Bethlehem Orphan and Half Orphan Asylum

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In perusing the maps of Rosebank and Fort Wadsworth I wander a little south of my usual hunting grounds and discovered something new: the Bethlehem Orphan and Half Orphan Asylum. A little quick digging revealed it was a Lutheran (yay) undertaking.
A little more research told me that the orphanage had been founded in 1886 by eleven churches in response to large number of children orphaned during a severe cholera outbreak in NYC. In 1915 they were able to buy about 20 acres of land on Staten Island from the Barrett family.

postcard showing the entrance to the orphanage



The establishment operated until it burned down in 1972. As the social services were turning away from orphanages towards foster care the Lutheran Social Services of New York declined to rebuild it and sold off the property. Today it's a huge tract of typically unattractive townhouses.



New York Times article from 1915

Fingerboard Road

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Nice little postcard of the intersection of Fingerboard and Tompkins looking south towards Fox Hill Villa (by then already a part of the Jesuit's Mount Manresa retreat). That towered building was taken down in 1963.
Based on some of the other postcards in the NYPL collection I'd guess it's from between the end of the 19th and the earliest part of the 20th centuries.
That bridge in the foreground is over the old South Beach Railroad. When I was a kid the old trestles of the line still existed along the overgrown right-of-way. In the mid nineties all that was lost when endless lines of far too small townhouses were built on top of the right-of-way. Progress.


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