Postcard from New Brighton

These were real postcards printed at some distant time in Staten Island's past. Both building still exist (with modern pictures forthoming) and have suffered considerable aesthetic deterioration and their blocks have tumbled down the economic ladder a few rungs. There also continues to be no reason for the postcards to exist. Perhaps I can do little research on the history of postcards of such everyday domiciles. I mean it's cool to be able to send a painted picture of your house to friends and family but it just doesn' make any sense.

New Links

I added a bunch of new links today. The first two are the most valuable but all have good things contained within.


Forgotten New York is one of the coolest sites for pictures of the five boroughs bar none. It's creator, Kevin Walsh, has been doing hist site for ten years and recently he wrote a book called "Forgotten New York". Go to the "Street Scenes" section and check out the Staten Island articles. The man's collected some amazing things and gathered good information.

The New York Public Library Digital Collections is a great picture resource. Just enter what you'd like to see in the search and go for it. Unfortunately there's not a lot of good information attached to the pictures. Sometimes there's a note scribble onto the image or there's a caption indicating date or location but more often than not it's all a little vague.

The last two sites are similar to my own. They're personal sites with things of special interest to their creators. Nonetheless, for the interested Staten Islander they do provide a wealth of interesting pictures from across the decades. They also have their own sets of links to other Staten Island biased sites. Check them out and if you find fun sites on your own, let me know and I'll put up a link.

Old Church Building

It's still a beautiful neo-Gothic structure. There's some minor changes (the old steeple spires are missing (which is not visible in my mediocre picture) and there are windows over the bell openings), but it's still the same building from the postcard. Reading about Zion's history from there website, I discovered the building was opened in 1921. The congregation had started as a simple Norwegian Sunday school meeting in a building on Avenue B (which was just torn down) and had finally reached the point they could afford to erect a real church. Then a mere forty-three years later they moved on to the lifeless structure on Watchogue Road.

Zion Lutheran Church

I guess that Zion Lutheran moved to its present location in Westerleigh from Port Richmond in the mid sixties because they wanted a larger building and many of its parishoners had moved to that neighborhood. Whatever the reasons, who'd want to trade this beautiful gothic building for this lifeless example of modern architecture?

The old Scandinavian Lutheran Church is now St. Philip's Baptist Church and appears to be maintained in good condition. It is one of several churches in the area and one of the two directly along the park that once formed the heart of one of Port Richmond's nicer residential sections. I forgot to get a picture of the building's present condition (because I'm a dope) but I'll put that up next.

Same House - Different Picture

So here's what the house looks like today. It's a pretty little house that's been kept up rather well. You can see that the clapboard sheathing has been replaced with wider boards and the decorative trim at the top of the left hand chimney is gone but it's still a splendid reminded or Staten Island's long ago Dutch settlement.

Van Santvoord House

This cool little brick and wood house sits at the bend in Richmond Terrace at the foot of Pelton Avenue. I'll post a picture of the house at it looks today. It's still beautiful. Now, unfortunately, it's been chopped up into multi-family. What are you gonna do. At least it's still there.

Staten Island

I love Staten Island. If you know me that probably doesn't come as any sort of a surprise, but I just wanted to get it out there for anyone else bored enough to be reading this. I can't think of leaving Staten Island. I know, I know. Staten Island's a provincial, conservative town with stupid, classless people.

First, with almost half a million people it's only as provincial as you want it to be. Whatever cultural attractions we lack are simply in another borough, that is, in a different part of the city Staten Island belongs to.

Secondly, it is conservative. People who own homes, worry about earning enough money and sending the kids to school usally don't have the luxury or time to not be fairly conservative. Suits me fine.

Finally, they're really no less classy than any bohemian wannabe in Manahattan or Brooklyn. Look, we live in a pretty tacky society in general these days. For every NASCAR or wrestling fan there's some hipster going to a pompous show at PS 1. We live in a day of cheap spectacle and crazy social antipathies. If you like junk I don't it must be tasteless.

Coming on to Staten Island from any of the bridges or the ferry can still take my breath away. Masonry towers and old wooden houses brek through a seemingly endless green cover of sycamores, oaks and maples. The same vantage point shows the Island as a black space floating in front of me bound together by the yellow-orange street lights and rushing bands of car lights. I'm still moved when I look out over the borough from the crest of one of our bridges and I get just a bit excited when I can pick out a house I know between the leaves and branches that seem to be ready to smother it.

I like its houses and I like its people, even the ones I can't stand on a day to day basis. That's probably because I know I'm a bit of a jerk and I only feel superior because they don't like what I like or act just like me. I mean there's just no rational foundation for me feeling I'm any better than anybody I meet on the street and when I stop looking down my nose long enough I remember that and I can tell myself to shut the heck up.

I'm not foolish enough to think I'm anything but a product of this borough and I know I'm not "better" than the vast majority of them. Just because I think I'm smarter than so many of my fellow Staten Islanders doesn't make it even occasionally true. Everyone likes to think they're smarter or cooler than everyone around them (and everyone knows how cool I am).

These are the people I've known all my life and will probably know till the day I die. They have the same concerns for how the Island evolves and grows in the future that I do. If we don't agree on precisely how things turn out we at least all know what's important to think about.

If I was to go anywhere else I'd feel unmoored and set loose in a very discomfomrting way. It happened during my years in Albany (admittedly a small, anti-cosmopolitan outpost in New York's northlands) and I suspect it would happen wherever I moved to.

I love the tree covered hills and the evolving prairies growing on the remnants of the Fresh Kills Landfill. I love our French Provincial Borough Hall and the abandoned derelict Seaview TB hospital. I love the handful of ancient colonial homes scattered around the North Shore and old Victorian homes vainly struggling against development in Tottenville.

I'm going to start posting pictures from the Island throughout time. Some I'll snag from books and websites while the others I take with my handy little digital camera. If you have any ideas or comments please feel free to leave them and I'll see what I can do.