Secret Places

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Last fall when I was searching for old foundations I came upon something beautifully odd and hidden. Some of what I found was unremarkable for where I was but the rest was completely beyond any of my expectations.
Jones Woods lies two short blocks from the back of my house. Franklin Avenue seems to have been where the driveway to Shipley Jone's estate was. On many weekends in my childhood I had heard dirtbikes ripping around on the hills hidden from view behind the dense woods covering them.
I had never actually gone up into Jones Woods and last fall after dropping the luminous Mrs. V off at work I figured I'd take a quick look. I drove up to the top of Franklin Avenue and parked at where the road ended and the entrance to the woods began.


As I walked along the trail into the woods the bits of pavement from the old driveway peeked out from under the dirt and weeds. Only a short walk from the end of the street I came upon the first wrecked car.
Finding a wrecked car in wooded property on Staten Island isn't a surprise. The woods between Howard Avenue and Van Duzer Street used to be filled with abandoned stolen cars. I've always assumed they were stolen and dumped for the insurance.
What was odd about this car was what had been done to it.



It had been painted green. Soon I came across several more cars and small trucks in various states of ruination and all painted green.

Then I came across something odder. Deeper into the woods, off the trail I came upon a series of constructions made from tree limbs.


Some of these constructions were over six feet high. They were arranged between trees as well as freestanding. For a few moments I suspected I had wandered into some impressive, secret art project. Looking around I also saw nets with branches and leaves woven into them strung between trees . Maybe I had wandered into something like Karl Edward Wagner's story "Sticks". That thought creeped me out a smidge.


And then I discovered what I had discovered hidden a few hundred feet from my house. Covering portions of several trees and boulders were the multicolored splatters from paintball gun pellets.
I can't judge if the barriers and nets are of recent construction. They might have been put up years ago and left there when the players got bored and moved onto something else. Or, hopefully, not. Maybe on a warm spring Saturday afternoon if I listen carefully I'll hear the sound of air expelled pellets and the shouts of people in goggles and camouflage hunting each other on the hills.


View to towards the northeast from atop Jones Woods hill.
I didn't find any foundation remnants but I haven't given up hope. When the weather improves I'll head into the woods again.

Big Houses on the Hills

Until about 1986, the property across the street from my family's home on Cebra Avenue was a high, tree covered hill with an old foundation and driveway hidden away in the overgrowth. Throughout my childhood ramblings across the wooded spaces of Staten Island I came across several old foundations. One was in the woods near my grandma's house on Henderson Avenue and another was several blocks from my Cebra home on Austin Place.
Going through the old survey maps on the NYPL's site I've discovered the names of the owners of these and similar houses and in some cases the names of the homes themselves. It's a great find and a fascinating look at Staten Island's old, wealthy past.

Cebra Avenue and Ward Avenue - Someone named Chester E. Clark owned the house across from mine and called it Hill Top. This map is from about 1917. By the time my family moved to Cebra in 1969 the house was long gone. Today all that remains is the man's name split into the names of two inconsequential little streets and about one hundred shoddy attached houses.



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Highview Avenue and East Buchanan Street - Taking a walk with the luminous Mrs. V. one day up Highview we spotted the foundation remnants shielded from the casual passerby by the trees covering the now houseless lot. Once a man named Thomas Bushell owned it. Now it's nothing.



Henderson Avenue and Bard Avenue - This house was two up from my grandma's house. I remember coming across the ruins and my grandfather telling me it was from a house that'd burned down some years ago. Today I can't tell who owned it and if it even had a name.




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Austin Place and Ward Avenue - This house stood on what had become a large wooded lot we hung out in all the time by time I was twelve years old. The Fredericks house was still standing, occupied by a scary old lady supposedly related to my friend Bruce N., until only a few years ago. It was finally torn down and the lot was covered with ugly attached houses and a series of plug ugly "mini mansions".

When I hung out there and played manhunt and other games, the basement of the Lederle house was still there sunk beneath the earth and covered with the old flooring. There was hole, probably from a stair case, you could climb down into. Rising up over the place the tennis courts had been once been was a great dark stone wall. The first time I saw it it was like finding a lost ruin from Middle Earth. The Austin woods were by far the most interesting "natural" place we ever found when we were kids.




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When I come across these lost houses and family names I think about how they got this way: torn down, forgotten and built over. Do these families exist anymore? Obviously they had money, but if they still exist, do they still have it? Did all these houses burn down while occupied or where they abandoned and succumbed to fire from lighting or arson? Where they simply torn down and the land sold off?
It's a sad thing to see a home that's become abandoned and forgotten. I wonder what happened there. How many games of catch were played on the lawns and hands of euchre in the drawing room? Did servants live on the grounds and were they well treated? What happened to the businesses the owners ran to make their money? I don't know and I doubt anyone else cares anymore.