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?

Richmond Terrace as Classical Playground

Once upon a time, when Staten Island was a playground for the more than moderately wealthy, stately homes and near palaces graced the county. One notable location was Richmond Terrace, particularly between the ferry terminal and Westervelt Avenue. The only remaining evidence of this grand period is the weed shrouded Pavillion catering hall on the corner of Westervelt and the Terrace.
Once several ornate, classically columned and decorated homes graced Richmond Terrace looking northward across the bay towards New Jersey and Manhattan. Staten Island actually had a elegance that seems utterly alien to its car jammed streets and too-small townhouses.
By the early decades of the last century these homes, like the great mansions of the Hendersons, Vanderbilts and Lows were being demolished and their land subdivided. I'm not sure when these building met their ultimate fates but by 1928 the property of 386 and 396 Richmond Terrace is clearly overgrown, the first is for sale and both are in disrepair. I don't know where these wealthy families went or what became of them (whence the Pendletons, Barretts, Hendersons and Jewetts?) but at some point these homes and similarly scaled ones across the North Shore seem to have become burdensome or out of date and they left them to decay and the wrecker's ball.



Democratic Party Clubhouse - Now the site of St. Peter's Girls' School


View Larger Map



386 and 396 Richmond Terrace - between St. Peter's Place and Westervelt Avenue - 5/2/1928 - The former is listed on 1917 maps as the "West Day and Evening School" and prior to 1907 belonged to the Pendleton family. The latter belonged to the Wilkinson family. It's hard to tell without zooming in on the original digital photo but the school building has a sign indicating it's for sale.




396 Richmond Terrace - 5/2/1928 -


View Larger Map


404 Richmond Terrace - southeast corner of Westervelt - 5/2/1928 - In 1907 it belonged to one George J. Greenfield, and between 1874 and 1898 the Wilkinson's owned it. Much later it became the Pavillion, a catering hall where my aunt and uncle had their 25th anniversary party.



View Larger Map

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