portrichmond

Future Star Studios, Post Avenue near Jewett, and (left) unusual pizzeria sign.

A newish Heberton Avenue building has a plaque recognizing the founder of the resident treatment facility.

CONTINUED FROM PART ONE


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Two blocks east of Port Richmond Avenue, its namesake neighborhood's main shopping street, you find Heberton Avenue, one of New York's hidden gems of preserved late 19th century architecture. The gems here reflect Port Richmond's former status of commercial pre-eminence. Veterans Park, a town green between Park and Heberton Avenues and Bennett Street, overlooks a Carnegie Library and an A-framed house best described as a fantasy. Intriguingly, until the mid-20th Century Heberton was Herberton, with an extra "r."

Port Richmond was a transportation hub for decades; horsecar, trolley and bus lines fed traffic to Bergen's Ferry Landing, where boats crossed the Kill Van Kull to Bayonne. Manufacturing centered along Richmond Terrace, then as now, an industrial strip.

LEFT: 121 Heberton Avenue: This residence, constructed by carpenter-builder James G. Burger around 1859-61, is a rare surviving example in New York City of a picturesque villa in Rustic style. Notable features include the handsome bracketed door and window surrounds and the cross-gabled roof with overhanging eaves enriched with unusual braces. soon after its completion, this house passed to Captain John J. Housman,a prosperous oysterman and noted abolitionist. The house was leased to tenants until 1892 when it was acquired by Robert Brown, the owner of a neighboring saloon who held a number of offices in the Port Richmond government. The house remained in the ownership of the Brown family until the 1940s. info: nyc.gov

RIGHT: cottage from the same era at Ann Street and Park Avenue.


		Port Richmond's library, here in 1905 view just after it opened, is at Bennett and Heberton Avenues opposite Veterans Park. Funds from industrialist/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie were emloyed to fund it; Carrere and Hastings, builders of Staten Island's Borough Hall, were the architects. Other Carnegie libraries can be found throughout the city.
Old Public School 20 at Heberton and New Street was built in 1891 with an addition in 1898. It is the last clock-towered school building in Staten Island and is now a senior center.



	The stretch of Heberton Avenue between Ann Street and Post Avenue rivals St. Mark's Place in St. George, Wards Hill and St. Paul's Avenue in Stapleton for the variety and beauty of the dwellings you will find there. Too often, though, I found "for sale" signs on the front lawn. How many of these buildings will survive? Can any of them last beyond our era of cheap, multi-family houses?


		Heberton east of Castleton. This house belonged to one of the Deckers, a prominent Staten Island family.
Grace Methodist Church (now Faith United) at Heberton and Castleton Avenues, built 1897.


Attached brick houses, Heberton Avenue near Ann Street. Right: bluestone sidewalks and white picket fences. The streets of heaven are lined with them.


	St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church stands at a bend in Jewett Avenue north of Post. The church was established in 1852 with the present building erected in 1901; note the accompanying churchyard. Jewett Avenue is named for early 19th Century whaler John Jewett, who became a wealthy linseed oil manufacturer.

Is the party over...for aficionados of decent architecture in Port Richmond? Anonymous brick objects are appearing here, as well as in every other non-landmarked part of town.

Photographed in 2000, 2003 and 2005

erpietri@earthlink.net