Lost Richmond Terrace

Last year in posting a picture of Richmond Terrace I realized that I was seeing a lost series of tenements and shops along it where it meets Jersey Street and the Richmond Terrace Projects are now located. There were also buildings along the water side of the Terrace now occupied by tall grass and bits of rubble.

Some later time I was asking my aunt about going to movie theaters when she was a kid and she remembered going to one down by Jersey Street with my grandmother in order to get something at some giveaway or another. Eventually taking her information and the various bits and pieces I'd come across this past year I determined that my aunt's theater was located on Richmond Terrace at the foot of Jersey Street.

A quick trip to the St. George Library and the WPA photo archive turned up the following pictures. From top to bottom there's the Star Theater and the shops to its left (west) along the Terrace circa 1939.

Here's what's there today -

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I'm sure there's a good reason for the loss of these buildings and the replacement of shops and homes with ant hive-like projects but all these years later I imagine the builders might have second thoughts.

A Belated Return - Missing Churches of Port Richmond

So last November and December I did several postings on the churches of Port Richmond. I chose the neighborhood because it's got the largest single collection of churches in any neighborhood on Staten Island that I'm aware of. The churches are also an interesting bunch of old, new and inbetween. Several have changed denomination and most have seen some sort of demographic shift as the borough and Port Richmond in particular have changed over the past forty years.

Unfortunately, I left a some out. One was recently shown as a "lost church" and the other I just forgot about at the time. Unfortunately, I also never posted a picture of the original building used by the Norwegian Lutherans (later Zion Lutheran) for their Sunday school before forming a full congregation and church and now I've discovered it's been torn down. Oh, well.


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Mt. Calvary Holy Church - Dubois Avenue (behind the Castleton Depot)
This was the original location of the El Bethel Assembly of God (that means Pentecostal) now located on Jewett by Victory Blvd.



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Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
Last month I put up a picture of this, the present church, and the pretty little Mediterranean one long gone a replace with the parish school's parking lot.

ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! revisited

So I'm just a great, big, doofus, dummyhead. Or some such listing of adjectives denoting my idiocy. The pictures didn't upload because I made the original scans too big. Blogger handles up to 8mbs and they're something like 22. It always pays to actually look at what you're trying to do and not just assume it's going to work out OK.

Gettysburg

Little and Big Round Tops

Last week the luminous Mrs. V and I took a short trip down to Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The primary goal was to see the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields and we accomplished that. We'd wanted to take a run through Baltimore but rainy weather made us decide to drive down to Harper's Ferry for a quick look and then head home through the mountains, down in Harrisburg and then home on 78.

We went first to Gettysburg and the weather was perfect - comfortably warm and a sunny sky. We spent the money for the museum, movie (Sam Waterson now sounds like a crazy monkey when he plays Lincoln) and cyclorama. Then, in our trusty silver Honda Fit, we took the self-directed tour around the most of the battlefield (we got hungry and skipped on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge).


The field of Pickett's Charge from the Confederate perspective

Alongside the southern face of Little Round Top we got parked and hiked west and through the Devil's Den and then came back and up the western, exposed face of Little Round Top.



















Devil's Den and looking at Little Round Top from the west

From there we drove north along where the Union center was located, stopping at the Pennsylvania State Memorial and finally at the Copse of Trees.

Referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy", this was where a few elements of Pickett's Charge broke through the Union center for a few moments before being stopped.
It's also where the 111th New York Regiment, was located. That was the unit served in by my great-great grandfather, John F. Robinson and presumably the point from which he killed several Confederate soldiers.

The most heart stopping thing about walking old battlefields is the eventual realization that the pretty landscape your touring was covered with blood and shattered men. It's a struggle to picture the green hills of southern Pennsylvania covered with 150,000 men and the fields shrouded by gun smoke and the constant ear shattering sounds of cannon fire, but it does come.

ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Pictures won't upload to blogger. I actually have things to post today. Arrgghhh!!!

Well this made me sad.

Dog braves Staten Island traffic to guard dead companion

WPA Photo Project

Yesterday I was able to make some time and spend a few hours looking at the microfiche of the WPA photos of all the block and lots on Staten Island, circa 1939.
I was unable to find the exact pictures I went there looking for (I need to do a little more prep work beforehand next time) but I did end up with a great collection of pictures from various areas of the North Shore. Hopefully tonight will see me get them scanned, posted and annotated.