Lost Apartments of the North Shore: the Baltimore Flats

 

17-23 Victory Blvd, ca. 1940

When my parents got married, they lived at 115 Stuyvesant Place. It's where I lived my first three years. They bought a house on Cebra Avenue when their rent went up to $137 and exceeded a mortgage. As a baby, my mom and I went to all sorts of stores in St. George and Tompkinsville. I had memories of eating in a luncheonette at the corner of Victory and  Bay, but I couldn't remember anything specific about it except that my mom was friends with a waitress. It was only doing some research a few years ago that I discovered pictures of it.

The luncheonette was called DeFranco's and it was in the corner of a string of apartments called the Baltimore Flats. They're a beautiful example of late 19th-century buildings, designed by Edward A. Sargent. Unfortunately, after part of them caught fire in 1980, it wasn't long before the entire block of flats was demolished.

DeFranco's Luncheonette, 1969 - My mom and I could be inside 

Baltimore Flats on fire - 1980

the Baltimore Flats, 1980 - awaiting their fate

1989 - rubble

2021

Some Filler - Bay Street - 1931 vs. TODAY

   I've been trying to get better at posting stuff, but my usual bugaboo, laziness, has too often got the better of me.  I am working on a post about Staten Island's North Shore Norwegians.  I'm just waiting to hear back from several people I've e-mailed.  Hopefully, it'll mean pictures and details about another community that was once much more substantial that it is today.
   My dream after that is to work on one about the Germans of the North Shore.  Perhaps, more than any other ethnic group whose time has come and gone on Staten Island, the Germans built and molded much of old Staten Island.  If you've got any information about them I'd love to hear from you.

   So here are some pictures of Bay Street past and present.  I haven't taken the camera out so I'm reduced to going back to the Google Street View shots.  In deference to complaints I've gotten about the slow load time I just clipped them.  Unfortunately, whatever I do with them, they stink.  Still, I find them interesting.  Bay Street has always been a sort of odd mix of commercial and residential.  Clearly it's been that way for a long time.  It's a shame it's so shoddy and decrepit looking these days.

310 Bay Street - 1931 - Today an empty lot

Even eighty odd years ago, Bay Street had auto shops

corner of Bay and Clinton Streets - 1931 - Today, ABCO Refrigeration occupies the place of both old wooden buildings

   The middle building has a sign showing it to be "PHILIP KAPLAN - New & Secondhand Plumbing Material"  That line of white objects along its side is a great big, bunch of bathtubs.

494 Bay Street - 1931 - Replaced by a dull building that's housed a string of clubs and bars over the years

     Not only is the long vanished house a loss, look at how 498 Bay (left side of picture) has changed.  Awnings, transom, masonry detail above the entrance, all gone and  just sort of uglified.

Van Duzer Street - blocks of wonder, sort of - Part One

   Van Duzer Street lies a few mere blocks east of St. Paul's Avenue.  Unlike St. Paul's it's never seemed to have gotten the love from the preservationists that it deserves.  I wonder if that's because it's less upscale and more heavily trafficked.  Preservationists always seems to target the streets with large expensive homes that they own already, not equally important (from a historical perspective) areas that might be a little more worn or less desirable.   Which I guess is a good thing because historical districts tend to push out poorer owners and replace them with wealthier (and usually whiter) ones (facts and figures available upon request).  Any renaissance connected with such districts tends to be the kind that comes anytime big money pushes out little money.
   All that being said, I'm not sure I'd want to live on Van Duzer Street myself.  The traffic is heavy and constant and wouldn't want that outside my front door.  I doubt it's ever truly quiet along the street.  But it is a street with beautiful and interesting homes and buildings.

open the maps in a new tab so you can enlarge and zoom in on them

   I debated (with myself, and it was contentious) about how to put up pictures to accompany these maps.  They're a labor of love and I hope some of that love is contagious.  I want people to look at them closely, think about what the street and surrounding blocks look like today, how they compare to each other, what they must have looked like in years past.  All sorts of stuff.

   One way to do that is simply present you (the readers) with photos with addresses but no key to their map location.  To figure that out you'll have to search the maps.  You can do it just by that.  I've found so many surprising things in preparing these two maps I'm sure you'll find things I haven't noticed.  

   I think this is the sort of thing I'm going to be doing for the next several posts in general.  If you don't think it's a good idea, please, let me know and I'll figure out something else to do.  Thanks, as always, for reading and commenting on something I thoroughly and utterly enjoy doing.

                35 to 51 Van Duzer, 4/1929                                                   41 Van Duzer Street, 2/2012

             63 Van Duzer (center), 3/1927                                     59, 63, and 67 Van Duzer, 2/2012

219, 221, 223 Van Duzer, 2/2012 - beautiful early to mid 19th century side gable houses

226 Van Duzer, 5/1935

292 Van Duzer Street - left - 5/1935 (a this time it was the Democratic Club) - right - 2/2012

310 Van Duzer Street - left - 5/1935 - right - 2/2012

According to the NYC records on-line this home date to at least 1835 - a neighbor of it told me it was the oldest house on the block

324 Van Duzer Street - left - 5/1935 - right - 2/2012

   The mighty fortress that is Trinity Lutheran Church can be easily seen on the hill overlooking Van Duzer Street.  The "for sale" sign mention Cornelius G. Kolff.  As an Islander of a certain vintage I only know the name as from the old ferry that got turned into a prison boat and then scrapped.

   Turns out he was a major land developer, Staten Island promoter and folklorist and part-time philosopher. Most of this I actually came across in an article from the Northeast Tolkien Society. 

   So that's all for today.  I've just got a ton of stuff to post and this is long enough.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the rest up for your perusal.

Look to the Hills

Perhaps you've noticed that the North Shore of my beloved Staten Island is littered with hills? Well it is.

Once they were all refuges for wealthier seeking insulation from the rest of us. Elevation lifted them away and above us. In that time great mansions covered many of those hills (see the Ben Braw pictures). Later, meaner times lead to the demolition of those manorial estates and the subdivision of their property as is seen in the differences between the map of the C. A. Low Estate and the photo of the same place twenty-five years later.

Pavillion Hill - 1933 - Taken from a vantage near the public restroom at Tompkinsville Square (where all the junkies hung about when I was younger).




View Larger Map

Map of Pavillion Hill - 1917 - Note the ownership by the Pavillion Hill Corp. and the subdivision of the property into the lots that exist to this day.




Ben Braw - 1935 - This magnificent house is one of the few remaining great estates from Staten Island's Gilded Age homes (I think I've ranted about this once or twice before). Today the view of it from Murray Hulbert Street is obscured by the elevated SI Rapid Transit tracks, buildings and three quarters of a century of plant growth.








Fort Hill Circle - 1933 - From York Avenue - The large brick building with the gables in the picture's center is on the corner of Crescent and Westervelt. The white apartments at the top left is the Ambassador and the first home of the luminous Mrs. V.



Map - Low Estate - 1917

Van Duzer Street - from North to South

Running from Tompkinsville to Stapleton and then to Concord and parallel to St. Paul's Avenue, Van Duzer Street is lined with some of the most interesting older houses and buildings surviving on the Island. The street's name is obviously Dutch in origin (street name seem to be the only lasting impression of my forbears founding of this city) but beyond that I don't know specifically for whom it's named. I've only posted pictures from the beginning of Van Duzer at Victory Blvd in Tompkinsville to Targee Street in Stapleton. It's the stretch I'm most familiar with and definitely the most interesting.




View Larger Map

Facing North(ish) on Van Duzer and looking at Victory Blvd.





The original El-Bethel AME Church and as it looks today


View Larger Map

247 Van Duzer Street at between Clinton and Baltic. According to the late Dick Dickenson's edition of "Holden's Staten Island" this little house dates from before 1786. Wow.





View Larger Map





House on the corner of William and Van Duzer with restaurant addition - appears on 1874 map - Many of us know it with varying degrees of distaste as Giggles, the 19th Hole or perhaps Beer Goggles.




292 Van Duzer Street - the Democratic Club c. 1935 - in 1874 it was owned by W.C. Anderson. Today it remains but in a considerably worn down state






Looking west along Van Duzer at Sands Street - in the background is the steeple of Trinity Lutheran Church





View Larger Map

This beautiful house on the corner of Van Duzer and Smith Terrace. In 1874 it was owned by K. Jessup. Today it is much more secluded and sits hidden behind trees.





View Larger Map

523 to 525 Van Duzer Street - in 1932 the wood frame building was occupied by the Eagle Social Club.





View Larger Map

561 Van Duzer Street - This old brick home was owned by J. Oneill in 1874 and Chas. Rosenberg from 1907 to 1917. The old picture dates from 1932


So ends our incredibly edited and short trip along Van Duzer Street. There are some great pictures I left out. Maybe later.