Jersey Street Projects Project: Part Seven - west side of Jersey Street between Crescent Avenue and Cleveland Street

This is my favorite stretch of recreated Jersey Street I've done to date. The reason is the looming presence of St. Stanislaus looking down from York Avenue in many of the shots. Today, blocked by the line of trees and brush that fills the lots these buildings once occupied, the church is barely visible from Jersey Street level. Once, though, it was a major element of the local skyline and a reminded of the Church as part of everyday life.

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When I first copied and pieced together this shot I wasn't completely sure it was the right one. As you can see, it isn't labeled like the rest. I don't know why, but many of the photos are in a general sort of catch-all file. There's a code on the master list telling which picture is supposed to be which, but still, this didn't look right. I had collected this shot first so I didn't recognize the structure in the upper right corner for what it is, St. Stanislaus.

It seems funny to find detached homes in what seems like such a urban area as Jersey Street, but I think I understand what was going on. I think Jersey Street was originally lined with such buildings on decent-sized lots. As the years went on and the development accelerated, several would be torn down and replaced with the multi-story mixed residential and commercial buildings featured in most of these pictures. This particular house appears on the 1874 map.

1917 street map

         1924 aerial map           present day street map    present day aerial map

Regular readers have read me gripe about what I consider the heartlessness of the city planners who ripped down neighborhoods like this part of New Brighton in order to replace it with overcrowded housing projects in the name of urban renewal. I believe this shot, better than many others I've presented, prove my case. All those buildings above were destroyed sixty years ago and since then all that's there is a garbage-strewned and fenced off lot. It's both ugly and cut off from public access. What was the point of that? I'd be surprised to hear a good one suggested.

Jersey Street - winter 2013

Jersey Street Projects Project: Part Five - north side of Richmond Terrace btw York Avenue and Jersey Street

The destruction carried out in the name of urban renewal in order to build the Richmond Terrace housing projects was significant. As you saw last time, not only was a long stretch of Jersey Street and some of the streets between Jersey and Westervelt cleared, but a two blocks of Richmond Terrace's north side were demolished as well.

The Star Theater was a place my grandmother would go regularly in order to get  a free piece of dishware. It was a thing theaters did back then to draw customers in.

If you can't make out the word on the marquee, have no fear, I was able to figure out what movies were playing. The top billed is The Light That Failed, an adaptation of a Kipling novel and starring Ronald Colman. Below it is Kid Nightingale, a musical boxing movie starring John Payne and Jane Wyman. The last picture listed is The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, a mystery starring Lloyd Nolan. The first two were released in late 1939 and the last in January, 1940.

I found an article from the July 30, 1926 Ocean Grove Times listing Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Semons of West New Brighton arriving in Ocean Grove.

In case you can't make it out, the building house a United Cigar store. Apparently, at one time, it was the largest cigar store chain in the country, with 3,000 stores before the Depression.

"Eat Home Cooking" proclaims the lunch room's sign. I'm going to make a guess that the owner's name was Antone Pappas.

The Liberty Grill, a name that came up in the comments on the Facebook posting of one of the Jersey Street Projects Project articles. They had wines, liquor, and beer.

A shack, probably part of the Gypsum Plant.

I was pointed to some interesting reading from the Staten Island Advance from 1959. Borough President Maniscalco discusses the demolition of the above buildings for the extension of the Richmond Terrace Promenade and its widening. It was supposed to have been the same length as the portion east of Westervelt and have a "central mall separating the traffic lanes." Whelp, like with so many projects on Staten Island it never really worked out the way its proponents claimed. That stretch of the Terrace in front of the Jersey Street Projects remains a bottle-neck almost 60 years later.

 Sixty years later and this is what Staten Island has to show for urban renewal.

Jersey Street Projects Project: Part Two - west side between Crescent and Carlyle

I've held off on the Jersey Street Project for so long (a year and a half), because, compared to Stapleton and West New Brighton, it's huge and unwieldy. It covers way more ground, making it more like Port Richmond than the other areas I've covered. So, without more jib jab, here's another round. Sadly, it's not connected directly to the last batch  - cause I still need to get more photos.

Jersey Street: Part One Northwest side between Richmond Terrace and Pauw Street

When I was a kid, Jersey Street had a reputation as a dangerous place. Much of that was overblown and attributable to racism. It wasn't the safest place on the Island, though. Once it had been a heavily trafficked commercial and residential strip, but my childhood, the projects and changing demographics had dimmed Jersey Street considerably.

Once upon a time it was a street lined by shops with apartments over head and even a synagogue. Just off it were detached houses and a church. By the early eighties, a large stretch of the old buildings were demolished and replaced with attached townhouses. Today, Jersey Street is a little better than it was in the eighties and recently a few new businesses have opened. No matter what happens, Jersey Street will never be the mighty commercial strip it once was. As usual, the removal of mixed-use building and their replacement with purely residential housing projects utterly changed the fundamentals of the area. A ton more people were packed into the area, but a great number of stores were eliminated, limiting the choices residents would have.

Jersey Street 1968

The Staten Island Advance had a great page from its October 30, 1968 edition yesterday.  While hard to read, it shows several terrible pictures of Jersey Street's decaying storefronts in that year.  Jersey Street's history and decline is something I've written about several times in the past.

When I was a kid taking the old No. 5 bus to Curtis in 1980 I'd pass what I'm pretty sure was this stretch of buildings.  On had a tree growing out of it.  And then in 1983 or 1984 they were gone.

The long stretch of vacant stores were ripped down, presumably by the city, and replaced with fairly unattractive townhouses.  Still, it was a better alternative than letting the stores continue abandoned and present fire and safety hazards to the neighborhood.

I only wonder that the Advance doesn't appear to offer any speculation as to why the stores were abandoned.  Port Richmond stayed a viable shopping strip until some years after the Mall opened in New Springville.  Stapleton lingered on and still does to a some degree.  What caused Jersey Street to suddenly collapse?  Perhaps it was the projects?  Was it the Jewish working class moving up and away?  What, when and how did this happen to such a vibrant neighborhood?