New Brighton is a neighborhood located on the North Shore of Staten Island in New York City. The neighborhood comprises an older industrial and residential harbor front area along the Kill Van Kull west of St. George. New Brighton is bounded by Kill Van Kull on the north, Jersey Street on the east, Brighton and Castleton Avenues to the south, and Lafayette Avenue and Snug Harbor Cultural Center to the west. It is adjacent to St. George to the east, Tompkinsville to the south, and West New Brighton to the west.
The village of New Brighton was incorporated in 1866 as part of the town of Castleton and was divided into six wards. It originally stretched long and was wide, encompassing the entire northeast tip of the island from Tompkinsville to Snug Harbor, and included what is now St. George. The current neighborhood includes Hamilton Park, an enclave of Victorian-era homes developed before and during the American Civil War. The surrounding area includes several older churches, including St. Peter's Church, the first Roman Catholic parish established on Staten Island. The original New Brighton Village Hall, constructed in 1871 on present Fillmore Street, was ordered demolished in December 2003 and was demolished in February 2004. New Brighton public housing includes the Cassidy-Laffayette Houses and the Richmond Terrace Houses on Jersey Street.
New Brighton is part of Staten Island Community District 1 and its ZIP Codes are 10304 and 10301. New Brighton 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 winded 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. 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.
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 on the North Shore 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 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 New Brighton, 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, dedicated in 1844, was the island's first Roman Catholic house of worship; it remains one of Staten Island's most historically important churches, with more than half of the island's Catholic churches having been derived from St. Peter's parish. Two Greek Revival houses remain on the waterfront, at 404 and 272 Richmond Terrace.
By the 1840s and 1850s, New Brighton including modern-day St. George began to develop into a summer resort area. In addition to the existing Pavilion, hotels in modern-day St. George/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, 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 1861, 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.
Late 19th century The New Brighton Village Hall was built in 1871 and was one of the few Village Halls to remain from the old village system that existed before it was merged with New York City. See also: A passage from an anonymous author in the Illustrated Sketch Book of Staten Island, NY: Its industries and commerce, from 1886, describes New Brighton as follows:The village of New Brighton is unique in its attractiveness. Its public buildings, churches, hotels and institutions are all handsome and substantial, its residences the perfection of refined taste; it has of streets, the principal of which are wide, well paved, and generally well shaded with ornamental trees. A complete system of sewerage has been adopted. The inhabitants are filled with a sense of local pride which is in itself most commendable and leads to the happiest results, the most noticeable of which perhaps is the great care bestowed upon their private residences. The neighbors seem to vie with each other in friendly emulation as to who shall keep the smoothest lawn, the neatest fence or the most graceful fountain.
As a whole, the effect is most pleasing, but when the eye wanders beyond the artificial beauty of its immediate surroundings and rests upon the sparkling waters of the incomparable Bay of New York, with stretches of cultivated landscape in the distance, the picture is singularly lovely and complete.
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. 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. The St. George Terminal opened in early 1886, bringing more development to the neighborhood.