AN ISLANDER WITH "ST. GEORGE ROOTS OF SORTS" COMES HOME

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Meet the Neighbors

(Photo by Willie Chu)

SOUGHT AND FOUND:
A BEAUTIFUL OLD APARTMENT
NEAR THE FERRY

Professor, working poet and performance artist MARGUERITE MARIA RIVAS did her growing up in pre-Bridge Huguenot, in what Rivas calls The Lily Cup House, at a time when large tracts of land nearby were still densely wooded.

But before that, before becoming homeowners, Rivas's parents settled as newlyweds in an apartment in St. George Gardens (now Seaview Estates), a recently rehabilitated 1929 courtyard development that straddles the hill between St. Marks Place and Hamilton Avenue near Curtis High School--giving Rivas what she describes as "St. George roots of sorts."

Often referred to as Staten Island's Unofficial Poet Laureate, Marguerite Maria Rivas is an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She holds a Doctor of Arts and Letters from Drew University and a Masters in English from CUNY. Her work has appeared in The Americas Review, The Multicultural Review and Earth's Daughters, among others; and her chapbook, Poetry Cannot Save You, was published in 2003 and reprinted in 2005.

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Sea Meets Land Dreams of Sky, ceramic art by Judith Eloise Hooper

A PLACE TO MAKE A FRESH START

A while ago, finding herself with two grown daughters on their own and a large apartment in a neighborhood she didn't much care for, Rivas determined it was time to make a very different sort of move from those she'd made earlier as a wife and mother and then as a single parent. "It seemed like a natural choice," Rivas told me recently, "for a single woman who loves the Island, and enjoys working and playing in the city as well, to move to St. George.

"I wanted to live in a beautiful old house again," she explained, "and St. George and Silver Lake were the two neighborhoods I most wanted to live in." So Rivas advertised herself as a prospective tenant on Craigslist and on the St. George Civic Association e-group and before long got a call from a St. George homeowner with a one-bedroom apartment for rent. "The minute I stepped in the door and saw those high ceilings, the many large windows and the garden views," she recalled, "I was hooked."

The apartment had another key selling point. Its two-rooms-and-kitchen layout, though quite large, simply would not accommodate the three truckloads of accumulated possessions, including many books, that Rivas had to divest herself of before she could move in. "That was what I needed, though," she admits, "as I was still mourning the loss of my second marriage and needed to move on.

"St. George was the place that I wanted to do that in, and as soon as I saw the apartment, I knew that I was truly coming home again and that I could make a fresh start here, as my parents had made their start some 60 years before."

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Comments

[Gablers]

My family had a Summer home on the same street as the Lily Cup houses but on the opposite side. In 1922 to about 1928 we spent the Summers, and many Spring and Fall weekends at the Summer house
starting just the Lily Cup Houses were being finished. My brother and I spent a lot of time in the woods behind the Lily Cup houses and were friends with the children of one of residents of a Lilly Cup house until the depression.

[Dan Icolari]

Thanks, Gablers, for your comment.

I didn't quite get the "Lily Cup Houses" reference when Ms. Rivas mentioned it, and, long story short, didn't have the time to probe deeper.

Could you possibly reply, explaining what these houses were, who built them, and how they got their name? Any photos you may have would be appreciated, too--especially if you'll grant me permission to reproduce them (they should be jpgs, by the way).

Many, many thanks!