The Fletch Movies (are unwatchable)

So killing time and trying to watch the Fletch movies on netflix. Uff da! I can't believe how unwatchable they proved to be. I remember vaguely liking them back when. Not now. Shudder.

Detroit in the News

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Michigan Central Station - built 1913, closed 1988

Mayor Dave Bing, elected last year in the wake of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's contretemps last year, has proposed a novel way of trying to stave off the death of Detroit. Like a surgeon removing gangrenous flesh, Bing plans to encourage people still living in desolate neighborhoods to relocate to ones that stand a chance of survival.

Immediately I'm saddened by the plan but I'm also realistic enough to recognize its logic and potential. According to the city's survey of itself 1 out of 3 lots is abandoned or empty. The population's fallen from a 1950 high of 1.8 million to just over 900 thousand today. At the same time the total Detroit metro region has risen from 3.7 million to 5.4 million.

The disaster that is Detroit rests at many peoples' feet; the white people who fled, the auto industry that failed to make cars that could compete with Japan's, the unions that bled the auto companies, and the people left behind who elected incompetents and crooks in desperate hope of staving off their city's destruction. I'd add the federal government but what was it supposed to do - force people to remain in a burning and collapsing city or just pour billions down a municipal rathole?

So sadly, I commend Mayor Bing for coming up with a novel way to try and save his home city. Cities across the country have been losing people for years to the suburbs and beyond. There's nothing that could have prevented the reduction of Detroit in the face of that and the changing global economy. But still, Detroit's slow death hasn't been a natural one but an abetted one.

Saddest Music in the World

So I've been listening to a bunch of seventies music lately and in telling the luminous Mrs. V. about it I mentioned I thought "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was one of the saddest albums I know. This precipitated a short discussion of other sad albums. She felt "The Wall" belonged on the list. I came back with "Setting Sons" by the Jam (though perhaps it loses major points for ending with a take on "Heatwave" that's so uplifting that it almost cuts through all the preceding tracks' misery). I also remembered that the ole' Lawgiver said to me once, in the dim and distant past, that "All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes". Perhaps.
But what do you think (and that's the plural you, I'm not talking to you as a special individual)? Make some suggestions. Don't be limited by the pop music genre.

Augustinian Academy

Once upon a time the Catholic Church built a school for boys, particularly geared towards entering the priesthood. It stood on top of Grymes Hill near the site of Wagner College (initially a Lutheran seminary. I wonder if they raided each others' campus.) looking over Clove Valley. In 1969 it closed due to declining enrollment. It became a retreat house (and I seem to recall my friend's father going there on retreat) and was eventually sold to developers in 1985. After that it fell into a sad state of ruin before finally being demolished over the past few years.





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I'm not the only one interested in Staten Island's fallen buildings. Here's a nice site with pictures of the Academy's sorry state prior to its destruction.

Secret Places

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Last fall when I was searching for old foundations I came upon something beautifully odd and hidden. Some of what I found was unremarkable for where I was but the rest was completely beyond any of my expectations.
Jones Woods lies two short blocks from the back of my house. Franklin Avenue seems to have been where the driveway to Shipley Jone's estate was. On many weekends in my childhood I had heard dirtbikes ripping around on the hills hidden from view behind the dense woods covering them.
I had never actually gone up into Jones Woods and last fall after dropping the luminous Mrs. V off at work I figured I'd take a quick look. I drove up to the top of Franklin Avenue and parked at where the road ended and the entrance to the woods began.


As I walked along the trail into the woods the bits of pavement from the old driveway peeked out from under the dirt and weeds. Only a short walk from the end of the street I came upon the first wrecked car.
Finding a wrecked car in wooded property on Staten Island isn't a surprise. The woods between Howard Avenue and Van Duzer Street used to be filled with abandoned stolen cars. I've always assumed they were stolen and dumped for the insurance.
What was odd about this car was what had been done to it.



It had been painted green. Soon I came across several more cars and small trucks in various states of ruination and all painted green.

Then I came across something odder. Deeper into the woods, off the trail I came upon a series of constructions made from tree limbs.


Some of these constructions were over six feet high. They were arranged between trees as well as freestanding. For a few moments I suspected I had wandered into some impressive, secret art project. Looking around I also saw nets with branches and leaves woven into them strung between trees . Maybe I had wandered into something like Karl Edward Wagner's story "Sticks". That thought creeped me out a smidge.


And then I discovered what I had discovered hidden a few hundred feet from my house. Covering portions of several trees and boulders were the multicolored splatters from paintball gun pellets.
I can't judge if the barriers and nets are of recent construction. They might have been put up years ago and left there when the players got bored and moved onto something else. Or, hopefully, not. Maybe on a warm spring Saturday afternoon if I listen carefully I'll hear the sound of air expelled pellets and the shouts of people in goggles and camouflage hunting each other on the hills.


View to towards the northeast from atop Jones Woods hill.
I didn't find any foundation remnants but I haven't given up hope. When the weather improves I'll head into the woods again.

The Forgotten Borough

I added a new link on the "Historical Stuff" section called "The Forgotten Borough". I'd come across the site in it's earlier "Prodigal Borough" version and was happy to find the new version. It's a beautiful site with all sorts of very valuable links to sites about the arts, parks, and real estate (and plenty of other stuff too). Primarily it provides a great perspective about the North Shore by an immigrant from Manhattan (and parts beyond originally). She loves the communities, the look, and the buildings.
I love the North Shore for many reasons, but mostly, I suspect, because it's where I grew up and it forms the background for most of my memories and experiences. I was born in the ruined hospital looming at the head of Cebra Avenue and I almost burned down the woods behind my between Cebra and Creston Place. We shopped in Stapleton every week and I ate fish filet sandwiches at the Woolworth's counter. I practically lived in the Stapleton Library from age 5 to age 18. I went to school at PS 16, Trinity Lutheran (and was baptized and confirmed there) and Curtis High School (the same place my mom and her three sisters graduated from).
As I get older and most of my childhood friends (most of the people I'm friends with now have lived here their whole lives but few of them were part of my life before the age of fifteen) have left the Island and my parents have died I guess I'm trying to reinforce the images of my past by constantly examining and studying the place where I've lived most of my 43 years. It's like I'll lose parts of my memories if I don't reinforce them by studying them to death.
I appreciate everyone who sticks around for the ride and I hope to actually get off my backside and get some better things up here this year (and I hope the preceding paragraphs don't sound too maudlin). I need to get my scanner fixed, I need to get back to the St. George Library for more WPA photos, and I need to maybe get a better camera to get better pictures of my own (I mean how much can I steal from NYPL's collection?) and I need to do this more regularly.

Rockin' in a Magic Place

So I'm listening to a bunch of early David Byron fronted Uriah Heep the past couple of days. In their worst moments (which are still sort of fun) think Spinal Tap's Stonehenge with less self awareness and dopier lyrics (ex. Rainbow Demon, The Wizard). At their best (ex. Circle of Hands, Easy Livin', High Priestess)they came up with some of the best, utterly over the top progressive hard rock of the era.
Unfortunately, they started going stale after five or six albums, fired the alcoholic Byron and later morphed into a straight forward metal band with albums titled wretched things like "Abominog" (cue spooky music).

Look to the Hills

Perhaps you've noticed that the North Shore of my beloved Staten Island is littered with hills? Well it is.

Once they were all refuges for wealthier seeking insulation from the rest of us. Elevation lifted them away and above us. In that time great mansions covered many of those hills (see the Ben Braw pictures). Later, meaner times lead to the demolition of those manorial estates and the subdivision of their property as is seen in the differences between the map of the C. A. Low Estate and the photo of the same place twenty-five years later.

Pavillion Hill - 1933 - Taken from a vantage near the public restroom at Tompkinsville Square (where all the junkies hung about when I was younger).




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Map of Pavillion Hill - 1917 - Note the ownership by the Pavillion Hill Corp. and the subdivision of the property into the lots that exist to this day.




Ben Braw - 1935 - This magnificent house is one of the few remaining great estates from Staten Island's Gilded Age homes (I think I've ranted about this once or twice before). Today the view of it from Murray Hulbert Street is obscured by the elevated SI Rapid Transit tracks, buildings and three quarters of a century of plant growth.








Fort Hill Circle - 1933 - From York Avenue - The large brick building with the gables in the picture's center is on the corner of Crescent and Westervelt. The white apartments at the top left is the Ambassador and the first home of the luminous Mrs. V.



Map - Low Estate - 1917

A Neighborhood Far Afield

In the heart of downtown Los Angeles is the neighborhood of Bunker Hill. Once it was a steep hill covered with Victorian mansions and shops and reached by seemingly impossibly steep trains tracks.



Over time their wealthy owners moved to the suburbs in places like Pasadena and the mansions became apartments and flophouses. The whole area became a giant filming location for film noir movies.



In 1955 the city decided the neighborhood as is stood impeded the city's development. They declared it blighted (which of course once such a determination was made only led to area becoming truly blighted), eliminated the 150 foot height limit on new buildings, and leveled the district. Literally. About a hundred feet were shaved off the hill, tearing down most of the old buildings and making way for the steel and glass skyscrapers that dominate the downtown today.
I don't know anything about LA and I can't say much about the rightness or wrongness of what was done six decades ago. But I can provide a link to an amazing site ( On Bunker Hill) put together by local LA historians and aficionados in order to document the old, and long lost, Bunker Hill.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

As usual I've left things till too late, but, Merry Christmas to one and all!

Shults Bread Company and company

On Cary Avenue and Taylor Street in West New Brighton (edging perilously close to Port Richmond), stands an old factory built of red brick. In my time it's housed the Art Network (who remembers that now?) and then, in one form or another, a church for the last decade or so.

Apparently, formed from the consolidation of several bread wholesalers, for a few years the Shults Bread Co. was one of the most prolific bakeries in NYC. They operated a dozen factories in and around the city (six in Brooklyn, their home, alone). In 1923 they were acquired, in a stock deal, by the United Bakeries Corporation and were no more. UBC renamed itself Continental Bakeries, and became one of the biggest bakers in the country.










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I've posted this theater before, but here's it's in a larger neighborhood context. It was the first movie theater on Staten Island and until recently it maintained much of its original facade (see the googlemaps' picture) though its present Pentecostal owners have finally fixed up the building and covered it over.

The intersection of Castleton and Broadway and several blocks around seem to have been an entertainment nexus a century ago. There was an opera house (!) on Henderson and Broadway and a movie theater on the corner of Broadway and Noble. Now there's projects, dollar stores and scary delis.

Tell me again how were things improved when the projects replaced older working class apartments? Am I wrong in thinking that people aren't meant to live piled together in giant apartments like ants? How many people and neighborhoods suffered because Corbusier offered a cheap way out for packing in the poor like rats?







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An Industrial Bend in Richmond Terrace

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Taking Richmond Terrace westbound heading toward Mariner's Harbor and points beyond, at West New Brighton, right past Broadway, there's a great northward bend in the road. On a low rise on the south side of the road is an old factory building that is the beginning of an industrial and commercial area. Part of me always wondered what that factory made in the sooty days of its youth. Now I know (and you will too), thanks to my new found map friends.

It was the part of the C.W. Hunt Company. According to the NYPL website, the firm were "manufacturers of railway freight cars, coal handling equipment, and related machinery".



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This building appears to have been the boiler house. I assume it's where engine boilers were cast.








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These buildings were all part of the C.W. Hunt Co.'s factory once in a long ago past of red hot iron sparks and clanging machinery and coal dust.

The Block

This amazing project is something I happened across while doing my usual Staten Island research. He had a few now/then shots of SI posted and tooling around the rest of the site I found "The Block". It's a beautifully rendered and animated history of the buildings along a Manhattan block from 1795 to 1991.

Big Houses on the Hills

Until about 1986, the property across the street from my family's home on Cebra Avenue was a high, tree covered hill with an old foundation and driveway hidden away in the overgrowth. Throughout my childhood ramblings across the wooded spaces of Staten Island I came across several old foundations. One was in the woods near my grandma's house on Henderson Avenue and another was several blocks from my Cebra home on Austin Place.
Going through the old survey maps on the NYPL's site I've discovered the names of the owners of these and similar houses and in some cases the names of the homes themselves. It's a great find and a fascinating look at Staten Island's old, wealthy past.

Cebra Avenue and Ward Avenue - Someone named Chester E. Clark owned the house across from mine and called it Hill Top. This map is from about 1917. By the time my family moved to Cebra in 1969 the house was long gone. Today all that remains is the man's name split into the names of two inconsequential little streets and about one hundred shoddy attached houses.



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Highview Avenue and East Buchanan Street - Taking a walk with the luminous Mrs. V. one day up Highview we spotted the foundation remnants shielded from the casual passerby by the trees covering the now houseless lot. Once a man named Thomas Bushell owned it. Now it's nothing.



Henderson Avenue and Bard Avenue - This house was two up from my grandma's house. I remember coming across the ruins and my grandfather telling me it was from a house that'd burned down some years ago. Today I can't tell who owned it and if it even had a name.




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Austin Place and Ward Avenue - This house stood on what had become a large wooded lot we hung out in all the time by time I was twelve years old. The Fredericks house was still standing, occupied by a scary old lady supposedly related to my friend Bruce N., until only a few years ago. It was finally torn down and the lot was covered with ugly attached houses and a series of plug ugly "mini mansions".

When I hung out there and played manhunt and other games, the basement of the Lederle house was still there sunk beneath the earth and covered with the old flooring. There was hole, probably from a stair case, you could climb down into. Rising up over the place the tennis courts had been once been was a great dark stone wall. The first time I saw it it was like finding a lost ruin from Middle Earth. The Austin woods were by far the most interesting "natural" place we ever found when we were kids.




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When I come across these lost houses and family names I think about how they got this way: torn down, forgotten and built over. Do these families exist anymore? Obviously they had money, but if they still exist, do they still have it? Did all these houses burn down while occupied or where they abandoned and succumbed to fire from lighting or arson? Where they simply torn down and the land sold off?
It's a sad thing to see a home that's become abandoned and forgotten. I wonder what happened there. How many games of catch were played on the lawns and hands of euchre in the drawing room? Did servants live on the grounds and were they well treated? What happened to the businesses the owners ran to make their money? I don't know and I doubt anyone else cares anymore.

The Hills Around My House - Jones Woods and Nearby

These two maps show the area around where I live these days at Franklin and Prospect Avenues. These maps, which I've never looked at too closely before, are eye openers. Apparently, the hill looming over Brighton Avenue, containing what's called Jones Woods, is called that because it once was the grounds of the estate of one Shipley T. Jones. So far, all I've found out about him is his gardener wrote an article on dahlia raising and he attended a fundraiser for the old Staten Island Hospital. Again, the lost history of the island is lurking everywhere.








The Cedars - Clearly, this estate was huge. It ran from Prospect to Brighton and from roughly Sumner to Harvard. Most of the property remains unbuilt on to this day and serves as a track for intrepid dirtbikers.






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S.R.Smith Infirmary - The core of the old Staten Island Hospital.


I've written and posted photos of this now crumbling place several times. It still holds a place in my heart and its current state and presumed future brings at least a nominal tear to my eye. The folks at the Kingston Lounge have a nice photo collection of the present state of the Infirmary's interior.


Richmond Rail Road & Light Co. Car House - Jersey Street and Victory Blvd. I'd always heard that the NYC Sanitation Garage had been some sort of machine shop in the past. Well, the map lets us know it was a garage for rail cars (presumably trolleys). You can even see the tracks running north up Jersey Street and west up Castleton Avenue.



From this overhead shot you can sort of see the footprint of the original building that's been added to over the decades by Sanitation.


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Borden's Condensed Milk Co. - Once upon a time, when Jersey Street was a flourishing commercial and industrial avenue, Elsie the Cow held sway over a factory turning out condensed milk for all the households. Now, sadly, both Borden's and the factory are no more. Elsie still lingers on but in a severely limited state.




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Vertical Staten Island

Stairs on Benziger Avenue in New Brighton

I happened across a beautiful collection of North Shore hills and staircases at something called Walking Is Transportation
. Check out some beautiful pictures of some of the most out-of-time locations on the North Shore. And also see what can be accomplished when you get off your fat rumpus and actually venture forth and take pictures with a camera instead of just snatching stuff off the web and Google.

Victory Blvd. stairs entrance

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Here's my own sad little contribution to the catalog of North Shore staircases. These stairs climb up the back of the hill Tompkins Circle sits on up to said street.

Tompkins Circle entrance

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Forest Avenue in Ole Tymes and Now

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Running parallel to Castleton Avenue for much of its generally east-west run, Forest Avenue is tied with Victory Blvd as the North Shore's most important commercial avenue. Starting at the crest of Victory Blvd.'s first great hill, Forest Ave. starts alongside Silver Lake Park and Golf Course. It then cuts its way through the southern portion of West New Brighton. The stretch between Oakwood and Bement used to be called Peter Pan Alley because it was lined with Irish bars; the denizens were green and never grew up.
West New Brighton runs roughly from Hart Blvd to Jewett Avenue. From Jewett to Richmond Avenue Forest cuts Port Richmond off from Westerleigh and Willowbrook. At Richmond Avenue it separates Elm Park and Mariner's Harbor to its north from Graniteville before coming to an end in the marshlands of Bloomfield.

The first lovely house was located on the north east corner of Oxford Place and Forest. Today it's a series of relatively unpleasant townhouses thrown up in the 90s. The second house is still standing on a beautiful block between Oxford and Duer Lane opposite Silver Lake Park.

Silver Lake - Oxford and Forest



Silver Lake - Forest and Duer - This house was owned by Louis A. Dreyfus, a noted chewing gum magnate and Staten Island civic activist. He and his wife donated the land for Hero Park and supported numerous churches, schools and charities. IS 49 in Stapleton is named for his wife, Bertha.




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Today the intersection of Forest and Bard is a major commercial area with a Keyfood, drycleaners, a Starbucks and a CVS. Once upon a time it was a fairly sleepy (and dusty apparently) crossroads.

West N. Brighton - north side of intersection looking east along Forest Avenue




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I had to blow up the bus just because I thinks its pretty nifty looking.



On the south side of the intersection is Our Savior Lutheran Church. I've mentioned in an earlier post how it was once the church in the basement. Well, here's proof.





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West N. Brighton - Forest and Clove Road - This beautiful estate was owned by the Brooks family (who I have no idea who they were) and was called, imaginatively, Brooklawn) Today it's all gone and been replaced with the northern stretch of Clove Lake Park.




Graniteville - Richmond Avenue between Forest Avenue and Monsey Place - Today Monsey doesn't even intersect with Richmond and there's a filthy gas station and convenience store on the spot. Good going, people.



Graniteville - PS 22 - Forest and Columbus Street (well, today, Columbus doesn't even exist and a new extension to the school's been built across its roadbed) - This picture from the early 30's shows the "new" extension built to the original school on the picture's left. Today another extension has been attached to this extension.




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Castleton Avenue in Olden Tymes

Castleton Avenue is one of the major thoroughfares of the North Shore. It stars in New Brighton near the south terminus of Jersey Street, rises up into Silver Lake, winding its way past the old Staten Island Hospital and into West New Brighton and past the old St. Vincent's Hospital (now, boringly, called Richmond University Medical Center). It continues through West New Brighton passing the Civil Court House, Calvary Presbyterian, Sacred Heat R.C. Church, the West Brighton Projects and on towards Port Richmond. It finally ends, after having run past the Castleton Bus Depot and crossed the crumbling commercial center at Port Richmond Avenue, at Nicholas Avenue near Port Richmond High School.

southside of Castleton between Pelton and Oakland - This first building was once the West New Brighton sub-branch for the New York Public Library. For as long as I can remember it's been a junk shop.







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southwest corner of Castleton and North Burgher - Today the West Brighton Branch of the New York Public Library sits here in its stately Carnegie building.




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You can see the original steeple of Sacred Heart that was lost to fire many decades ago.




southwest corner of Castleton and Caroline - Half the building was occupied by a James Butler Store. Apparently that was a successful chain of stores at some time in the past. Twenty years ago the building was used by a local civil rights organization called "Heritage House". Until fairly recently you could still see their signs on the place. Back then I worked at NYS Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation. The group was getting state dollars to turn the building into a state of the art community center. I don't remember the specifics but there were problems with the group's handling of the renovation of the building and in the end the project fell apart. Now I think it's got the dreaded X for condemned on it.




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northwest corner of Castleton and Port Richmond Avenues - once in the dim, and distant past, Port Richmond was a major commercial center. Even in the days of my youth it was a beacon for North Shore consumers. There was a Woolworths and several other similar five & dimes. There were restaurants, clothing stores, photographers, and all other manner of shopping destinations. Then the Forest Avenue Shoppers Town came into being in the late 60's followed by the Staten Island Mall in 1975. Within a few years the stores began losing customers in droves and closing up shop. There was an effort at a commercial revival in the 80's with an emphasis on furniture stores but this was enough.

With the arrival of large numbers of Mexican laborers in the 90's (to do work that Staten Islanders might have to pay someone else a decent wage to or, heaven forbid, do themselves) the neighborhood became a very different place. Now, many of the old, vacant stores have been replaced with restaurants and discount stores selling Mexican products. Unfortunately this new Port Richmond remains as bedraggled and rundown as it did when the old businesses first closed up shop in the 70's.


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