  I haven't taken the camera out so I'm reduced to going back to the Google Street View shots.  In deference to complaints I've gotten about the slow load time I just clipped them.  Unfortunately, whatever I do with them, they stink.  Still, I find them interesting.  Bay Street has always been a sort of odd mix of commercial and residential.  Clearly it's been that way for a long time.  It's a shame it's so shoddy and decrepit looking these days.

310 Bay Street - 1931 - Today an empty lot

Even eighty odd years ago, Bay Street had auto shops

corner of Bay and Clinton Streets - 1931 - Today, ABCO Refrigeration occupies the place of both old wooden buildings

   The middle building has a sign showing it to be "PHILIP KAPLAN - New & Secondhand Plumbing Material"  That line of white objects along its side is a great big, bunch of bathtubs.

494 Bay Street - 1931 - Replaced by a dull building that's housed a string of clubs and bars over the years

     Not only is the long vanished house a loss, look at how 498 Bay (left side of picture) has changed.  Awnings, transom, masonry detail above the entrance, all gone and  just sort of uglified.

Edward I. Koch - R.I.P.

   Mayor Ed Koch is gone and with him someone who seemed at times like he'd live as long as the city of New York stood.  The first time I ever heard of Ed Koch was when he ran for mayor in 1977.  I was really too young to pay much attention to him or understand what was going on in the city.  Not until his second term, starting in 1981, did I see him as someone other than the man always blurting out, "How'm I doin?".  By then, aside from seeing his pure joy at representing this city to the world, I was able start understanding the things he had done to help address the financial crisis that had nearly murdered the city.  By then, even my staunchly Republican parents had become fans of his.  Aside from a neighbor who ran for state senator, the only Democrat my father ever voted for was Ed Koch.  

   If you're not a native New Yorker you owe it to yourself to read about the man and his accomplishments.  His greatest one was proving that New York City, contrary to many's beliefs, was indeed governable.  I'm glad he didn't become governor (though we would have been saved the sanctimony of Mario Cuomo) and began the recovery of New York from the disasters of the sixties and seventies.  His strenuous efforts also laid the groundwork for the later successes of Giuliani.

   Ed Koch wasn't perfect.  He, Police Commissioner Ben Ward and the NYPD of the mid-eighties were unable to staunch the blood from rising crime rates.  He couldn't stem the flood of homeless people on the city's streets.  For all the fiscal stability he helped bring (along with the Gov. Carey, the MAC and the municipal unions) to New York City, the city took on a rotten sheen that was only washed away by the collapsing crime rates of the nineties and the development of the past two decades.

   I will miss Ed Koch.  Even as my love for this city dwindles (skyrocketing taxes, endless development, etc.), and as Bloomberg acts the fool (soda, fats, smoking and, really, he wants to make Kissel and Conyingham Avenues a bike route?), and a cast of ultra-liberal Democratic party hacks wait in the wings to replace him, reading about Koch reminds me of better times and how a mayor ought to act.  Unlike today's mayor, he walked the streets, met regularly with the public (and listened to what they said), and reflected the sheer excitement of being a citizen of this great and wondrous city.

Swedes of Staten Island

   While I'm a Wasp on my father's side, on my mother's I'm of  mixed Scandinavian blood only two generations off the boats.  My maternal grandmother's father was Swede Finn with a Norwegian mother.  My maternal grandfather was Norwegian and Danish.  He was raised in Sweden where his father had moved the family in search of a better life.
   I grew up with only a few stories about the old countries and fewer examples of their cultures.  Most of what I got consisted of my grandfather telling how great Sweden's social safety net was (even though he'd never move there because he didn't like paying taxes) or my grandmother telling me about seeing tomtegubbens.
   The only time I ever heard Swedish spoke was when my grandparents argued.  My grandmother got a Norwegian-American newspaper but I never looked at it beyond its blue viking ship logo.
   Once upon a time, though, Staten Island was practically overrun with all sorts of Scandinavians.  Mostly Norwegians and mostly in Port Richmond.  The churches they founded still remain (most notably Zion Lutheran and Salem Evangelical Free) as do the two Sons of Norway lodges.
   Swedes were here in much lower numbers.  Still, like their Norwegian brethren, a little of their legacy remains.  The most explicitly Swedish thing, the Swedish Home for the Aged over in Sunnyside, was only shut down in the past three or four years.  It didn't have enough residents to remain in operation.

 Its centerpiece, a house once owned by the Vanderbilts, was torn down in the face of a request for landmark status from the preservationists.  It might have survived if some sort of reasonable accommodation had been made with the new owners but that approach appears anathema to the preservationists.

   The most concrete remnant of their duration here is St. Paul's/St. Luke's Lutheran Church on Decker and Catherine in Port Richmond.  According to Leng and Davis, the congregation got its start on March 15, 1905 and met in the Odd Fellows Hall in Port Richmond or the original Norwegian Our Savior on Nicholas Avenue before building its own church on Decker and Catherine Avenues.  The present building was opened in 1911.  Among its early pastors were Augustus Olson, Nester Johansen and A.J. Ostlin.

 Today it's got a small, faltering congregation, many of whom are of Swedish heritage.  I own a copy of one of the church's last Swedish Bibles.  I was allowed to take it because no one can read it anymore (including me).

 
   Recently I learned of another surviving symbol of the Swedes sojourn on the Island.  My aunt told me my grandfather belonged to something called Svea Lodge of the Swedish society, the Order of Vasa.  They met in the building now used by the Alzheimer's Association.

 
   A little research in my prized Leng and Davis books told me that not only had Svea Lodge met there but they had actually built the building.  I wonder if under the marquees their something indicating the building's initial function.

 UPDATE:  Well, I'm all red faced.  I always thought my maternal grandmother's mom was Norwegian.  Wrong!  Turns out she was just another Swede Finn.  And my grandfather was raised in Sweden by his grandmother.  That's why, when my grandparents argued, it was in Swedish.  It's probably the only time I ever heard it spoken in their house.

Exciting News!

   In 1930, William T. Davis and Charles W. Leng, co-founders of the Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences, published their five volume "Staten Island and Its People: A History 1609-1929".  For anyone interested in the past of this borough this is an incredibly important work.  Until now I've been forced to copy notes out of the library copies at CSI.  My ability to simply leaf through to my heart's content has been limited at best.

   Last year I went to an estate sale in hopes of buying a set but was confronted by a price that was above my limits.  Now, however, a more attainable set has appeared on my horizons.  At present they are being prepared to wing their way down from the Great White North (well, at least Nova Scotia) into my living room and onto my bookshelves.  To say I'm excited is way too much of an understatement.

   I hope it means a return to regular posting for this site.  I've hit a bit of a wall regarding new stuff.  Mostly it's because of my recurring laziness and not making myself go to the St. George Library.  With these in my hands I should have a surfeit of new material to write about.  Here's hoping.