stand three Sandy-damaged bungalows still in disrepair.
Founded by Holocaust survivors, Madelaine was the largest employer in the Rockaways before Hurricane Sandy hit, employing 400 or more people in the peak seasons before Christmas and Easter. It's reopened since the storm, but it's operating on a smaller scale with just a fraction of its former work force, and it's considering moving out of the city if it can't secure the funds to fully restore its production facilities.
Rarely used by passenger trains, this is the single-track connection between the two main legs of the Hammels Wye (what's a wye?) that carry the two branches of the Rockaway Line onto the peninsula. This connection was, however, notably put into passenger service after Hurricane Sandy as part of the route of the H train, a temporary shuttle that provided free rail service along the peninsula while the tracks across Jamaica Bay that connect the Rockaways to the rest of the subway system were being reconstructed.
Welcome to the home of Hector Figueroa, a.k.a. Ultimate Inventor, the creator of, among other things, the Store & Oar boat/roof-mounted cargo carrier on top of the minivan at left.
Has Hector really "found the total solution to finally stop poverty in America" with his inventions? Can he bring prosperity to all with his Quick Cool line of rotating multi-cup drink coolers, his Roll N' Lite matches with built-in cigarette papers, and his Electro Babywalk U.S.A. remote-controlled baby walker? Check out his website to learn "what the news media doesn't want you to know".
(Here's a collection of photos I took of the various posters and signs displayed on his property. This one is as good a place to start as any.)
The Staten Island Bluebelt is an award winning, ecologically sound and cost-effective stormwater management for approximately one third of Staten Island’s land area. The program preserves natural drainage corridors, called Bluebelts, including streams, ponds, and other wetland areas. Preservation of these wetland systems allows them to perform their functions of conveying, storing, and filtering stormwater. In addition, the Bluebelts provide important community open spaces and diverse wildlife habitats. The Bluebelt program saves tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs when compared to providing conventional storm sewers for the same land area. This program demonstrates how wetland preservation can be economically prudent and environmentally responsible.
In 2010, the NY Times ran a little day-in-the-life account of the goings-on at this park-and-ride bus hub:
At 12:36 p.m., one of the pay phones inside the center rang.
"Hello," said the man on the other end, sounding as if he was trying to keep calm. "Someone called me from this number like 10 times?"
He had reached a bus station on Staten Island, he was told.
"O.K.," he said, and hung up.
Nine minutes later he called back, wanting to know who had been calling him earlier.
"Because someone’s harassing me now, and this is in the middle of a police investigation," he said. "Where is this place?"
The Eltingville Transit Center.
"O.K.," he said, and hung up again.
You can see this unusual house a little better in the winter.
From the Purple Martin Conservation Association's website:
Today, east of the Rockies, Purple Martins are the only bird species totally dependent on humans for supplying them with nesting sites. And they have been managed by man longer than any other North American species. If humans were to stop supplying martins with homes, they would likely disappear as a breeding bird in eastern North America.In 2003, the NY Times reported that this seasonal purple martin colony here in Annadale and another a bit further south down the Staten Island shore were the only two in the city.
Julius R. Nasso, a movie producer best known for his work with Steven Seagal in the 1990s, opened this editing and post-production facility several months after his 2005 release from prison. He had been incarcerated for about 10 months for conspiring with members of the Gambino crime family to extort from Mr. Seagal — by way of "an old-fashioned mob shakedown in a dark Brooklyn restaurant" — hundreds of thousands of dollars that he claimed the actor owed him.
By the way, Mr. Nasso is now "grooming a new action star". His name is Tony Schiena, and he's "a former karate champion who has run international security operations and trained military and law enforcement personnel in hand-to-hand combat and escape techniques".
The oldest part of this house — half of its basement — can be traced back to a one-room stone shelter erected here in the late 1600s, but most of the current structure dates to the 1700s and 1800s. The last major addition was built by a young Frederick Law Olmsted, who moved here from Connecticut in 1848 at the age of 25 to pursue his agricultural ambitions. The property had previously been used to grow wheat, but Olmsted turned the place into a fruit farm and tree nursery, while also dabbling in landscape design. (Some of the trees he planted are still standing, including the black walnut at right.) A friend of his later recalled:
The whole place was as dirty and disorderly as the most bucolic person could desire. It was on the surroundings of the house that Olmsted first showed his genius in landscape construction.Olmsted would go on from these modest beginnings to become America's foremost landscape architect, most famously designing Central and Prospect Parks with his partner Calvert Vaux. The Parks Department, appropriately, purchased his Staten Island house in 2006, but does not currently have the funds to renovate it and open it to the public.
He moved the barns and all their belongings behind a knoll, he brought the road in so that it approached the house by a graceful curve, he turfed the borders of the pond and planted water plants on its edge and shielded it from all contamination. Thus, with a few strokes and at small expense he transformed the place from a very dirty, disagreeable farmyard to a gentleman's house.
After finishing my walk in Staten Island and heading to Brooklyn, I noticed a cool engraving on this building at Grand and Waterbury Streets that I had missed when I previously walked by.
Sounds like F.H. Von Damm started as a grocery store before becoming an animal feed and fertilizer wholesaler. And the business seems to have lasted well over 99 years at this location.
This elevated structure is part of the old Long Island Rail Road Rockaway Beach Branch, which has been out of use since 1962. There are currently two prominent, conflicting visions for the line's future: some people want to restore rail service on it, while others want to turn it into a 3.5-mile linear park, a "High Line on steroids".
When I saw this mosque, with its rooftop additions signifying the building's conversion into a house of worship, I was reminded of Shri Trimurti Bhavan, the nearby Hindu temple we just passed. And it turns out that there's more of a connection between the two places than just the visual. They both serve the area's Indo-Guyanese residents, and the mosque is actually owned by the temple!
As we learned last year, Worksman was founded in 1898 and is America's oldest existing bicycle manufacturer.
