Lost Small Churches of the North Shore: Italian Pentecostal Church, Pike Street

Italian Pentecostal Church, Pike Street - ca.1940

 Here's another church that was not lost, but transformed. Founded as a prayer meeting in 1923, the Italian Pentecostal Church was eventually located on Pike Street. In 1964, it moved to Richmond Road where it's still to be found, now named the Christian Pentecostal Church. According to its website, it's the oldest Pentecostal church on Staten Island. 

They also had a show on WPOW, 1300, Staten Island's first radio station.

St Paul Apostolic Faith Church, Pike Street - 2012

The first time I even knew Italian Pentecostalism was a thing was when my wife's old pastor, a Baptist, mentioned it was how he'd grown up. Here's an interesting article about Massimilano Tosseto, one of, if not the founder, of Italian Pentecostalism.

Insurance Map, 1936

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

High Church - North Shore Episcopalian Churches Pt. 2

Here's another installment of Episcopalian churches.

Christ Church 

Situated on a large, tree-filled corner of New Brighton (specifically Hamilton Park), Christ Church is a large, Gothic-style building. According to Wikipedia, it was built in 1904. The large attached parish hall was built in 1879 and remodeled in 1909. I don't have a date for the rectory, seen on the far left of the bottom picture, however.

I don't have any interior pictures of the church and that's a shame. I've was in the sanctuary once and it can only be described as beautiful. As someone who grew up very high Lutheran, my tastes definitely run toward the more elaborate and ornate. I get the theology behind a stripped down church but I definitely prefer something like Christ Church.

Christ Church - Franklin Avenue

St. Paul's Memorial Church

I grew up attending Trinity Lutheran Church, just up the block from St. Paul's, but I've never been in it or known anybody who attended there. From the pictures on their website, it's another beautiful house of worship. 

The present building was constructed in 1866 to replace the older, wooden one that was across the street a block or so away.

Original St. Paul's Memorial Church - St. Paul's Avenue - date unknown

Map of St. Paul's Avenue - 1874

St. Paul's Memorial Church - St. Paul's Avenue - 1939/1940

St. Paul's - 2013

St. Paul's Parsonage - St. Paul's Avenue - 1939/1940

St. Paul's Parsonage - 2013

Jersey Street Projects Project: Part Three - east side, running north from the corner of Cleveland Street

Sorry I've taken so long to get another post up. So here's a quick glimpse of the east side of Jersey Street starting at the corner of Cleveland Street and running north.

 The corner of Cleveland and Jersey Streets. With a name like White Eagle, I'd guess it was a Polish bar. To the left is a building I don't have a better picture of. It reappears in the next shot, but on the right.

   

   The same corner today.

 A house. One of the interesting things about Jersey Street is the large number of individual houses right in the middle of largely commercial blocks. That's not the case in Stapleton and West New Brighton.

P.S. 17 Hamilton Park - Burned and Gone

PS 17, a fairly standard looking school once stood on the heights overlooking York and Jersey Streets. The bit of woods visible in the right of the picture, behind the school, represent the edge of The Cedars, businessman Shipley Jones' estate.

The school burned down in 1977 and Parks began the process of acquiring the land from the Board of Education in order to build what's now called Skyline Park. It's a great place and every time our nephews visit we try to get there at least once.

1874 Map - a school existed on the site but it's footprint differs from the photo/post card, implying it was a different, older facility.

1917 Map - That's the building in the pictures. The entrance faced Fairview Avenue (now Harvard). I wish there was a photo from a further away location so there'd be a sense of how the school sat on the land.

The streets today - Here's a shot up the little piece of Arnold off York. The school was on the rise to the right.

Franklin Avenue - Past and Present

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left -   93 Franklin Avenue - 1930 - right - same site today

left - 105 Franklin Avenue - 1930  - right - today

left - 129 Franklin Avenue - 1930 - right - today

left - 161 Franklin Avenue - 1930 - left - today

Hamilton Park remains one of the most architecturally attractive neighborhoods of Staten Island. Sure, most of the grand houses are long gone, but the ones that remain are worth a look. 

Cornices and Corbels

  So we (the luminous Mrs. V. and I) bought a decent Canon camera this summer and I intend to use it to revitalize this site and help out those folks suffering from slowness with the google street views.  These are just some shots of attractive details from my immediate neighborhood.  There's probably a way to tell what firm made which corbel but it's presently beyond me.  If you know anything let me know something.

frieze below the corbels

corbels on brick

who was P. Mart?

cat adorned corbels

click to see the cat better

between the two corbels are little bits called dentils

   So there you go, folks.  A return of Ape Shall Not Kill Ape and some pleasant decorative architecture from the Hamilton Park area.