Sad Ferries

As a native Staten Islander I grew up riding the ferry into Manhattan on a regular basis. Whenever relatives descended on us from New England we'd take them to the museums and shopping and all sorts of touristy jazz. I rode them with my father to see the three real Star Wars movies at the Loew's Astor. Later I took them to college and to work.

The names of those boats still echo in my head: the American Legion, the Gov. Lehman, and the Cornelius Kolf and the Pvt. Merrell. These last two were decommissioned in 1986 and converted into prison barges. Finally they were simply sold for scrap and ripped apart.

USS Mahan

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Built in 1936 in Mariner's Harbor, Staten Island. The USS Mahan, (DD-364) was the first of the seventy-five destroyers built at the Bethlehem Steel Works. She had a life of only eight years and seems to have served the Navy and the country well. There was even a model made of her.

Bethlehem Steel in Mariner's Harbor

There was a period when Staten Island was an industrial town. In Mariner's Harbor, Bethlehem Steel built destroyers during WW II. They closed up shop in the late fifties but several of the buildings still remain, converted to other uses or simply left to rot.


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The size of this shipyard was huge.


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Buildings on Davidson Street - rotted, rusting remnants


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Buildings at Andros and Richmond Terrace - the building on the extreme right's been converted into a mosque.

Cool Page - Staten Island Air Field

Just tooling around I found this cool looking site dedicated to lost or forgotten air fields and there's a page about State Island. Nifty.

Dom Deluise, RIP

Forever a sideman to Burt Reynolds and a minor player in things like "Sherlock Holmes Younger Brother", Dom Deluise was one funny, funny man. RIP

Here's the funniest clip from a not really good movie (but I did pay to see it at the old Hylan Movie Theater, I think) with him and Gilda Radner.

Lost Richmond Terrace

Last year in posting a picture of Richmond Terrace I realized that I was seeing a lost series of tenements and shops along it where it meets Jersey Street and the Richmond Terrace Projects are now located. There were also buildings along the water side of the Terrace now occupied by tall grass and bits of rubble.

Some later time I was asking my aunt about going to movie theaters when she was a kid and she remembered going to one down by Jersey Street with my grandmother in order to get something at some giveaway or another. Eventually taking her information and the various bits and pieces I'd come across this past year I determined that my aunt's theater was located on Richmond Terrace at the foot of Jersey Street.

A quick trip to the St. George Library and the WPA photo archive turned up the following pictures. From top to bottom there's the Star Theater and the shops to its left (west) along the Terrace circa 1939.

Here's what's there today -

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I'm sure there's a good reason for the loss of these buildings and the replacement of shops and homes with ant hive-like projects but all these years later I imagine the builders might have second thoughts.

A Belated Return - Missing Churches of Port Richmond

So last November and December I did several postings on the churches of Port Richmond. I chose the neighborhood because it's got the largest single collection of churches in any neighborhood on Staten Island that I'm aware of. The churches are also an interesting bunch of old, new and inbetween. Several have changed denomination and most have seen some sort of demographic shift as the borough and Port Richmond in particular have changed over the past forty years.

Unfortunately, I left a some out. One was recently shown as a "lost church" and the other I just forgot about at the time. Unfortunately, I also never posted a picture of the original building used by the Norwegian Lutherans (later Zion Lutheran) for their Sunday school before forming a full congregation and church and now I've discovered it's been torn down. Oh, well.


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Mt. Calvary Holy Church - Dubois Avenue (behind the Castleton Depot)
This was the original location of the El Bethel Assembly of God (that means Pentecostal) now located on Jewett by Victory Blvd.



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Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
Last month I put up a picture of this, the present church, and the pretty little Mediterranean one long gone a replace with the parish school's parking lot.

ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! revisited

So I'm just a great, big, doofus, dummyhead. Or some such listing of adjectives denoting my idiocy. The pictures didn't upload because I made the original scans too big. Blogger handles up to 8mbs and they're something like 22. It always pays to actually look at what you're trying to do and not just assume it's going to work out OK.

Gettysburg

Little and Big Round Tops

Last week the luminous Mrs. V and I took a short trip down to Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The primary goal was to see the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields and we accomplished that. We'd wanted to take a run through Baltimore but rainy weather made us decide to drive down to Harper's Ferry for a quick look and then head home through the mountains, down in Harrisburg and then home on 78.

We went first to Gettysburg and the weather was perfect - comfortably warm and a sunny sky. We spent the money for the museum, movie (Sam Waterson now sounds like a crazy monkey when he plays Lincoln) and cyclorama. Then, in our trusty silver Honda Fit, we took the self-directed tour around the most of the battlefield (we got hungry and skipped on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge).


The field of Pickett's Charge from the Confederate perspective

Alongside the southern face of Little Round Top we got parked and hiked west and through the Devil's Den and then came back and up the western, exposed face of Little Round Top.



















Devil's Den and looking at Little Round Top from the west

From there we drove north along where the Union center was located, stopping at the Pennsylvania State Memorial and finally at the Copse of Trees.

Referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy", this was where a few elements of Pickett's Charge broke through the Union center for a few moments before being stopped.
It's also where the 111th New York Regiment, was located. That was the unit served in by my great-great grandfather, John F. Robinson and presumably the point from which he killed several Confederate soldiers.

The most heart stopping thing about walking old battlefields is the eventual realization that the pretty landscape your touring was covered with blood and shattered men. It's a struggle to picture the green hills of southern Pennsylvania covered with 150,000 men and the fields shrouded by gun smoke and the constant ear shattering sounds of cannon fire, but it does come.

ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Pictures won't upload to blogger. I actually have things to post today. Arrgghhh!!!

Well this made me sad.

Dog braves Staten Island traffic to guard dead companion

WPA Photo Project

Yesterday I was able to make some time and spend a few hours looking at the microfiche of the WPA photos of all the block and lots on Staten Island, circa 1939.
I was unable to find the exact pictures I went there looking for (I need to do a little more prep work beforehand next time) but I did end up with a great collection of pictures from various areas of the North Shore. Hopefully tonight will see me get them scanned, posted and annotated.

More Lost Churches of the North Shore

The original St. Adalbert on Morningstar Road. I know several people who feel the new church is cold and normally I think I'd agree but for some unfathomable reason I don't. I only went to one Mass there and it was a funeral but for some reason the church worked.



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Original Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Castleton and Clove - Today the church site is a parking lot and the new church (a boxy, sixties thing) sits on the north side of Castleton Avenue a block or so away.


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Lost Churches of Staten Island

I've alluded to, and even posted about, several of the North Shore's lost churches. These are the ones that time and tide have overcome and been replaced or simply forgotten as their congregations move away. I hope to find more pictures next week in the archives but for now these should prove interesting.



The original St. Paul's Catholic Church in New Brighton on Clinton Avenue - this beautiful Italiante church was replaced with a modern and boxy one, presumably in the sixties. Recently it has been essentially merged with the Assumption on the other side of New Brighton and switches Sundays back and forth for the celebration of the Mass.


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Original Episcopal Church of St. Simon on Clove Road
This little wooden Episcopal church was demolished to make way for either the highway or the lead on for the Verrazano (I can't remember which). It too was replaced with a (at least externally) soulless little piece of sixties architecture.





Original Episcopal Church of the Ascension - Richmond Terrace near Alaska Street
I've written about this gorgeous old church before and I was very happy to come across this new (to me) picture of it from a different perspective. The page I glommed the pictured from said that the church burned down in 1946 and the building to the right(most likely the rectory) is still in use by Rogers Surveying.
The replacement is actually a pretty building tucked away alongside the far reaches of Clove Lakes Park on Kingsley Avenue




Randall Memorial Church in Snug Harbor - I don't know the exact dates of this church's destruction but I think it was mid-twentieth century. It fell into disrepair and was crumbling. Instead of renovating and saving it the trustees demolished it.



Original Episcopal St. Paul's Church on St. Paul's Avenue and Paxton - This small wooden church was replaced by the beautiful stone church on the other side of St. Paul's Avenue

Notes

So I haven't posted all that much lately. Partly it's been because of various home and other commitments but it's mostly because I've tapped much of the easy stuff available on the web. I need to spend quality time at the SI Historical Society and the SI Museum and start going through their photo archives. I'll probably start that next week and get some of the up pretty soon thereafter.

Yesterday on my way home from Queens (with the luminous Mrs. V. driving) I found my eyes drawn to every cross topped spire and church belltower. I knew the ecclesiastical architecture of the city was tremendous and pervasive but I don't think I ever really understood how so. Sure we think of St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine but there are so many amazing and beautiful churches all over the city. They may not have the size or history of those two building but they serve as beautiful reminders of Christian endeavor. They also serve as road maps back along New York's changing demographics. In Manhattan, numerous neighborhood synagogues are now Spanish language Pentecostal churches and the same in Brooklyn holds true for many old mainline Wasp and Scandinavian churches.

Some Architectural Finds

Clinton Avenue near Prospect Avenue







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Van Duzer Street - just north of Beach Street


This house, once owned by someone known as R.M. Hazard, date to at least 1874 and probably before that. The surviving house is the one on the right. The left has been replace with stores. There's a plaque on the exterior of the remaining home but I don't have the information at hand. Maybe later (don't I always write that?).


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The Theaters of Stapleton Revisited

I posted a request for photos of the North Shore on the Stapleton section of the SILive Forums. Based on previous experiences with some of the racist invective spewed there I was less than optimistic. Fortunately, while I received no new photos or leads, I was provided with some great information. Here are the posts I received in reply to my photo request:


771.2. Richmond Theater by baystcarm, 2/22/09 15:38 ET
Re: Looking for Photos by Fletchav, 2/22/09
was right across the street from old PS 14 school yard. I watched it burn down in the late 40s. The back was the corner of Thompson/WrightSt. Down on the corner of Wright/Canal..the store was a Ralston store.The Rex looks great in that photo..in the 40s it was the cheapie place with cowboys buckrogers,serials. burned thru films. I think it was 11 cents to get in.

771.4. Memory Lane by JimEG, 2/24/09 10:14 ET
Re: Looking for Photos by Fletchav, 2/24/09
Boy, some of those old photos brought back some long forgotten memories. I went to the old PS 14 from 1945 thru '49 and I remember the old theater across the street. My dad worked there as an usher in the 1930's. I think it was a storehouse for beer kegs from the old R&H brewery before the fire. As for the other pics, I loved the churchs, especially the old Unitarian church in Snug Harbor where I was married to my first wife in 1971.

There was also a comment by the creator of SIMemories that I linked to in the very beginning of my Staten Island postings.

Richmond Theater - Stapleton

Here's a lovely colored postcard of the Richmond Theater on Wright Street.


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Stapleton, Yet Again

I've put up lots of pictures of Stapleton, and particularly the Tappen Park area, so I figured I might as well put up some more. Down at the heels as it was when I was growing up, it was still a great shopping district with places to eat and even see a movie. Once, though, it was a true town with its own industrial employers, lots of working class housing and several theaters, not just the long-past-its-sell-by-date Paramount. So here we go, limited as usual by the good graces of the NYPL's Digital Collection to the first third of the last century.



The Palace Theater, sw corner of Wright and Canal Streets - March 23, 1930


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This building is new. When I was growing up the upstairs of the previous building held the notorious "Golden Cue" pool hall and later the relocated "Wright Toy Store". Later it held "Ross Cosmetics". The theater, though, was long gone even when I was little.



The Rex Theater, sw corner of Wright and Canal Streets - October 4, 1936




The Richmond Photoplay Theater - April 12, 1929


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I don't remember what existed on the lots before those cheap looking townhouses. Maybe there's an old photo kicking around my mother's stuff.


Rubsam and Horrmann Brewery - Broad Street between Wright and Cedar Streets - March, 1930

Even when I was little and it had been closed for several years, the great industrial pile dominated Stapleton's skyline. Just a few blocks away, Demyan's Hofbrau House was housed in another vast, defunct brewery.

When the decayed and rat/bum infested brewery came down, my mother and her cohorts pushed hard for a park to go with the houses built along the back of the property. All they got was a weed choked lot with some benches. Thank you Mayor Koch.


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Further up Broad Street were more stores. When I was little there was a model store, Gelgeisser's Hardware and Miller's Pharmacy (still there). In the photo's right you can see the buildings torn down to build the Stapleton Projects. My supervisor's family was kicked out of their apartment because of that undertaking.


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Some Comparison Shots

Here are a series of pictures and their matching googlemaps shots that just happened to catch my eye. I'm sorry I haven't been posting too much lately. Facebook has been a drain on my posting time and I need to get to the St. George Library to get some decent new postable stuff.




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