Jersey Street Projects Project: Part Six - east side of Henry Street

Recently, I've become interested in the infamous tenement collapse on New Street in the summer of 1937. This New Street wasn't the one in Port Richmond, instead it was a little dead end street off of Jersey Street roughly where the entrance to 81 Jersey Street is today. It was a horrible disaster, killing 19 people, and I'll write more about it in the future.

Right now, I'm putting together pictures of the buildings that were down in the valley between Jersey Street and Westervelt Avenue. New Street, Henry Street, and James Street, all no longer in existence, were situated below the level of Jersey Street. That was part of the reason the tenement collapsed, their basements having filled up with over ten feet of water during a torrential downpour.

Henry Street ran north from Cleveland Street to James Street, behind 131 and 151 Jersey Street. Between the maps and the photos are 23 years. In that time, several of these buildings were constructed and several more vanished - whether from demolition or fire, I have no way of telling. There's a little more of a ramshackle quality to a few of these buildings than the vanished streets of Stapleton and West New Brighton. As I've written before, I think it's due to the greater age of the neighborhood, but I'm only guessing.

this building is actually 51-61

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Ten - Meadow Street between Gordon and Patten Streets, McKeon between Gordon and Patten, and Warren between Meadow and McKeon

A typical backstreet block, a mix of commerical and residential with a definite worn-out appearance. Even with my antipathy toward urban renewal and dislike of housing projects that pack people together like rats, these pictures show a pretty run down neighborhood. If this is what it looked like in the late thirties, I imagine twenty years only made it worse. Between the publication of the map (1917) and the photos (ca. 1940), several lots became vacant, not, I'd wager, a sign indicative of good neighborhood health.

When I see people, especially kids, in these pictures, I love it. They add a dimension of life to them that make it easier to imagine these lost place alive again. Then I realize these kids are in their eighties at least - if they're still alive.

The Stapleton Projects Project - Part Eight

Moving west along Tompkins Street, we reach between Patten and Clarke Streets. The southside was actually featured in the very first Stapleton Projects Project last year. A mix of commercial and residential buildings, it's typical of the backstreets I've looked at so far.

The northside is mostly residential, but there is the cool looking luncheonette with the Pepsi Cola sign on it. Also, lurking overhead to the right is Horrmann Castle high atop Grymes Hill. 

Today I took my first trip to the new Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor today and learned a terrible bit of backstreets history. Apparently, during the New York City Draft Riots in 1863, white Islanders attacked black residents of McKeon Street. McKeon Street was the original name for Tompkins Street. Nice to know Staten Island got to play its part in one of the city's most ignominious events.

Southside of Tompkins Street between Patten and Clarke Streets, pts. 1, 2, and 3

Northside of Tompkins Street between Patten and Clarke, 

pts. 1 and 2

1917 map showing locations of buildings

Let It Begin! - Stapleton Projects Project Part One - Lost Stapleton

I mentioned on Facebook in the group North Shore Staten Island Stuff about my hope of recreating the neighborhoods lost to the construction of the various NYCHA housing projects across the North Shore in the early sixties. Because it's my home, because I'm getting reinvolved in community affairs, I'm starting with Stapleton.

The backstreets of Stapleton, over ten blocks of detached homes, small apartments, and a few commercial operations were demolished in order to build the Stapleton Houses. They were completed in 1962 and are the largest public housing complex on Staten Island with over 2,000 tenants.

While the area had some buildings in poor condition, there is no way it could really be thought of as blighted. But the city is its infinite wisdom decreed it so and up went the terraced towers that still loom over Broad Street today.

As I learn more I'll speak more about the nature of what was there in the region bounded by Broad, Tompkins, Hill, and Warren. For now, I'm just going to start putting up pictures.
Caveat - These pictures are from the WPA property photos and were taken between 1939 and 1941. Things may have drastically changed over the ensuing twenty years before the projects were built.

Tompkins Street btw Patten (Custer) and Clarker

(make sure you click on the pictures to enlarge them)

1917 map

1917 map smaller scale

So there's the first round of lost homes and businesses. I'm not sure I can ever quite forgive the mid-century urban planners who thought they could "fix" cities by destroying existing neighborhoods and packing people into high rises.