Tidewater Staten Island

1280 Richmond Terrace, 1931

   This simple and attractive house sits on the sharp bend in Richmond Terrace at the foot of Pelton Avenue.  The lot in the right of the picture has over the years been used as storage for bundles of wood as well as heavy equipment.  Once, though, it was a gas station, specifically a "Tydol" station.  I'd never heard of it so of course I looked it up.  Click on the link and you can learn about it too.  Then you'll have that going for you.

Same house, today

   The house, sans porch, doesn't otherwise look all that changed.  A fence has replaced the hedges, though with the increased traffic on the Terrace that would seem to be sensible.  The trees now tower over the house and the Captain's House behind it is hid from view.  

A Mansion in West New Brighton

618 Delafield Avenue, July, 1932  

   Described as a mansion on the NYPL site, this once ornate home sits on Delafield Avenue near Clove Road.  Like so many beautiful older houses it has suffered the fate of being sided and stripped of all its unique touches.  The shutters, original columns and corbels have all been lost to time.  Still, there's hope the inside has been preserved.

Details of central roof section

Small Churches - part 1

  For those in the know, this blog's Staten Island focus started with big ideas regarding something I called "the Church Project".  I was going to document and get photos and histories for all the older churches on the North Shore.  Never happened.  Still, it's something that lurks in the back of my head and surfaces from time to time.  Here's something I'm calling "Small Churches - part 1".

   Not far from my house are two little churches, one with an interesting cultural history and the other with an interesting congregational history.  

Bethel Temple Church

  I knew that Jersey Street once had Italians, Chinese, Jews and Germans.  I didn't know it also Norwegians.  This little church on Hendricks Avenue right off of Jersey Street was, according to Leng and Davis, originally the St. Olaf Norwegian Church.  Who knew?

Bethel Community Church

  This small church, located near the end of Van Duzer Street where it meets Bay Street, is only from 1940 or so but had a significantly longer history.  This past spring they celebrated their 115th anniversary and had their stretch of the street named in honor of Bishop C. Asapansa Johnson.

  According to "Holden's Staten Island", the congregation was founded in 1896 on Targee Street, incorporated as the Bethel African American Methodist Church in 1909 and in 1917 was located at 110 Van Duzer Street.  In 1940 the congregation built and dedicated the present building, also on Van Duzer Street.

   In the 40s the church became independent from the denomination under the leadership of its pastor, Rev. Coma Asapansa Johnson.  I've learned a little about him and he appears and interesting figure.
   He came to the US from Sierra Leone and was the first black chaplain in the FDNY.  I also know my sister's 8th grade teacher at the late Trinity Lutheran School was named after him.

   Someday I'd love to see history of all the strands of African-American history on the Island.  One can only hope.

A Haunted House

  One of the games I play (in my head) is deciding whether or not a particular house might be haunted.  Sometimes it's an easier call to make than others.  This one - no question - haunted.  It even had a cat sitting guard on the front porch.

Driving from Tompkins Avenue to the south, it emerges thru the trees

From the curb in front it looms large, filled with menace

Finally, pulling away towards Bay Street, looking back over your shoulder it towers above you

   The house is on Townsend Street, part of a once beautiful section of Clifton with many large, stately homes.  They once existed in the shadow of the Vanderbilt estate.  

It was owned by someone named Farrington in 1874

   Today, like South Avenue in Mariners' Harbor, many of the larger homes have been demolished and replaced with rows of fairly ugly townhouses.

Cornices and Corbels

  So we (the luminous Mrs. V. and I) bought a decent Canon camera this summer and I intend to use it to revitalize this site and help out those folks suffering from slowness with the google street views.  These are just some shots of attractive details from my immediate neighborhood.  There's probably a way to tell what firm made which corbel but it's presently beyond me.  If you know anything let me know something.

frieze below the corbels

corbels on brick

who was P. Mart?

cat adorned corbels

click to see the cat better

between the two corbels are little bits called dentils

   So there you go, folks.  A return of Ape Shall Not Kill Ape and some pleasant decorative architecture from the Hamilton Park area.

Delafield Place

69 Delafield Place - btw Davis and Bard Avenues - 1931

   This beautiful stone house is the centerpiece of a hidden treasure (well not so much anymore), Delafield Place.  From other information it seems to have been built around 1840.  The NYPL digital collection indicates that in 1898 it had belonged to someone named Voorhis.  A good Dutch name, I like that.

   They leave out that it is the Elliott house of Elliott houses.  It was the actual home of  Dr. Samuel MacKenzie Elliott himself.  He built almost two dozen stone homes across the North Shore, including the present parsonage of Our Savior Lutheran Church and St. Mary's Episcopal Church.


View Larger Map

   Today, though bereft of the ivy, the house remains pretty unchanged.  The home to its right is still there though thoroughly obscured by the trees.  To its left, however, only a few years back, a rundown but attractive enough old home was torn down and four unpleasant townhouses put in its place.  Not only are they ugly, but they look seriously out of place across the street from Walker Park.

Delafield Avenue - just another pretty house

587 Delafield Avenue (off Broadway), August 1932

   Delafield Avenue is an interesting street.  Like West New Brighton overall it runs the gamut from beautiful to  fairly shambolic.  This house is on the stretch between Broadway and Elizabeth and that piece of Delafield has a bit of both.  There are homes in beautiful states of maintenance, a few looking to fall to bits and some that have been repaired oft seen mix of lousy brick facing and cheap siding.

   I think the house above, listed in 1932 as belonging to the Gordon family, is one of the nicer ones.  Still, I don't like the replacement of the screening on the front porch with year-round windows, even with the added porch.  The loss of contrast between the window frames and the support posts causes their inward angle to be lost to the eye and that's one of the nice touches about the house as originally built.  Also, the siding over what appears to be stucco is disappointing.  Still, it's a nice house, a nice house.


             
View Larger Map

They Took My Thumb

Erie-Lackawanna tugboat, Richmond Terrace and Bement Avenue

   My grandfather, the late Holger Anderson, was many things in his life; subway tunnel digger, LIE tree cutter, brass foundry worker, carpenter, floor scraper and other things.  By the time I was born he was exclusively a floor scraper, in fact, one of the best around.  Not long before I was born, though, he had still been a carpenter.

   As a carpenter he work for the Erie-Lackawanna Railway at a boatyard they maintained at the foot of Bement Avenue and Richmond Terrace.  He primarily worked repairing the wooden barges used by the railroad to shunt car around the harbor.  He had started in the yard working for Bethlehem Steel but at ome point the railroad took over and he ended up with a pension from them.

  As a railroad carpenter my grandfather worked with huge circular saws.  They had all sorts of safety guards and things to keep the users safe.  He also used little handheld saws.   With one of them he took off his thumb one day.

  Supposedly he stuck the severed digit into his pocket and drove up to St. Vincent's Hospital.  It was the early sixties so reattachment didn't work.   Later in life he used the sharp little stump of his thumb to grab recalcitrant grandchildren.  It was very effective.

   He's been gone 23 years now and would have been 102.   Still miss him.



View Larger Map

SiTreasure

   I just came across a new (to me) site called SiTreasure.  It's run by Angela D'Aiuto, a real estate saleswoman and community activist.  She also has a blog called SiTreasure Blog but that hasn't been updated in months.  Still, the more the merry and the more information and pictures the better

Moving on to West New Brighton

Civil Courthouse at Castleton and Bement

   So, Rosebank turned out to be a bit of a bust. Not enough decent free pictures to put up for examination. I'm happy with the few I posted but it's time to move on.

   West New Brighton is a huge area. I've always put it from Lafayette to the Terrace to Clove Road to Forest Avenue. Within it are the small semi-neighborhoods of Randall Manor, Livingston, Sunset Hill (ok, that's not even a real semi-neighborhood, just a real estate designation) and Snug Harbor.

   There are stately old homes as well as city housing projects. It's population is Irish, African-American, German, Italian, Hispanic from all over, and too many people from too many other places to list.  It's a great place with great stores.  New Brighton (Cottage Hill in particular) may be my home but much of my business is done in West Brighton.

   Hopefully I'll be able to get more pictures of West New Brighton than I was of Rosebank.  I'll also try to get back to a little more regular posting again.  Thanks for the support and comments.
 

House built and owned by Dr. Elliot,
now Our Savior Lutheran's parsonage

Belair Road - Hidden Jewel in the Crown

Some might argue that Belair Road is really part of Shore Acres. Feh. For me, Shore Acres only includes that area between Bay Street and the water. I place this little traveled street squarely in the neighborhood of Rosebank.

Winter - looking southward from in front of 37 Belair Road - 1934


View Larger Map

25 Belair Road - 1934


View Larger Map

While the decorative supports for the porch roof have been lost a zoom in on it will show the beautiful scrollwork eaves have survived.

18 Belair Road - 1934


View Larger Map

Today the hedges have been allowed to grow over the columns standing astride the entrance walk and the tree in the front yard towers high above the roof of this quaint Mediterranean style house.

59 Belair Road - 1934


View Larger Map

Oddly unpainted but largely intact - sorry about the telephone pole









I'm finding I'm having a much tougher time creating posts about Rosebank that I thought I would. Most of my work is predicated on what I can find digging through NYPL's digital collection. While I'm finding numerous good shots of Rosebank's beautiful and often stately homes, I'm finding few images of the neighborhood's commercial structures.

Oh, there are a few specific shots, but most are like the stores I put up that were essentially background images on Rosebank's Tangled Backstreets. So far I'm having little luck with pictures showing Bay Street in its past glory which seems odd. I mean we're talking about a stretch of major road from Vanderbilt Avenue to at least Hylan Boulevard and I'm getting next to nothing. So there's a bunch of work I need to do and it means getting up off my rump and going to the St. George Library. Oh, well.

NY Daily News - Stapleton Article

Yesterday, the NY Daily News ran a nice article highlighting the best of Stapleton's beautiful homes. There were good pictures and information on Harrison Street and St. Paul's Avenue (the usual suspects). I can't find the link for it so if you want to see it you need to find your old copy.

There was also a mention of the city backed disaster about to start at the Homeport . Of all the things I dislike about the Napoleon of City Hall, regarding Staten Island, it's his killing of the movie studio planned for the Homeport that angers me the most. It was frowned on by the Giuliani people in EDC but it was the present mayor that murdered it for good.

Let's see, we have an already operating business that will employ people at high salaries who'll spend money in the area. But wait, it'll compete with studios in other boroughs. And the local developers want to get their hands on the land. What to do?

Instead we'll build an pointless mixed-use complex. When they can't fill or finish apartments or storefronts in St. George and Tompkinsville (where people really might want to live) do they really think this will succeed? That it will become a destination shopping district? It leaves me all very annoyed.

Rosebank's Tangled Backstreets

Reynolds Street, 1934 - looking east from Bell Street to St. Mary's Avenue

View Larger Map

To the southeast of the intersection of Tompkins Avenus and Hylan Boulevard is a near maze of narrow streets and old houses. It's a physically fascinating remnant of the sorts of old working class neighborhoods that have been vanishing since at least before I was born. Witness the disappearing bungalows of Midland Beach or the neighborhoods that once existed where the Stapleton or West Brighton Projects are today.

View Larger Map

White Plains Avenue from Bell Street, 1934

I first encountered this little section during a low speed chase between friends back in the mid-eighties. The car I was in quickly became lost but the Rosebank's labyrinth remains etched in my mind to this day.

View Larger Map

Pigeon Coops at the Northeast corner of Oak and Bell Streets, 1934

One of the things you find doing this is that once there were stores sprinkled throughout residential areas away from the more developed commercial areas. I can't tell what the store in the below picture's right is but the one on the left's awning appears to read "Italian Deli"

View Larger Map

Till next time, same Rosebank Time, same Rosebank Channel

Rosebank - A Place I Don't Know

When I was young, every Thursday night, my grandfather would take my mom and my aunt grocery shopping at the A&P in Rosebank. It was one of the biggest supermarkets on the North Shore at the time and my grandfather knew people working in the butcher shop. And that was about the extent of my interaction with the neighborhood.

The only other thing I knew was that it was Italian, and pre-bridge non-Brooklyn Italian at that. Giuseppe Garibaldi had lived there in 1850-1851 and his house was preserved as a museum.

Rosebank had a bad reputation as being a very insular and somewhat racist neighborhood. In 1988 a young black man named Derek A. Tyrus was hit and killed by a car while being chased by a gang of white guys. But that's 23 years ago.

It wasn't until I went to work for the Police Athletic League in 1995 and started driving all over the Island that I started becoming familiar with Rosebank. When I went to work for City Hall in the late 90's I really got to discover the neighborhood in greater detail and it's an easy place to love. There are quiet, tree lined streets, odd, little twisting back streets and large, commercial strips. Many beautiful older homes survive and their are three churches, elevated train tracks and old factory complexes, all side by side.

Today it's a much more integrated place. There has been a lot of commercial development along Bay Street and many of the beautiful older homes on Rosebank's sidestreets have been demolished and filled with the usual array of Staten Island attached nightmares.

So, here goes. In an effort to learn a little more about the place myself and for your edification I'm dedicating the next series of posts to Rosebank

Signage Remnants

Even the "new" sign doesn't look that new anymore

Like a beacon of decay towering over the avenue

I guess when a store is no longer an actual C H Martin it gets some of its letter taken away. Or that could just be a lack of concern about appearances

These folks still exist across the street

I've got nothing pithy

Posting Annoyance

Have some nice pictures to post and either CSI's wifi connection is busticated or blogger's acting all crazy like. Either way, no pictures right now. Maybe tonight.

Destination Port Richmond: Names, Dates, Friezes and Cornices