SOMETIMES historic buildings are hiding in plain sight. Take this unassuming two-story house on Woodrow Road and Rossville Avenue, in an area that has gone from rural to suburban to nearly urban in my lifetime. Even now, this house lacks a sidewalk in front of it. You can tell, though, that it’s older than the attached tract housing that populates much f Rossville now. The building is in a subneighborhood of Rossville known as Sandy Ground, founded by New York City’s first community of free blacks, oystermen who moved north from the Maryland shore to work then-burgeoning oyster beds along the Staten Island shore. There are still a number of descendants of those settlers residing in Woodrow and Rossville today. After the water became too polluted in the 1910s, the oyster beds were condemned, and many residents moved away. Yet, the community’s unique identity was able to persist until the 1960s and 1970s, when suburban sprawl, bringing the anonymity that is increasingly pervading Staten Island’s south shore, began to take over the area. The Sandy Ground Historical Society, 1538 Woodrow Road at Lynbrook Avenue, exhibits letters, photographs, film, art, quilts and rare books, all collected from area homes over the past few decades, in its collection.
This building, known as the Coleman-Gray House, it was constructed in the 1850s and is one of historic Sandy Ground’s oldest houses.
It is unclear when the Coleman-Gray House was originally constructed, although it is identified on one of the earliest surviving maps of the area, from 1859. It was occupied at that time by Ephraim Bishop, who arrived from Maryland in 1851. The house was purchased by Isaac Coleman and his wife Rebecca Gray Coleman when he came to Sandy Ground to serve as pastor of the Rossville A.M.E. Zion Church in 1864. Although Isaac Coleman probably lived in the house only one year, the building has been in the possession of descendants of Rebecca Gray Coleman since that time. The house was likely built as a 1 ½ story structure, with a single room on each story. The shed roof addition to the east, probably used as a kitchen, was added at some point early in its existence and the two-story, two-bay addition was made on the western side, possibly sometime around the Coleman’s purchase. It is likely that the most recent section of the house, the two-story section on the western side, was added during the late 1880s to accommodate a growing extended family. Throughout this time, the basic form of the house has remained, although these later additions have enlarged the space. More recently, the house has been sided with contemporary materials and the window sash replaced. Its massing, fenestration pattern and siting on a large lot helps it stand out in this recently-developed part of Staten Island and its survival is a remarkable and rare reminder of this very early African-American community. Landmarks Preservation Commission Designation
More from Sandy Ground on this FNY page.
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1/30/25