In 1854, at about the same time that Henry Steinway Sr. was starting his piano empire, Balthazar Kreischer was building a brick factory in Charleston, Staten Island (Richmond County was then independent entity). Because of the clayey ground in the area (Clay Pond Park State Preserve is nearby), Kreischer’s was one of several brickmaking firms active in the period. Like Steinway, Kreischer constructed a small company town in this remote corner of Staten Island centered around Arthur Kill Road and Kreischer and Androvette Streets. The brick works employed almost 150 and produced 20,000 bricks per day. Kreischerville, as the town was known, was entirely self-contained, with a hotel (still standing at Androvette and Kreischer Streets, now a Knights of Columbus), church, grocery store and inn. The factory closed in 1927. In the aftermath of World War I, many German-sounding names were purged from New York City directories, and so Kreischerville became known as “Charleston.”
Public School 4, on Arthur Kill Road up the road from Killmeyer’s Old Bavaria Inn, is probably the edifice with the highest concentration of Kreischer brick in the area. It is still used by special education students. Immediately across the street is West Baptist Cemetery, with many interred members of the Storer family; the name also shows up on Storer Avenue. The cemetery was associated with the long-gone West Baptist Church, raised in 1847. Some of the stones have inscriptions in German.
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10/19/22