HYLAN Boulevard in Staten Island, the longest road on the island not an expressway (though Richmond Avenue may have challenged it before its northern end was renamed Port Richmond Avenue in the 1970s) has the distinction of beginning and ending at two 17th-century houses: Clear Comfort (the Alice Austen House) (1690) and the Billipp (Conference) House (1680). On an October 2025 trip to Tottenville I squeezed off some photos of the latter, but I also got some photos of the seaside pavilion where the Arthur Kill meets Raritan Bay.
A succession of such pavilions has been in place here since 1934, and all have been named for local Tottenville World War I casualtyAlmer Russell. The original pavilion was razed after years of disrepair in the 1960s, and so I did not see it during my Tottenville visits in the 1970s and 1980s. I first began taking the bus from St. George in the 70s when the far end of Staten Island was still semirural with small towns dotted here and there. It’s a shame that my Forgottening with a camera did not truly begin in earnest till the 1990s, by which time much of the area had been built up.
A second Almer Pavilion was built in 2002, but a decade later, Hurricane Sandy made quick work of it after similar deterioration and it was subsequently demolished. This, the third Almer Russell Pavilion, was opened in the late 2010s. It’s a beautiful spot to view the water, but like many of the newer public works, it was built without seats to deter lingerers and camera toting skulkers, like me.
I’ll get to work on that Tottenville post sometime soon which will include more views from here.
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4/27/26