St. George is a neighborhood on the northeastern tip of Staten Island in New York City, along the waterfront where the Kill Van Kull enters Upper New York Bay. It is the most densely developed neighborhood on Staten Island, and the location of the administrative center for the borough and for the coterminous Richmond County. The St. George Terminal, serving the Staten Island Ferry and the Staten Island Railway, is also located here. St. George is bordered on the south by the neighborhood of Tompkinsville and on the west by the neighborhood of New Brighton.
What is now St. George was initially occupied by the Lenape Native Americans, then colonized by the Dutch and the British. The first residential developments arose in the 1830s, and through the late 19th century, the area was a summer resort. Until the construction of the ferry–railroad terminal in 1886, present-day St. George was considered to be part of New Brighton. The section around the current ferry and railroad terminal was renamed after developer George Law, whom Erastus Wiman promised to "canonize" in exchange for relinquishing the land rights for the terminal. Several government buildings and landmarks were constructed in St. George in the early 20th century, and further developments on the waterfront commenced in the early 21st century.
St. George is part of Staten Island Community District 1. St. George is patrolled by the 120th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
History Precolonial and colonial period Originally, Staten Island was inhabited by the Munsee-speaking Lenape Native Americans. The Lenape relocated during different seasons, moving toward the shore to fish during the summers, and moving inland to hunt and grow crops during the fall and winter. The present-day area of New York City was inhabited in 1624 by Dutch settlers as part of New Netherland. In 1664, the Dutch gave New Netherland to the British, and six years later the British finalized a purchase agreement with the Lenape.
At the time of British handover, several British, Dutch, and French settlers occupied the area, but did not have an established title to the land. A series of surveys were conducted through 1677, and several parcels were distributed to different landowners. Among them were the "Duxbury Glebe", given to Ellis Duxbury in 1708, bequeathed to the Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Andrew's ten years later, and then leased for 54 years by John Bard in 1765. Another tract was granted to Lambert Jansen Dorlant in 1680, whose western boundary was a brook on present-day Jersey Street. By 1748, it had been purchased by Salmon Comes, who ran a ferry to Manhattan. By 1765, part of the Dorlant tract was owned by John Wandel, a molasses distiller who operated a plant at the Kill Van Kull near Richmond Terrace and Westervelt Avenue, taking advantage of the Jersey Street brook. Two Native American roads intersected near the distiller: Shore Road (today's Richmond Terrace) on the North Shore, and a road that wound southward on St. Marks Place and then Hamilton and Westervelt Avenues.
Fort Hill, one of the hills overlooking the harbor, was the location on Duxbury's Point or Ducksberry Point, fortified by the British during the American Revolutionary War.NYPL Old Names on Staten Island Hessian troops, contracted by the British, were stationed near the Jersey Street brook, which then became known as Hessian Springs. After the end of the war, the area remained primarily rural through the early 19th century. The area became part of the town of Castleton upon the town's incorporation in 1788. The New York state government took of Duxbury Glebe in 1799, upon which it established the New York Marine Hospital (also "The Quarantine"), a contagious disease hospital. The state then gave to the federal government for the U.S. Light-House Depot Complex, a lighthouse facility.
19th century
Early ownership Among the first people to promote the widespread development of Staten Island was former U.S. vice president Daniel D. Tompkins, who purchased land in the northern part of Staten Island in the early 1810s. Tompkins purchased Abraham Crocheron's farm, located on present-day Jersey Street south of Richmond Terrace, in 1814. The next year, he acquired from St. Andrew's Church, and two years after that, he bought Philip Van Buskirk's land claim, located between the two disconnected pieces of land. Tompkins also incorporated the Richmond Turnpike Company to build present-day Victory Boulevard in 1816, started operating a ferry to Manhattan in 1817, and laid out the adjacent village of Tompkinsville for development between 1819 and 1821. Tompkins then expanded the Van Buskirks' old farmhouse, using it as his primary residence. He died in 1825.
Tompkins's property within present-day St. George was sold in April 1834 to Manhattan developer Thomas E. Davis, who continued to buy land through the following year. Davis came to own all the land on Staten Island's northeastern shore, bounded to the south by Victory Boulevard, to the west by Sailors' Snug Harbor, and to the north and east by the waterfront. He planned to develop the area into a summer retreat called New Brighton, renaming Shore Road to Richmond Terrace, and the first five Greek Revival summer bungalows were erected in 1835. Davis sold the development to a five-person syndicate for $600,000 in 1836, and the New Brighton Association was incorporated that April. The area on the northeast shore, including present-day St. George, thus came to be called New Brighton.
Increasing development Development on the New Brighton street grid proceeded according to a plan that surveyor James Lyons had created in 1835. Streets were arranged around existing topography. When the New Brighton Association laid out streets in northeastern Staten Island, many of these roads were named after notable politicians, with such names as Hamilton Avenue, Jay Street, and Madison Street. Other streets were named after people or places that were associated with the development of the area, including Tompkins, Davis, or the Stuyvesant family (who were early investors). For instance, St. Marks Place was named after Davis's developments on St. Marks Place in Manhattan, while Westervelt Avenue was named after Tompkins's son-in-law. Several of these street names replaced preexisting appellations.
Work on the street grid and development of the land continued, but in March 1837, one major investor declared bankruptcy following the Panic of 1837. The same year, the Pavilion Hotel opened in a mansion along the shore, being converted from a residence. The association continued to lay out streets. However, in 1840, four of the five original New Brighton Association investors' properties were foreclosed upon. The foreclosed lots were thus repurchased by Thomas E. Davis in 1844. According to a survey conducted the following year, several streets had been laid out in modern-day St. George, including Carroll Place, Hamilton Avenue, St. Marks Place, Richmond Terrace, and numerous smaller streets. Most development was on the waterfront, where there were mansions with carriage buildings, as well as smaller homes and the Pavilion Hotel. St. Peter's Church on Carroll Street was dedicated in 1844 as the island's first Roman Catholic house of worship.
By the 1840s and 1850s, New Brighton began to develop into a summer resort area. In addition to the existing Pavilion, hotels in modern-day New Brighton included the Peteler (later St. Marks) Hotel, as well as the Belmont Hotel. Additionally, new houses such as Italianate villas were built, while existing Richmond Terrace mansions were expanded or received new annexes and gardens. Several greenhouses were also built in the neighborhood, particularly on the land of the merchant John C. Green, part of whose estate is now the site of Curtis High School. The silk printer John Crabtree established a printing plant for his company, Crabtree and Wilkinson, on the eastern bank of the Jersey Street brook in 1844. The factory had over 180 workers and a small residential and commercial community by 1853, and the establishment of similar factories led to the population of New Brighton doubling between 1840 and 1860.
In 1858, angry Staten Island residents burned down the Quarantine in what became known as the Staten Island Quarantine War. Three years afterward, the onset of the American Civil War resulted in large changes to the neighborhood's land use. Initially, the local economy suffered due to cessation of trade with the Southern United States, but because of the Union Army's demand for material, many entrepreneurs and workers moved to New York City, including to Staten Island's North Shore. According to a 1865 article from the Richmond County Gazette, "the demand for dwelling houses upon the island has never before been equalled." During this time, many new houses were designed in the Second Empire style and/or as duplexes, particularly on as-yet-undeveloped plots along Westervelt Avenue or St. Marks Place. The end of the Civil War, cheaper building materials, and technological improvements resulted in an increase in real estate prices on the North Shore, and by the early 1870s, the area was described as being prosperous, with real estate in high demand.
The Panic of 1873 resulted in a near-cessation of building activity on the North Shore. By the late 1870s, industries had started to move to the area again, such as J. B. King and Company, whose plaster mill opened in 1877. A water system was established upon the Staten Island Water Supply Company's 1879 incorporation, and a sewage system was added between 1884 and 1890.
Renaming and late 19th century In the 1880s, the area closest to the ferry terminals on the northeastern shore became known as "St. George", after developer George Law, who acquired rights to the New Brighton waterfront at bargain prices. According to island historians Charles Leng and William T. Davis, the businessman Erastus Wiman, who was expanding the Staten Island Railway to New Brighton, promised to "canonize" Law if the latter agreed to relinquish the land rights for a new railroad–ferry terminal there. St. George was selected for the terminal due to the site being the closest point from Staten Island to Manhattan, approximately a distance. The St. George Terminal opened in early 1886. It was served by a Staten Island Ferry route to Manhattan's Whitehall Terminal, as well as three routes of the Staten Island Railway: the North Shore Branch to Elm Park station (later to New Jersey), the East Shore Branch to Tottenville station, and the South Beach Branch to South Beach station.
With the completion of the Staten Island Railway, Wiman's Staten Island Amusement Company started operating locations in both St. George and Erastina (now Mariners Harbor). The St. George location opened in 1886 and included an illuminated fountain, as well as public events and competitions, a 60-piece military band, and the St. George Cricket Grounds. The fountain was removed from the site by 1887, and the amusements in St. George ceased to exist by 1889. The grandest and last hotel of St. George and New Brighton was the Hotel Castleton, built in 1889 and destroyed by fire in 1907.