Canal Street along Tappen Park

When I was a kid in the early seventies, Canal Street along the park was still an active business strip. There was an Army & Navy store, several shoe stores, and, of course, the Store of a Million Items. There were others but I can't remember them.

Now, it's a sort of run down patch. Many of the original buildings have been torn down. Sure, there's a new building but businesswise, Canal's a bit of a bust these days.

Looking for something else the other day in the CSI SI Archives, I came across a picture of the Store of a Million Items. Taking a few extra minutes, I looked at the rest of the block and couldn't really believe what I saw. Clearly Canal Street along Tappen Park had been more than just a commercial strip, but an incredibly busy and successful one.

Banksapalooza! - Part One - SI Bank & Trust Stapleton

   For those too young to remember or new to the Island, in the early seventies, Stapleton was a bustling shopping district.  It had already passed its best days but it remained vibrant and thriving.  Stores ran all the way down Broad Street from Targee Street to Water Street (save for the vast and abandoned Piels Brewery site).  All around Tappen Park there were more stores packed with customers.
  Probably at least once a week my mom trekked down to Stapleton with me and my sister in tow. We didn't have a car so it meant a nice walk down Cebra and Beach Streets.  Once there we'd always hit Woolworth's and John's Bargain Store.  There were lots of other places she shopped at as well, too many to mention them all in fact.  Of course, the highlight for me was where we'd always end up; the Stapleton Library.

   Depending on the weather, at the end of our excursions, we'd take the bus up the hill.  That meant the No. 5, which we'd catch at the foot of Beach Street in front of  Ying Wah Chinese Restaurant.  It would drop us at the corner of Cebra and Ward, only a few yards from our house.
   To get the bus we'd often walk past the magnificent Staten Island Savings Bank building on the corner of Beach and Water Streets.  It seemed so gigantic and imposing when I was little.  It's still impressive though it doesn't seem as large anymore.  It also suffers from the general grubbiness of the present day Tappen Park surrounds.  There are no other important businesses in the area and little to no foot traffic.  It seems a wondrous beast from a distant time stranded on a once vibrant but now empty shore.

 
   This is simply one of the finest looking buildings on Staten Island.  For a full history of Staten Island Savings Bank and the creation of this building, I recommend the Landmarks Commission packet.

   Set in recesses alongside the columned entryway are busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.  Presumably, their presence was to let folks know honesty and thrift would prevail within the walls of the bank

   This shield sits on top of the spiked, iron gates of the bank's entrance.  Bees and hives have long been symbols of industry, while owls of wisdom.  Again, design elements were used to instill confidence in the bank.

   Along the two street sides of the bank, great stylized dolphins hold lamps aloft over the sidewalks.  These, more than the anything else, are the strongest image of this bank for me.  They're like those illustrations of sea monster on old maps.  It's the loss of this sort of elaborate detail that makes much modern architecture such a dull thing.

  This ornate lamp hangs from the roof of the entrance.  It's hard to see, but it's got a CFL bulb and looks distinctly cheesy.

   Stapleton's glory was finally ground out as the eighties dawned and the crack epidemic took hold.  The badness that had started when the breweries closed and the growth of newer shopping locations was accelerated.  Middle-class Stapleton families decamped to neighborhoods and states perceived as safer.
   By the mid-eighties, the long holding action fought by residents and community organizations such as the Stapleton Civic Association and the Stapleton LDC, proved fruitless.  Though they had scored notable successes in refurbishing Tappen Park, including building the gazebo, they were unable to stave off darkness.  One by one shops closed and were replaced with lower quality ones or not at all.

 
   A composite of shots from about 1990, this picture leaves out the OTB to the left.  111 Water Street, the almost featureless building between the bar and the Discount Center, is Beth Israel's methadone clinic.  That as much as crack was part of the narcotic stake through Stapleton's heart.
   Later there was a pawn shop.  Between those various establishments it was some sort of sadsack, one-stop shopping strip.  
 

Just Some Quick Then and Now Stapleton Shots

Stapleton was the neighborhood I grew up in and still have a great affinity for even if there's little reason for me to spend much time there anymore. When I was a kid I lived in the library and we regularly shopped in the numerous stores around Tappen Park and along Broad Street up to Targee Street. There was the "Store of a Million Items" and "John's Bargain Store". There was "Wright Toy and Hobby" on Wright
Street and a Chinese restaurant on the second floor of the building next to "Woolworths" (which itself had a great luncheon counter where I always got a filet of fish sandwich without tartar sauce).


Woolworths vs. OZ - Woolworth's closed its American stores in 1997 ending an era of five and dime stores that dated to 1878. I bought so many books, models and other stuff there right up until the end. There were those kids rides where for a quarter a horse or firetruck bounces around sort of aimlessly and gumball machines.



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Later my mother started her long career of community activism in Stapleton with first "The Friends of Stapleton Library" and then the "Stapleton Civic Association" She and the equally late Helen Pose worked hard and often thanklessly to try and stave off the economic death of their town and get the merchants and residents to pitch in.



In 1979 or so she founded the "Stapleton Local Development Corporation", got grant money and got herself and three staffers paid to do the same things on a full time basis. For four years she worked hard at it only to get pushed out by a the head of the board of directors who put his girlfriend in my mom's place. Within a few years that woman messed things up and there were questions of impropriety and badly managed funds. Later directors (as my mother had moved on to way too many other things and the merchants of Stapleton had proven unwilling to make any real efforts to save their community) were better but the group eventually fell moribund and was absorbed into the still vibrant St. George/Tompkinsville LDC.

The only real testimony to the efforts of my mothers and the other "community organizers" of Stapleton back in the seventies and eighties is the beautifully designed brick sidewalks and gazebo at Tappen Park. Recently the park was renovated by the NYC Park's Department but there's none of the foot traffic of the past or the huge fall festivals and flea markets my mother and friends organized and held up through the mid-eighties.

Gazebo and Sidewalks - The beautiful building in the background is the remaining one of two village halls built as local municipal centers. It housed my mother's LDC and Community Board One and several other groups until the District Attorney's office took it over eleven or so years ago. They wanted to be closer to the court house and the public was deprived of a beautiful historic building.

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Chase Bank - This is where my family banked once we moved to Stapleton in 1969




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Staten Island Savings Bank (or whatever it's called these days) - I never went inside this magnificent classically styled building until a few years ago. You should do so and marvel at its beautiful interior and the sanctity and security of banking it was intended to convey.






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