Lost Apartments of the North Shore: Richmond Terrace at Bank Street (east side)

 

Letting loose the lunatics wasn't the greatest of ideas
Giving them plans and money to squander
Should have been the worst of our fears

                                                    Paul Weller, "The Planner's Dreams Goes Wrong" 

In my cataloguing of the devastation caused by the construction of the various NYC housing projects on the North Shore, I was constantly puzzled by the elimination of several blocks of buildings along Richmond Terrace. Only with recently being told where I can find archives copies of the SI Advance (1945-2018), have I discovered what happened.

In addition to building the Richmond Terrace Houses, the city planners decided they were going to continue the promenade and multi-lane Richmond Terrace divided by a median from Westervelt Avenue all the way down to Lafayette Avenue. To accommodate the plan, several blocks of existing buildings were purchased and demolished. 

Whelp, like so many well-intentioned plans, this one never came to fruition. Oh, sure, they bought and bulldozed the buildings, but they never built the expanded Terrace or extended the promenade. To be fair, I don't love the original idea, but right now, the narrow stretch of the Terrace in front of the projects is one of the worst bottlenecks on the North Shore. So, businesses and lives were uprooted for an expensive plan that was never implemented. Good going, people. 

For these lost apartment posts I wouldn't normally include pictures of so many individual buildings, but the sheer number of them seemed to warrant it. I want to make clear the extent of the destruction wrought for no ultimate yield.

 

Sanborn Map, 1936

 

 

SI Advance, March 23, 1963

 

 

 

Chen Hing Hand Laundry

Thomas V. Barry: Real Estate-Insurance & Libasci Bros. Tonsorial

Furrier

Unknown & Valet Service

Unknown

Unknown

Vacant - Demolished in 1946 after being vacant 20 years

Pan-American Bar & Grill

Vacant

Cigar/Candy Store

Tailor & Bar & Grill & S.I.R.T.R.R. Station

Bakery

Barber Shop

Laundry & other assorted businesses

Today

Lost Apartments of the North Shore: Richmond Terrace and Nicholas Street

 

224 Richmond Terrace and the foot of Nicholas Street

I came across this lost apartment by happenstance. I wanted to see the houses that used to exist along the beginning stretch of Stuyvesant Place where it meets the Terrace. Lo, and behold, I came across this fine little building. I don't know when it was destroyed, but I don't have a memory of it being there when I started attending Curtis in 1980. When I took of old #5 bus over Jersey Street in the morning, I'd get off right there and walk up Nicholas to school.

I'm not sure when it was built (the Archives photo doesn't have a date), but there was a building with similar looking footprint on both the 1898 and 1917 maps. However, the maps indicate the building was wooden, which, obviously, this isn't. Even the 1937 Sanborn Map shows the building as wooden. However, this picture, if taken at the same time as the rest of the tax photos is from between 1939 and 1940, so that would make it fairly new, which, again, it doesn't seem to be. So, if anybody reading this knows more about it, let me know.

216 Richmond Terrace

 

1898 Sanborn Map

 

1917 Bromley Atlas

1937 Sanborn Map

 1989

2018 - The View; better than an empty lot, I guess

Lost Apartments of the North Shore: Castleton Park

   From the maps and photographs, Castleton Park, once home to the gargantuan Hotel Castleton, and now home to the magnificently dull Castleton Park apartment towers, was a pleasant block of houses surrounding a park and watched over by two attractive apartment buildings. Only by checking the maps and dates right now, did I realize that when I first went to Curtis High School in 1980, that old Castleton Park might have only been recently destroyed. The DOITT NYCMap lists the current buildings, 165 St. Marks, as only having been built in 1976. In the past, I've gone on about how working class communities were destroyed for the ostensible benefit of housing projects, but this is the first time I've come across the obliteration of a middle-class section for affordable housing. 

   What strikes me immediately about Castleton Park's demolition is the absolute lack of any sort of concern for architectural attractiveness. Instead of the nicely detailed apartments and houses that were knocked down, the new apartments are looming, completely unadorned towers. Now, even the greenery that once covered the underground garage in imitation of the old park, seems to have been let go and replaced with concrete. Whatever reasons there are to remove something old and replace it, there's no reason to replace it with ugliness, but time and time again, that's what New York City (and, truth be told, most cities) have done over the past seventy-five years.

1934 Map - The Castleton in orange and The St. Marks in pink

ca. 1940 - my favorite picture of the Castleton as it seems to lurch around the corner of Nicholas and St. Marks

postcard of the Castleton with Castleton Park in the foreground

postcard of the Castleton

 

ca. 1940 - the St. Marks 

 

ca. 1940 - the St. Marks

postcard of the Castleton and the St. Marks

1928 -  skyline showing Curtis H.S., the St. Marks and the Castleton - I feel obligated to track down pictures of all the houses in this photograph

1924 vs ca. 2021 aerial maps

 

2021 - 165 St. Marks Place

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 Four - north side of Richmond Terrace btw Westervelt and Jersey Street

   I don't do a lot of these post. I should - I've got loads of pictures copied and saved - but I don't. The primary reason is laziness. There, I've admitted it. It's true, I'm a lazy, lazy man. In my defense, however, putting these posts together is time consuming and tedious. The 18 old pictures below are composed of 69 separate images that I had to put together like puzzles. I love getting these posts together and I love the feedback they get and conversations they start, but man, it's annoying. That said, here you go, one of the most interesting streetside recreations to date: the waterside of Richmond Terrace opposite the Jersey Street Projects, between Westervelt and Jersey. Enjoy!

These particular buildings appear to have come down in 1959 or thereabouts, specifically to help widen the Terrace and extend the Promenade down to the foot of Westervelt. Considering it's an overgrown mess today, was an overgrown mess when I was a kid forty-five years ago, and was probably an overgrown mess within months of demolition, I think it's clear the City did its usual bang-up job of urban renewal.

I look at these buildings and I imagine the people who owned the businesses - Chen Hing's Hand Laundry, Burns Coal, the Pan-American Bar & Grill - raised families, sent their kids to school, buried their parents, and now all the memories that remain are these old photos and family memories. I know it's not really important, but for some reason, I feel like it is. I know, it's weird, but I can't help it. I feel driven to recreate these lost street vistas of places that were demolished half a decade or more before I was born.

NOTE: I think it's safe to assume Chen Hing was Chinese. From things I've red and seen, I know there were more Chinese laundries along Jersey Street. Does anyone know anything about the history of Chinese living on Staten Island before the sixties?