Zebra Place is a very short road in Rossville, running one block from Arthur Kill Road at the ancient Saint Lukes Cemetery one block east of Bloomingdale Road south to the West Shore Expressway. For me, though, it raises a couple of questions that perhaps only I would think about.
Zebra Place wasn’t always Zebra Place. It used to be the north end of Winant Avenue, which runs north from Woodrow Road. “Winant” is an old Staten Island name. There are the very short Winant Place and Lane in Charleston (Kreischerville), and a short Winant Street in Mariners Harbor. There had been a variant spelling, Winans Street, in Richmond Valley, but it seems to have been swallowed by the Mill Creek Bluebelt. As you may expect, the Winant family originated in Holland, with a Peter Winant, born in 1652, immigrating to the new world in the late 17th Century. In the Dutch tradition, one of his sons was named Winant, Winant Winant. There still may be Winants on the island, and the name can likely be found in the island’s many colonial-era graveyards.
Change came slowly to the southwest end of Staten Island but when it did, it came quickly. The West Shore Expressway connecting the Staten Island Expressway with the Outerbridge Crossing opened in stages between 1973 and 1978. When it was constructed through Rossville, it separated Winant Avenue, with a small bit left on its north end. That part became Zebra Place. Meanwhile, new tract housing went up all over the area beginning in the 1970s.
Why was it named for the Horse In Striped Pajamas? I have nothing official in my research. My guess is that a traffic engineer somewhere had a little kid, and on a whim left it up to the kid to decided what this small piece would be named, and the kid liked zebras. Other than that, I got nothing.
Now for the other mystery. As you can see in the photo above there’s only one building facing Zebra Place, numbered #388. If you look at Open Street Map, houses along the extant portion of Winant Avenue are numbered south to north and run from #391 at Correll to #583, at Veterans Road South. Between Woodrow Road and Correll Avenue there are only two Winant Avenue addresses, #117 and #125, at about Shiel Avenue. They may be two of the buildings shown in the Municipal Archives’ collection of Winant Avenue houses in 1940.
So: why is #388 Zebra, which used to be Winant, on a stretch of Winant that should be numbered in the 600s? Fortunately, there’s no #388 Winant in the extant section.
Thus, those are the mysteries of Zebra Place. Know anything? Comments are open. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
4/22/21
3 comments
You may be one of the only people to think about things like this, but I’m very glad you do. Your research is greatly
appreciated, especially in a place like Staten Island that is relatively unknown to many New Yorkers.
Spent the first 47 years of my life on Staten Island, and still learn something new from you Kevin! Bear with me, but I think I may have an answer: NYC records say 388 Zebra Place was built in 1905, but when I looked up aerial shots of the area from both 1924 and 1951, the house is not at that exact location. It doesn’t show up on aerial maps until those taken after the West Shore Expressway was built. That, and the fact that this very old house seems to have been plopped down in a highly industrial area at a very odd angle from the street itself, leads me to believe the house was moved to that location sometime during construction of the expressway in the 1970s, not an unusual practice on SI at the time. The #388 may have been the home’s original address on whatever street was wiped out by the expressway, maybe even nearby Poplar Avenue or the rump end of Barry Street. Since it’s literally the only house on the street, the post office likely would have no objection to numbering it as 388 (or whatever number the owner saw fit). Just a theory, but as good as any I think! As for the name “Zebra” the city planners/post office probably just picked an unused street name and ran with it.
Interesting…