The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Ten - Meadow Street between Gordon and Patten Streets, McKeon between Gordon and Patten, and Warren between Meadow and McKeon

A typical backstreet block, a mix of commerical and residential with a definite worn-out appearance. Even with my antipathy toward urban renewal and dislike of housing projects that pack people together like rats, these pictures show a pretty run down neighborhood. If this is what it looked like in the late thirties, I imagine twenty years only made it worse. Between the publication of the map (1917) and the photos (ca. 1940), several lots became vacant, not, I'd wager, a sign indicative of good neighborhood health.

When I see people, especially kids, in these pictures, I love it. They add a dimension of life to them that make it easier to imagine these lost place alive again. Then I realize these kids are in their eighties at least - if they're still alive.

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Nine - Gordon Street between Broad and McKeon Streets

After a lengthy delay, here's another series of recaptured images from a Stapleton lost over fifty years ago to urban renewal. That was the polite term for slum clearance, itself a polite way of describing the process whereby poor working class neighborhoods were destroyed to make way for some urban planner's dream. That dream meant eliminating older neighborhoods of mixed residential and commercial properties and replacing them with higher density housing projects, which rarely was an improvement.

Gordon Street between Hudson and Gray Streets

The Staten Island Archive at CSI recently replaced its malfunctioning and obsolete equipment with functioning and more obsolete equipment. But it does get the job done and I'm getting the hang out of wringing the most out of it. I complain, but the Archive and the folks who work there are tremendous,if sadly underutilized, resources.

Never having had any reason to walk on the residential blocks between Broad and Van Duzer Streets, I never realized that they were part of the real hear of Stapleton. This was (and still is) where people actually live. Broad and Bay are lined with stores. Like the backstreets demolished for the Projects, these are the streets of one and two-family houses. Here's what one blocked looked liked circa 1940.

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Two

So, while I had planned to work my way from in on the backstreets to out on Broad Street, that ain't happening. Actually finding the pictures on the microfilms spools is annoying. So, when I come across any block/lots for the area I decided I might as well get them when I can.

Which means for this post, we jump right to Broad Street. Specifically between Patten and Gordon. It's an interesting assortment of buildings, but all are commercial on the first floor and residential up above. That's a type of construction you don't seem to see anymore. Personally, I always thought it was sort of nice. You need to buy something, you just go downstairs. Seems pretty convenient, if you ask me.

What it meant for Stapleton, was that just as the neighborhood's population was drastically increased, it lost a host of businesses. It's seems like a pretty counterintuitive thing to do. Did the remaining businesses have the capacity to meet the needs of the new residents? Did the stores that suddenly faced decreased competition raise their prices or reduce the quality of their services?

Glorious Broad Street - Stapleton Again

   The commercial heart of Stapleton is always assumed to be located at Canal and Water Streets along Tappen Park.  Well that's probably accurate it neglects the stores that ran from Wright Street all the way up Broad Street to Van Duzer Street.  According to my map reading skills that's about 1/2 a mile.  Add to that Broad Street from Bay to Tompkins and you get another 1/4 of a mile.  There half of the latter was pretty much residential, but still, that's about a mile's worth of stores catering to the needs and desires of Stapleton's citizens.  Once you add in the Tappen Park surrounds and Bay Street, Stapleton probably had at least as much commercial property as Port Richmond did.  Now much is gone or pretty low rent stuff.  So it goes.

291,293 and 297 Broad Street at the corner of Targee - 1931

When I was a kid the building on the left housed a canine patrol.  Its logo was a snarling dog's head.  My sister's dance school was originally in the same building on the Targee Street side.  It was called "Charing's Dance School" (or something very similar)

                                            Broad and Targee, northwest corner - 1931

Same corner today - It was an empty lot even when I was a kid in the mid seventies - I remember doing a cleanup of it when I was in the Weblos or Boy Scouts which would have been around 1977.

Broad Street, east from Gordon Street - 1931

Today - the corner store was candy store with a soda fountain when I was kid.  I only went once or twice but my mom and sister went there a bunch when she went to dance classes.

Broad, Canal and Tompkins - 1931

Today - Back in the early nineties the pizzeria (and as long as I can remember the building in the foreground has housed one) was called "Two Crusts".  I don't get why but it did make us laugh when we ordered and they picked up the phone and said it.

Bonus Picture:  Cop contemplating the world - 1931