Guest post
PAUL SHARROTT
Staten Island Historian
I just came across an article in the New Yorker by Joseph Mitchell, published in1956 about him exploring along the southern part of Staten Island, namely the Sandy Ground community. This man is my alter ego for sure. I grew up in Sandy Ground and since the woods, lakes, turtles, abandoned houses etc. abounded there I became an avid explorer at age 6 and never stopped.
I don’t think there is one square foot of the whole of south end of Staten Island that I didn’t explore; from Sharrotts Road to the Outerbridge Crossing, my footprints are there. One day in 1956 at age ten I was walking from PS4 on Arthur Kill Road on a shortcut path that my brothers and I forged using an old rusty hand held sickle that we found. The path was still very dense and would get overgrown every summer. I had never seen anybody on that pathway since it didn’t really go anywhere usable to anyone else but us Sharrotts, but on this particular day a man came through the woods just ahead of me and actually startled me. I stopped and stepped to the side halfway hidden by some brush and watched from a distance, ready to bolt away if necessary. He was looking closely at the flora and I noticed that he was breaking pieces off and even smelling the wood.
I knew every neighbor living in the area but never saw this man before. I know now that it was in fact Joseph Mitchell.
I was then and to this day I am still an explorer. I had to explore. It’s in my DNA. After all, that’s how and why the Sharrotts came to Staten Island around 1685. I just had to find out why there were deep holes dug in our woods between Sharrotts Road and Claypit Road. I wanted to know why there were huge piles of oyster shells all over the place in the woods.
Who were the Native American Indians whose arrow points I found and collected all through the fifties? Of course I wanted to know why the road just parallel to the road I lived on, Claypit Road, had the same name as my surname, Sharrott.
My explorations led me to find many interesting and sometime very scary, even controversial things, some that to this day are secrets kept safely in my memory bank. As they say, curiosity killed the cat and yes, I was curious but it’s a good thing I’m not a cat. I was shot at three times back then in the fifties. (Yes, they missed.) Once in 1953 while walking through the woods on a pathway heading towards Arthur Kill Road from Claypit Road I came across a very old, very creepy and seemingly abandoned two story farm house with several outbuildings that even back then were rotted to the ground.
As I got closer a strange man quickly stepped out with a shotgun and took aim while yelling something I could not understand at the time. I was probably three hundred feet away when I heard the gun go off, I was already at a dead run heading back the way I had come. I heard the pellets hitting the trees. I made it home safely. I was seven years old and now more curious than ever, so I went back several times at night and we went back one night with my older brother Howard and peeked into a window at the side of the house. There was one kerosene lantern lit in the room and an old truck parked in front of the house. Howard went back about a year later after we learned that the FBI had raided that old house in 1954 and took a photo.
Above is probably the only known photo of the “Still House”.
Turns out that it was the largest still yet operating on the entire east coast and we could actually smell the fumes of fermentation from our house on Claypit Road but never realized where it was coming from. My curiosity brought me back a dozen times after the raid and the house was now abandoned for sure. The still was huge. The people who operated it in that two story farmhouse with a full basement had cut out the floor so that the still would sit on the basement floor and reach all the way up to the second floor. As I said, it was huge. It was also riddled with machine gun bullet holes in neat rows from side to side and top to bottom which the FBI did to render it useless. It was for sure useless now. All around the basement were piles and piles of burlap sacks of hops and barley used in the fermenting process and rats were all over.
I explored that house from basement up and into the attic through a manhole cut into the ceiling in the upstairs bedroom on the right side of the second floor at the top of the stairs.
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1/22/24
24 comments
Paul, thank you for sharing these memories of your youth. You have caused me to think back to the 1950’s and 1960’s as a kid growing up in Whitestone, in Queens, as development was taking what open space remained between Whitestone and Flushing and College Point. We didn’t have folks with private distilleries in abandoned buildings, but we did have other abandoned buildings and lots of new construction (where a kid could easily gain entry in those days).
When I was in elementary school I had a friend who lived just beyond Parkchester (my childhood home) on Benedict Avenue. He invited me to explore a vacant house right near the apartment building where his family lived. It was two stories high & it had a basement where we discovered old record albums which he began shattering. Eventually, we left & probably not a minute too soon as the 43rd police precinct was also located further along Benedict Avenue. In my senior year of high school, many of us had managed to acquire cars or at least had access to them. Someone told me about a “haunted house” in Yonkers; we formed a convoy to Yonkers & found the place. It was a large multi-story mansion, but it was also just about destroyed. However, it was a pleasant way to spend a spring afternoon about a month or so before graduation day in 1967.
Anonymous: I look forward to your explanation about abandoned but intact houses. Keep those memories & “theories” coming. “Ciao, for now”.
Probably the ATF if it was a Federal agency doing it. Anyhow, odd that it was still (no pun) in business two decades after the repeal of Prohibition. I suppose there were people in Staten Island and elsewhere that had developed a taste for the kind of booze that was being cooked at that illegal distilling operation.
Great story REDSTATEREFUGEE and Kudos to your friend who introduced you to that old house. There were many old “haunted” houses on the south end of Staten Island and I loved them all. Looking back I think it gave me a warm feeling of a home in the old days, like the 1800’s. Some of the old rotting structures had all the furnishings even dishes and pots and pans. I have a theory as to why which will come out in another nostalgic story down the road. Thanks for your interest.
Thanks, THEREALGUYFAUX for your comment. The neighborhood always thought it was the FBI and looking back I’m pretty sure it was some branch of the Treasury department. Elliot Ness is alive and well. LOL Anyway, I found out that the ATF wasn’t established until the ’70’s. Keep being curious. and best wishes in this new year.
We lived a couple of blocks from the old farm colony and seaview complex. My kids would explore the old buildings, especially in the seaview property. They found an old cemetary in farm colony, along with
the pumping station on Steers St, and old medical records and equipment just laying around. I finally forbad them from going back after a homeless man folowed them home.
I have been in the farm colony and abandoned seaview buildings once each. I havde also been to abandoned ruins in Willowbrook and Latourette Parks.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Moonshine.Wouldnt it be easier to just buy some Everclear or
something at the store?Probably safer too.Less chance of lead poisoning.More time to spend with
your family.
Or if you want to DIY it there’s always Pruno, the choice of prison inmates for decades. All it takes is canned fruit, sugar cubes, ketchup, warm water, and of course some time.
Chris. My thoughts exactly. I suppose they just wanted to circumvent all the taxes on alcohol. Thank you so much for your interest and your comment. Take care, Paul Sharrott
Unless it was “the Recipe,” made by the little old ladies on The Waltons? 😉
“The way WE make it, it’s more like ‘sunshine’…”
“Our late father was a judge, you see, and he assured us our product was ‘medicinal’– we were doing the distilling following advice of counsel…”
Paul is my dad. I grew up hearing about all his adventures growing up on Staten Island. Great memories he has of all his adventures exploring the woods and old abandoned houses.
We should all have a drink at Killmeyers.
I’ll explore a old warehouse or factory any day but wont go near a house.Theres just something
gross about a place where people have lived especially the kitchen.Like looking at the inside of
a used coffin stained by leaking body fluids.
Is that house still there now?
No
What went up in its place?
The best I can tell from arial phoos is that there is a parking lot for school busses and several commercial businesses. No more woods to explore/ Grrrrrrrrrr Everything is built up now since the 50’s. I am retired to San Diego now but hope to visit the island this summer. Thank you for your interest and response.
Great fun, thanks for the article! I am sooooo intrigued as to where exactly that house was. PS 4 has been renamed IS 25, but otherwise the old brick campaigner is still holding strong, with what looks like a new addition being constructed (as per Google Maps; I’ve decamped to Los Angeles, so can’t see it myself). The South Shore of Staten Island is NYC’s true small southern town, in a Confederate States sort of way. The still story doesn’t shock me at all.
Hi Edward, That house has been replaced by some commercial buildings and a school bus parking lot since the 50’s but if we ever met face to face I could show you exactly where it was on a map, especially an ariel view. Thanks so much for your interest and comment. Take care. Paul Sharrott. As for Old PS4, it has gone through a couple of transitions since I graduated 8th grade in 1960. Would love to buy it and make a B & B out of it. LOL.
Wonderful stories about New York’s forgotten borough! I never got as far south as Tottenville, but our Scout troop used to go camping at Camp Pouch. It was quite an adventure for us Brooklyn kids, and only a ferry ride and a couple of busses away! I made the same commute to go to college, and then The Gangplank opened, reducing my travel time, and changing Staten Island forever…
Thanks for the great comments Bill. Yes, it was wonderful growing up in the “woods” as a kid. Miss it a lot. Take care and keep camping.
I grew up hearing these stories and they are so cool to recount! Thanks for sharing!