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.