The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Thirteen - Cedar St btw the old ball field and Tompkins St, Tompkins St btw Cedar St and Tompkins Ave, and Tompkins Ave btw Tompkins St. and the old ball field

Today this entire block is covered by baseball fields. The residential buildings look a little run down in these ca. 1940 shots. I don't have anything to say, except, enojy the pictures.

 While the service station is clearly shown on the 1917 map, the following two aren't. However, by comparing the buildings in the background to other pictures, I can safely figure out where the first, the garage, was. To see this, go to this post and look at the buildings marked D and E. The garage can be seen on the right hand side of the third building, the one with the Horn Paint sign on front.

Sorry about the quality of this picture. 

1917 tax map

today

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Seven

So, I already missed posting new pictures last week. I screwed up labeling the ones below and didn't fix it until just now. Sorry about that. 

The obvious standout today is Bennett's Bicycles. Their website says they opened as a general store in Fort Wadsworth before moving to Tompkins Street in the thirties. They stayed there until 1957 when the property was taken as part of the eminent domains proceedings that demolished the back streets, and then were given a check and thirty days to vacate. Good going, NYC!

The rest is the usual mix of houses and apartments. Something I forgot to include last time is the present day map showing where these buildings were originally located.

Tompkins Street between Cedar Street and Tompkins Avenue

1917 street map

Tompkins Street between Clarke Street and Cedar Street

Approximate location of old buildings

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Five

Time has passed far too quickly, and I've done nothing but accumulate stacks and stacks of electronic pictures and done nothing with them. So here goes, I'm going to try to get a post or two up each week and jumpstart this whole thing.

Broad Street between Tompkins Avenue and Cedar Street

 Here's another example of the typical Broad Street mix of commercial and residential units. So there's a shoe repair shop, a fish market, billiards, a deli, and a beauty parlor. #15 (B) is listed on the 1917 map as the Central Hotel. I can't tell if it's still a hotel or just an apartment building in the photo above, but either ways, it's a pretty large residence for Stapleton.

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

Rosebank's Tangled Backstreets

Reynolds Street, 1934 - looking east from Bell Street to St. Mary's Avenue

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To the southeast of the intersection of Tompkins Avenus and Hylan Boulevard is a near maze of narrow streets and old houses. It's a physically fascinating remnant of the sorts of old working class neighborhoods that have been vanishing since at least before I was born. Witness the disappearing bungalows of Midland Beach or the neighborhoods that once existed where the Stapleton or West Brighton Projects are today.

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White Plains Avenue from Bell Street, 1934

I first encountered this little section during a low speed chase between friends back in the mid-eighties. The car I was in quickly became lost but the Rosebank's labyrinth remains etched in my mind to this day.

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Pigeon Coops at the Northeast corner of Oak and Bell Streets, 1934

One of the things you find doing this is that once there were stores sprinkled throughout residential areas away from the more developed commercial areas. I can't tell what the store in the below picture's right is but the one on the left's awning appears to read "Italian Deli"

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Till next time, same Rosebank Time, same Rosebank Channel

Theater Fix

The Lyric Theater - in Rosebank at the on Tompkins near Clifton


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Apparently you can buy this bit of Staten Island theatrical history.

Fingerboard Road

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Nice little postcard of the intersection of Fingerboard and Tompkins looking south towards Fox Hill Villa (by then already a part of the Jesuit's Mount Manresa retreat). That towered building was taken down in 1963.
Based on some of the other postcards in the NYPL collection I'd guess it's from between the end of the 19th and the earliest part of the 20th centuries.
That bridge in the foreground is over the old South Beach Railroad. When I was a kid the old trestles of the line still existed along the overgrown right-of-way. In the mid nineties all that was lost when endless lines of far too small townhouses were built on top of the right-of-way. Progress.


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