More Lost Churches of the North Shore

The original St. Adalbert on Morningstar Road. I know several people who feel the new church is cold and normally I think I'd agree but for some unfathomable reason I don't. I only went to one Mass there and it was a funeral but for some reason the church worked.



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Original Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Castleton and Clove - Today the church site is a parking lot and the new church (a boxy, sixties thing) sits on the north side of Castleton Avenue a block or so away.


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Lost Churches of Staten Island

I've alluded to, and even posted about, several of the North Shore's lost churches. These are the ones that time and tide have overcome and been replaced or simply forgotten as their congregations move away. I hope to find more pictures next week in the archives but for now these should prove interesting.



The original St. Paul's Catholic Church in New Brighton on Clinton Avenue - this beautiful Italiante church was replaced with a modern and boxy one, presumably in the sixties. Recently it has been essentially merged with the Assumption on the other side of New Brighton and switches Sundays back and forth for the celebration of the Mass.


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Original Episcopal Church of St. Simon on Clove Road
This little wooden Episcopal church was demolished to make way for either the highway or the lead on for the Verrazano (I can't remember which). It too was replaced with a (at least externally) soulless little piece of sixties architecture.





Original Episcopal Church of the Ascension - Richmond Terrace near Alaska Street
I've written about this gorgeous old church before and I was very happy to come across this new (to me) picture of it from a different perspective. The page I glommed the pictured from said that the church burned down in 1946 and the building to the right(most likely the rectory) is still in use by Rogers Surveying.
The replacement is actually a pretty building tucked away alongside the far reaches of Clove Lakes Park on Kingsley Avenue




Randall Memorial Church in Snug Harbor - I don't know the exact dates of this church's destruction but I think it was mid-twentieth century. It fell into disrepair and was crumbling. Instead of renovating and saving it the trustees demolished it.



Original Episcopal St. Paul's Church on St. Paul's Avenue and Paxton - This small wooden church was replaced by the beautiful stone church on the other side of St. Paul's Avenue

Notes

So I haven't posted all that much lately. Partly it's been because of various home and other commitments but it's mostly because I've tapped much of the easy stuff available on the web. I need to spend quality time at the SI Historical Society and the SI Museum and start going through their photo archives. I'll probably start that next week and get some of the up pretty soon thereafter.

Yesterday on my way home from Queens (with the luminous Mrs. V. driving) I found my eyes drawn to every cross topped spire and church belltower. I knew the ecclesiastical architecture of the city was tremendous and pervasive but I don't think I ever really understood how so. Sure we think of St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine but there are so many amazing and beautiful churches all over the city. They may not have the size or history of those two building but they serve as beautiful reminders of Christian endeavor. They also serve as road maps back along New York's changing demographics. In Manhattan, numerous neighborhood synagogues are now Spanish language Pentecostal churches and the same in Brooklyn holds true for many old mainline Wasp and Scandinavian churches.

Some Architectural Finds

Clinton Avenue near Prospect Avenue







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Van Duzer Street - just north of Beach Street


This house, once owned by someone known as R.M. Hazard, date to at least 1874 and probably before that. The surviving house is the one on the right. The left has been replace with stores. There's a plaque on the exterior of the remaining home but I don't have the information at hand. Maybe later (don't I always write that?).


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The Theaters of Stapleton Revisited

I posted a request for photos of the North Shore on the Stapleton section of the SILive Forums. Based on previous experiences with some of the racist invective spewed there I was less than optimistic. Fortunately, while I received no new photos or leads, I was provided with some great information. Here are the posts I received in reply to my photo request:


771.2. Richmond Theater by baystcarm, 2/22/09 15:38 ET
Re: Looking for Photos by Fletchav, 2/22/09
was right across the street from old PS 14 school yard. I watched it burn down in the late 40s. The back was the corner of Thompson/WrightSt. Down on the corner of Wright/Canal..the store was a Ralston store.The Rex looks great in that photo..in the 40s it was the cheapie place with cowboys buckrogers,serials. burned thru films. I think it was 11 cents to get in.

771.4. Memory Lane by JimEG, 2/24/09 10:14 ET
Re: Looking for Photos by Fletchav, 2/24/09
Boy, some of those old photos brought back some long forgotten memories. I went to the old PS 14 from 1945 thru '49 and I remember the old theater across the street. My dad worked there as an usher in the 1930's. I think it was a storehouse for beer kegs from the old R&H brewery before the fire. As for the other pics, I loved the churchs, especially the old Unitarian church in Snug Harbor where I was married to my first wife in 1971.

There was also a comment by the creator of SIMemories that I linked to in the very beginning of my Staten Island postings.

Richmond Theater - Stapleton

Here's a lovely colored postcard of the Richmond Theater on Wright Street.


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Stapleton, Yet Again

I've put up lots of pictures of Stapleton, and particularly the Tappen Park area, so I figured I might as well put up some more. Down at the heels as it was when I was growing up, it was still a great shopping district with places to eat and even see a movie. Once, though, it was a true town with its own industrial employers, lots of working class housing and several theaters, not just the long-past-its-sell-by-date Paramount. So here we go, limited as usual by the good graces of the NYPL's Digital Collection to the first third of the last century.



The Palace Theater, sw corner of Wright and Canal Streets - March 23, 1930


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This building is new. When I was growing up the upstairs of the previous building held the notorious "Golden Cue" pool hall and later the relocated "Wright Toy Store". Later it held "Ross Cosmetics". The theater, though, was long gone even when I was little.



The Rex Theater, sw corner of Wright and Canal Streets - October 4, 1936




The Richmond Photoplay Theater - April 12, 1929


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I don't remember what existed on the lots before those cheap looking townhouses. Maybe there's an old photo kicking around my mother's stuff.


Rubsam and Horrmann Brewery - Broad Street between Wright and Cedar Streets - March, 1930

Even when I was little and it had been closed for several years, the great industrial pile dominated Stapleton's skyline. Just a few blocks away, Demyan's Hofbrau House was housed in another vast, defunct brewery.

When the decayed and rat/bum infested brewery came down, my mother and her cohorts pushed hard for a park to go with the houses built along the back of the property. All they got was a weed choked lot with some benches. Thank you Mayor Koch.


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Further up Broad Street were more stores. When I was little there was a model store, Gelgeisser's Hardware and Miller's Pharmacy (still there). In the photo's right you can see the buildings torn down to build the Stapleton Projects. My supervisor's family was kicked out of their apartment because of that undertaking.


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