Check out this little ball of pep on a dreary January day.
This house was built in 1880-82 for Mr. Schoverling ("one of the world's foremost importers and distributors of firearms") and his almost identically named wife.
2014: a bad year for figs, but a good one, at least in my world, for sorghum.
This house (which is named Portview, according to another tablet opposite the one above) is located at the intersection of Sunrise Terrace and Occident Avenue, and its current address is 6 Sunrise Terrace, implying that it once stood like Istanbul or Damascus at the crossroads of Orient and Occident.
(This 1907 map [look at the bottom left] confirms that this block of Sunrise Terrace used to be called Orient Avenue.)
Worked into this gate at the dead end of Pearl Street are the house's address ("Pearl St No 41") and "Much heat & Love 1980". Here's what the other door looks like.
This hillside nature preserve, established and maintained by a local community group, is named for the type of rock that forms the spine of Staten Island (last paragraph).
Mounted at the foot of the Serpentine Commons nature preserve
The Serpentine Commons nature preserve contains a serpentine barren with a spectacular view out toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
This seemingly vacant house, on the market since at least 2007, stands amid a large congregation of mansions on Grymes Hill. We're looking at it from behind, where a Serpentine Commons trail passes by its backyard on the way out to Howard Avenue.
This belongs to the next-door neighbor of the house in the previous photo.
Here's a look at this treehouse in its glory days a year earlier.
Why have actual food for breakfast when you could be eating more candy? It's refreshing to see a major corporation taking a public stand to address the dire lack of sugar and fat in the American diet.
These cars, painted a different color, were once a common sight on the streets of New York.
You can find some info on these old-timers (and other Van Duzer structures as well) here.
We've previously seen the rear of these buildings from a block away on Targee Street.
This residence was originally the Robinson Hose Company 9 firehouse (as indicated by the semicircular window up in the gable). The company, part of the volunteer Edgewater Fire Department, was established in 1880, moved here in either 1889 or 1895, and was disbanded in 1905 when the FDNY took over firefighting duties in the area. As a hose company, it "used a hand-pulled hose wagon and relied on hydrant pressure until an engine company arrived at fires."
This very steep and narrow passageway is closed to through traffic by both the DOT (bollard) and Mother Nature (tree).
"This house appears to be the result of several building campaigns starting with a frame, Gothic Revival-style house constructed c.1855-59 by Charles F.E. and Bernhardine Sudendorf, and continuing in the late-nineteenth century with Queen Anne-style additions by owner Louise Pommer, and in the early twentieth century with Colonial Revival-style enhancements by owner George W. Stake."
Here's a great view of the front of the house.
This house, "the undisputed . . . star among nearly a hundred handsome Victorian dwellings in the Stapleton area", was given by "a German-born beer baron named George Bechtel, who was said to be the richest man on Staten Island," to his daughter as a wedding present in 1888. On screen, it has served as the home of Chalky White in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. You can see a slew of photos of this gorgeous house and its ornate interior, which features a surprising number of stained-glass windows, in this audio slide show.
