Lost Apartments of the North Shore: Richmond Terrace at Bank Street (east side)

 

Letting loose the lunatics wasn't the greatest of ideas
Giving them plans and money to squander
Should have been the worst of our fears

                                                    Paul Weller, "The Planner's Dreams Goes Wrong" 

In my cataloguing of the devastation caused by the construction of the various NYC housing projects on the North Shore, I was constantly puzzled by the elimination of several blocks of buildings along Richmond Terrace. Only with recently being told where I can find archives copies of the SI Advance (1945-2018), have I discovered what happened.

In addition to building the Richmond Terrace Houses, the city planners decided they were going to continue the promenade and multi-lane Richmond Terrace divided by a median from Westervelt Avenue all the way down to Lafayette Avenue. To accommodate the plan, several blocks of existing buildings were purchased and demolished. 

Whelp, like so many well-intentioned plans, this one never came to fruition. Oh, sure, they bought and bulldozed the buildings, but they never built the expanded Terrace or extended the promenade. To be fair, I don't love the original idea, but right now, the narrow stretch of the Terrace in front of the projects is one of the worst bottlenecks on the North Shore. So, businesses and lives were uprooted for an expensive plan that was never implemented. Good going, people. 

For these lost apartment posts I wouldn't normally include pictures of so many individual buildings, but the sheer number of them seemed to warrant it. I want to make clear the extent of the destruction wrought for no ultimate yield.

 

Sanborn Map, 1936

 

 

SI Advance, March 23, 1963

 

 

 

Chen Hing Hand Laundry

Thomas V. Barry: Real Estate-Insurance & Libasci Bros. Tonsorial

Furrier

Unknown & Valet Service

Unknown

Unknown

Vacant - Demolished in 1946 after being vacant 20 years

Pan-American Bar & Grill

Vacant

Cigar/Candy Store

Tailor & Bar & Grill & S.I.R.T.R.R. Station

Bakery

Barber Shop

Laundry & other assorted businesses

Today

Lost Apartments of the North Shore: Prospect and York

 

238 York Avenue, ca.1940

 

234 York Avenue, ca. 1940

230 York Avenue, ca. 1940

 

I'm not sure I ever noticed this strange building until I bought a house on Prospect Avenue in 2006. After that, I drove by it all the time, curious about its odd look and hoping someone one would fix it up at least a little bit. Around 2010-2011, someone did do a major renovation. The work wasn't fantastic, and the roof over landing isn't attractive, but a building was returned to use. The DOITT map lists 238 York Avenue as being built in 1931, but it appears to be on the 1917 insurance map. Either way, it's a fairly old building that's still standing and occupied today.

 

Scanning the Advance archives, I wasn't able to determine when the two units to the right of the remaining 238 York Avenue, were destroyed. However, the last article referencing the center unit, 234 York, was in 1974 when for the second time in a year one of its tenants was robbed. The last reference to the rightmost building, 230 York, was in 1975 when one its tenants was sentenced to nine months for burglary. For at least a decade preceding 1975, all three units had tenants who had habitual contact with the police.

238 York Avenue, 1989 

The yellow street signs were gone by the time I moved to the area, but this was essentially how the building looked in 2006.

Sanborn Map, amended 1935

238 York Avenue - 2018