Welcome to Staten Island's Past

Best known for its vast parks and beach areas, Staten Island is a place where many generations of people
have come to make a good life for their families. This borough has always been known for its family values and
slower pace of living. Yet, we are just a boat ride away from the most exciting place in the world... "Manhattan" For residents of other boroughs, the Island's beaches and parks are a retreat from the crowded city streets. This is a borough, rich in history  and I hope to share some of that history with fellow native Islanders and  welcome all who
have made Staten Island their home. Enjoy your tour, in text and photo and please visit often, as I try to update on a
regular basis. Any photos or memories you can share will just make this website better for all. Please write to us
and let us know what you think of our website

     Care to take a step back in time to the Staten Island of years gone by? To a time long before developers threatened our rural, sea-kissed landscape with rows of cookie-cutter townhouses, big-name retailers and over-sized "mini" malls?
Would you like to sit back, re-live cherished memories and recharge amid the down-home charm of close-knit neighbor
hoods, mom-and-pop shops and bustling beach areas? Would you like to see what's been lost over time and what
things looked like here when grandma and grandpa were kids?
     Perusing the "Old Staten Island" Web site, posted in June,2004 is like having a beautifully-illustrated history book of the borough right at your fingertips. Intrigued visitors can, of course, begin their time-travel journey anywhere they'd like, but in order to put the site in the appropriate perspective, it might be best to start with the historical events page. Far from being a tedious lesson in social studies, this page features an engaging timeline of key events in the history of Richmond County dating from the early 1600s through to the present day. For trivia of a different kind, there's the "Staten Island in Film" page which references dozens of films reported to contain scenes on Staten Island or from the Staten Island Ferry. Another fun, lighthearted page is "Famous Islanders," which lists the names, along with brief biographies, of those who have, at one time or another, called Staten Island home. (We bet you'll come across a few surprises here!) Once your mind is chock full of details like these, site visitors can take a stroll through the virtual galleries of sentimental postcards and photographs and charming old store and movie ads. Where did Sublett come upon such information in the first place? The public library, of course. In fact, he spent weeks at the St. George Library researching old records and scanning early editions of the Advance to make sure the historical details given were not only thorough, but accurate as well. He also consulted several books written about the borough over the years. "It's really been a learning experience for me," Sublett shared. "Staten Island has such an amazing history." As for the featured photographs, he is grateful to have received most of them as "donations."

                                                                                                                  ~ written by Tamara Valles September 08, 2004 in The SI Advance

Port RIchmond Square

Port Richmond Avenue & Richmond Terrace

Before refrigerators became popular in the 1930s
Ice was delivered to homes to use in an Icebox
the predecessor to the refrigerator

From the 1920's
 

Staten Island Quiz

Here is a nice Staten Island quiz made up by one of my website visitors

WHO DID NOT LIVE ON STATEN ISLAND ?

Choose the ONE person in each group who did NOT live on Staten Island

 

1. Paul Newman - Jerry Orbach - Martin Sheen

2. Mabel Normand - Annie Oakley - Lillian Gish

3. Alexander Hamilton - Daniel D. Tompkins - Aaron Burr

4. Brooke Astor - Amy Vanderbilt - Emily Post

5. Gene Simmons - Alice Cooper - Vito Picone

6. Christina Aguilera - Madonna - Joan Baez

7. Willie Sutton - Paul Castelanno - John Gotti

8. George Westinghouse - Charles Goodyear - Giuseppe Garibaldi

9. Gerald Arpino - Clive Thompson - Alvin Alley

10. Buffalo Bill Cody - Peter Stuyvesant - Ichabod Crane,

11. Langston Hughes - Henry David Thoreau - Walt Whitman

12. Ernest Flagg - John A. Roebling - John Merven Carrere

13. Robert Merrill - Eileen Farrell - George M. Cohan

14. Bobby Thomson - Terry Crowley - Joe Torre

15. Franceso Scavullo - Ansel Adams - Mario Buatta

16. Rocky Graziano - Randy “Macho Man” Savage - Mike Siani

17. Steven Segal - Robert Loggia - Sylvester Stallone

18. Isaac Asimov - Paul Zindel - George William Curtis

19. Francis Cardinal Spellman - Pat Robertson - Father Vincent Capodanno

20. Elizabeth Ann Seton - Alice Austin - Emma Lazarus

 

You can find the answers as soon as you buy my book
"Famous People from Staten Island" :)
or
you can check back in a few weeks when I post the 20 answers

If you like email me with the answers, I will email back if you get all 20 correct

click here - Famous Islanders Quiz Answers

 

 

Willie Sutton on Staten Island

Famous bank robber Willie Sutton settled on Staten Island after escaping from Holmesburg prison, Philadelphia in 1947. He hid out on Staten Island while the cops hunted him down ( from a story in The Saturday Evening Post – June 9th 1951 )

Under the name of Eddie Lynch, he worked as a porter in the Farm Colony Hospital (across the road from Seaview Hospital) for $90.00 a month. He spent a few years at the Farm Colony.

After Willie crunched out of the Pennsylvania prison in February 1947, he'd come to Staten Island where he'd spent three whole years scrubbing floors in his hospital job, meanwhile living quietly with a landlady ( a nice Irish lady named Mary Corbett) on Kimball Avenue in Castleton Corners and going to church, on Sundays with her and helping her tend her flowers. During a two week vacation that he had, he waterproofed the cellar of Marys house. He seeded the lawn and painted the house. This small house on a quiet street became his sanctuary. As long as he was in this house he felt completely safe. He felt as if the bank robber "Willie Sutton' was dead and the fairly decent "Eddie Lynch" had taken his place.

Throughout much of this period, he was very patiently observing the daily routines at the Manufacturers Trust Co., 47-11 Queens Blvd., Sunnyside, Queens, getting to know exactly what the guards did when. Accordingly, things went like perfect clockwork when Willie and several pals hit the bank for $63,933 one morning in March 1950. After which Willie unobtrusively took the IRT and the ferry and the No. 111 bus back to Kimball Ave. and remained uncaught for two more years. In Willie’s words - "These young kids, they don't believe in hard work," he grumbled. "All these kids want to do is run into a bank, grab the money and run out.

A headline from The Washington Post - Washington, D.C. Mar 26, 1950
" Fugitive's Landlady Held in $50,000 Bail" 
A Staten Island woman who rented a room to Willie Sutton, bank robber and jail breaker, until four weeks ago was held in $50,000 bail today as a material witness in the $64,000 robbery of a bank in Sunnyside, Long Island, on March 9.
 

 

 

There has been much comment about how many Wetson's and where they were on the Island

As far as my research goes I have found four Wetsons locations

The two addresses in the above photo + two more

#1 - 1525 Hylan Blvd. was on the corner of "Burgher" Avenue, Dongan Hills
        ( Now a Mr Bargain II Auto Parts )   Robert Hall Clothes was across the street

#2 - 1767 Forest Avenue near Morningstar Road, Graniteville 
        ( Now a Firestone Store )

#3 - Forest Avenue between Broadway and North "Burgher" Avenue West Brighton
        ( Now a Bagel/Deli Place)

#4 - Richmond Avenue, New Springville
        ( Near Pathmark and Costco )

 

 

...... A story from the book

 

Mosquitoes Scare off Ulysses S. Grant

 

At the close of his presidency he visited Staten Island with the thought of accepting an offer from the American people. That offer was the famed Garner Mansion in West New Brighton. Except for the swarms of mosquitoes that inhabited Staten Island, the prominent American would have become an Island resident. The dwelling which Mr. and Mrs. Grant anticipated occupying was the building which had been erected by a prominent New York businessman, Charles Taber, and sold to Mr. W.T. Garner, Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. After the catastrophe during July 1876, when Mr. Garner and all on board his yacht had been drowned when the vessel capsized during a storm, the house was selected by a committee as the people’s gift to General Grant.

This plan was, however nipped in the bud by the hordes of mosquitoes which in 1876 were a scourge on Staten Island. On a gloriously bright day in June, General Grant was brought down to inspect the place. The day was ideal and he expressed himself as delighted with the magnificent property and beautiful surroundings, and all that was needed was the approval of Mrs. Grant. But the time selected for her visit proved to be just the reverse. The day was hot and muggy and the mosquitoes swarmed in the millions.

It was not possible to postpone the visit. So a pair of fast horses whirled the lady across the country, and she was actually in the house before the pests made an impression. Mrs. Grant was as pleased with the house as had been the General, and in due time suggested an inspection of the grounds. Then came all manner of excuses: she ‘was too tired for further exercise on such a warm day: inspection of the grounds and neighboring estates would take an entire day and had best be left to another visit,’ etc., etc., etc. But she was one who believed in doing it now, and the resulting trip through the mosquito infested shrubbery quenched all desire on her part for a home on Staten Island.

The building later became a prominent part of St. Vincent’s Hospital

New Dorp, Staten Island