Staten Island

FOR the first time in several years, I made my way south to Tottenville, New York State’s southernmost “town” (actually a neighborhood in NYC), on a very warm 80+-degree afternoon…

THE only zoo in the city that is not operated by the Wildlife Conservation Society is on Staten Island, at 614 Broadway near Clove Lakes Park in West Brighton, in…

A few wooden pilings and some crumbling concrete are all that remains of the Perth Amboy ferry landing at Bentley Street in Tottenville, Staten Island, the end of the line…

PARAMOUNT Theatre, at 560 Bay Street near Prospect, is now likely Staten Island’s premier ‘ghost theater’ now that the St. George has been restored and reactivated. It was designed by…

TOMPKINS Lodge 471, #514 Bay Street at Sands Street, is a classical-style Masonic Temple that has not been repurposed as so many Masonic halls around towns have been, as it’s…

I never knew there was a Saint Julian until I researched this one-block street in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, wedged between two main routes, Bay and Van Duzer Streets, seen here…

As a rule, NYC streets are given designations, seemingly arbitrarily, by the engineer who is plotting the map years before buildings on the streets are actually constructed. In Manhattan, with…

KNOWING the toll modernization was taking on the island, and perhaps presciently imagining the devastation to be wreaked on Staten Island’s old and out-of-the-way places by the opening of the…

OWLS Head Park is Bay Ridge’s largest public park, stretching between the Belt Parkway, Colonial Road and 68th Street, and its high hill provides a prime viewing spot during Brooklyn’s occasional…

THE rundown and somewhat neglected neighborhood of Stapleton on Staten Island’s eastern shore isn’t thought of as a hotbed of classic architecture but it does have pockets of excellence. Recently…

CAN it be over a decade since I have walked around in Grasmere, Staten Island, the next neighborhood west of Rosebank (where I have been multiple times, including a week…

SADLY I have never visited Big Nose Kate’s, a saloon way out in Rossville, at 2484 Arthur Kill Road, tucked near the huge Old Bermuda catering hall next to the…