Walking Is Transportation

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

Last night, an 1872 French Second Empire mini-mansion across the street from our house caught fire, the inevitable conclusion to a decades-long process of disinterest and disinvestment.

42 Westervelt Avenue in St. George was never as grand as the French Second Empire building pictured right, but its proportions suggest it was probably pretty impressive in its day.

Here's an incomplete record of its recent physical deterioration.

Like many larger residential properties in St. George, 42 Westervelt Avenue was chopped up into apartments some time before World War II. Under the right management, with proper maintenance and appropriate improvements, it could have continued to provide solid housing for six families.

But once the building fell into the hands of its current absentee owner, its fate was sealed. He promptly filled the building, and others he owned adjacent to this property, with friends and relatives and for a long time it was rundown but quiet and "respectable."

But that was only a temporary reprieve from this handsome building's continuing downward slide.

When these friends and relatives left, one by one, they were replaced by crack addicts and their friends. In short order, the building became a flop house whose occupants you see on the front stoop in the photo, above, dated 2008.

And so it continued through 2009, when the photo at left was taken, and well into 2010.

Until last night.

I took the photo on the left, below, through glass and a mesh screen, producing an eerie visual that perfectly represents last night's craziness,with hordes of firefighters responding to a four-alarm blaze that not only savaged 'The Crack House.' It also severely damaged the beautifully restored post-Civil War-era rowhouse to the right, separated by only a narrow alley.

I took the photo below, right, from my front porch this morning. I want to try and get the Landmarks Commission involved here, to make sure that whatever happens next, happens in a preservation context.

Just to get this on the record: Two fire marshals were here this morning and described the building as severely damaged but 'structurally sound'---their words. Just in case we need to repeat them for the benefit of those who'd rather raze it and replace it with 20 townhouses, built front to back. Landmarks protection has to mean more than that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DANGEROUS BY DESIGN

NO EXIT

Enter on foot here, at the Ballpark Esplanade's western edge near Jersey Street at Richmond Terrace, and you'll find there's no way out for more than half a mile.

Unless you can scale a story-and-a- half-high masonry wall (on the right in the photo at left, camouflaged by vegetation), your only option, if there's a problem, is to swim to safety in the Kill van Kull. So it's not unreasonable to ask yourself, Do I really want to take the risk?

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

I'm sure the people who designed the Ballpark Esplanade didn't plan it as a trap for walkers, runners and cyclists. But that's what it is.

What they were thinking about, more likely, was ballpark customer logistics, tourist revenues and parking-fee receipts--and as always, the needs of cars and drivers, not the needs of walkers, runners or cyclists. This, despite the roadway paint job featuring international walker and cyclist symbols, now fading; despite all the lovely Greenway signs, which require interpretive skills I seem to lack.

Because the farther you get from the ferry terminal, the fewer and more bare-bones the amenities become . . . until, following the shoreline, the esplanade becomes a strip of concrete bordering a macadam roadway.

The only way in or out is at the extremes: at the southeastern end, near the ballpark and the ferry terminal, or at the western end, at Jersey Street and Richmond Terrace. The more-than-half-a-mile stretch between those two poles is the perfect setting for a mugging or worse.

WHAT WE DON'T USE, WE COULD LOSE

The result? A major neighborhood resource goes unused by a significant number of neighborhood people who'd rather go to a greenspace where they feel safe.

If you want to see what happens when a magnificent park goes unused because it's considered dangerous, have a look at High Bridge Park, overlooking the Harlem River Valley in Washington Heights. It was virtually abandoned by the city during an earlier fiscal crisis in the 1970s, then shunned by the community and nearby Yeshiva University--until recently. The painstaking work of reclaiming and recreating what has been lost, vandalized, overgrown and eroded will take decades.

And safety isn't the only issue. Because it offers prospective users only two widely separated points of access and egress, the Ballpark Esplanade as currently configured actively discourages them from using it. Especially for those who live at or near the midpoint of that more-than-half-mile expanse between access/egress points, either entrance can seem very far away.

Richmond Terrace near St. Peters Place,
as seen from the Ballpark Esplanade below.

ROCKET SCIENCE NOT REQUIRED;
ALL WE NEED IS AN OVERPASS

The most obvious solution would be to install an overpass that provides pedestrian access to the esplanade from Richmond Terrace, located at a midpoint between the two entrances already in place.

That midpoint probably lies somewhere between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place. But the available land at that location, as shown right, is too narrow to accommodate the broad ramp or stairway required--similar to two existing ramps on either side of the ballpark, one at Hamilton Avenue, the other at Wall Street.

A better location is Nicholas Street at Richmond Terrace (shown left), where the Esplanade widens considerably and where an overpass could be accommodated more easily.

How to pay for it? Include the cost in the proposal for the North Shore light rail environmental review and preliminary engineering design study (the overpass would be directly above the light rail roadbed) that Rep. Mike McMahon is pushing as part of the federal Surface Transportation bill reauthorization.

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WHEN QUEEN ANNE WAS KING

Tower at One Saint Mark's Place with stained-glass transoms.


TOWERS FOR ALL

According to A Field Guide to American Houses (Knopf, 1984), the Queen Anne style was introduced at Newport, Rhode Island in 1874. Its influence spread rapidly, and Queen Anne became one of the dominant styles of American residential architecture during the period 1880 to 1910.

Here on Staten Island, in the more well-to-do precincts of St. Pauls Avenue in Stapleton and Westervelt Avenue in St. George (then considered part of New Brighton), Queen Anne was the had-to-have exterior style.

While some of the decorative detailing of the houses at 57, 59 and 65 Westervelt Avenue has been obscured by inappropriate siding, the tower rooms and their finials survive.

59 Westervelt Avenue

57 Westervelt Avenue

This tower at 263 Hamilton Avenue (where Hamilton merges into Westervelt) indicates the importance of the Queen Anne style during the late19th and early 20th centuries in America, even in buildings as modest as this one (see below).

 







GIMME TOWER: 65 Westervelt, on the left, with its expansive circular bay, capped with a tower and truncated finial; and 263 Hamilton on the right, with its more modest, scaled-down version.