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: 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

Lost Apartments of the North Shore: 210 Victory Boulevard

 

                                                            210 Victory Boulevard, ca. 1940
 

 

   I have only the slightest memories of this building, even though I grew up a few blocks away and probably walked past it hundreds of times before it was torn down in the early 2000s. I suspect the reason it never really registered in my mind is because it was set way back from Victory Boulevard and the property was no longer the nicely-maintained lawns and hedges depicted above, but a mass of uncontrolled trees and bushes. 

   When I was a kid, those set-back buildings had acquired a reputation for housing shady characters. A friend of mine lived in one of them - maybe even this one - and I visited once, and it was fairly creepy. 

   According to Dept. of Building records, in 2000, it was reported that the back of the building had collapsed and the front was in imminent danger of coming down. I've always been fascinated about the circumstances by which a perfectly decent building reaches a state where it's abandoned and left to ruin. Whole families lived there once. Hopes were hoped, dreams dreamed, and lives lived inside those walls. Now, it's not much more than a few photos. As such, I'm going to do a series of short posts about buildings similar to this one that once graced our streets and at some point - poof!- just seemed to vanish into the æther.

2013

1917 map

1996 NYC aerial map

Snug Harbor Randall Memorial Church

   Many readers of this site (or group) know that Snug Harbor used to have a beautiful church standing next to the theater: the Randall Memorial Church. As the number of sailors resident declined the church fell into disuse. Unused, it also fell into disrepair. According to Wikipedia, after a plan to turn it into a community center fell through, in 1952, the building was torn down. Today, it's the crappy parking lot next to the theater.

interior images showing the apse and altar

the church was located in the bottom left of the lower picture, around where the cars are parked.

One of the things I only really thought about a few years ago was that I never really understood what Snug Harbor is supposed to look like. The location of the trees were deliberately planned and not just scattered around randomly. All the forested section along Henderson Avenue?  All just new growth following the end of farming at the Harbor.  

I Was Born There

   Well, not actually.  I was born in the newer section but you know what I mean.  Sadly, after three decades of neglect and misplaced trust that "somebody" would do "something" to save it, the Smith Infirmary was demolished by the City earlier today.  The SILIVE has pictures and video.

   I'm a little disappointed with myself for never going back and getting some better, closeup pictures of the building but it sure ain't happening now.  So it goes.  I wonder how many poorly built townhouses they're going to fit on the property.