Staten Island in the Nineteenth Century: From Boomtown to Forgotten Borough

By Joseph Borelli and James Oddo

Emerging from the Revolutionary War and the formation of a new nation, Staten Island was poised to enter the nineteenth century ripe for growth and prosperity. Fueled by waves of immigration, Richmond County became a boomtown of industry and transportation. Piloting his first ferry with just two small masts and eighteen-cent fares, Cornelius Vanderbilt built a transit empire from his native shores of Staten Island. When the Civil War erupted, Richmond played a key role in housing and training Union troops as 125 naval guns protected New York Harbor at the Narrows. At the close of the century, Staten Island was swept up in the politics of consolidation, with 84 percent of locals voting to join Greater New York, yet the promised benefits of a new mega-city never materialized. Author Joe Borelli charts the trials and triumphs of Staten Island in the nineteenth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781439674918

Joseph Borelli

Joseph Borelli is a member and minority leader of the New York City Council, representing the South Shore of Staten Island since 2015. Joe is also an adjunct professor of political science at the College of Staten Island and was a Lindsay Fellow at the CUNY Institute of State and Local Governance. He is a contributor to The Hill and regularly appears as a commentator on Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, CNNI, HLN, BBC, OAN, AM970 and WABC. He has also been published in the New York Daily News, New York Post, Washington Times, Washington Examiner, Staten Island Advance, Gotham Gazette and City and State NY. He serves as a spokesman for the New York State Republican Party. He lives in Annadale with his wife, Rachel; two sons, Joseph Jr. and John; and an overweight English bulldog named Luna.

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Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Borelli

All rights reserved

First published 2022

The History Press edition 2022

ISBN 978.1.43967.491.8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022931445

print edition ISBN 978.1.46715.029.3

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To my sons, no matter where life takes you,

Staten Island is always home.

To my constituents, I hope this book makes you all consider the price we pay

for being one of the five boroughs.

Contents

Foreword, by Borough President James Oddo

Introduction

1. Richmond Republic

2. Richmond Co. Arouse!

3. Island Oasis

4. A County Waxes and Wanes

5. The Politics of Greater New York

Epilogue

Notes

About the Author

Foreword

Hanging on a wall in the vestibule of my office is a somewhat faded black-and-white photograph of a distinguished-looking gentleman. He is formally posed, wearing a vested suit with a pocket watch slung across his middle and seated in a high-backed chair. With even the briefest of glances, one can recognize that he sat for the photo around the turn of the last century.

The plaque beneath the framed portrait identifies him: George Cromwell. In 1898, Mr. Cromwell became the first president of the newly minted borough of Richmond. In total, there are fourteen such framed photographs on the walls of that room, representing all its past presidents. Sometime after January 1, 2022, my photograph will be up on one of those walls as well.

They are hung in chronological order, and I note the way the style of dress slowly but inexorably changes from decade to decade. But fashion is not really something I care about. What interests me more is not evident in any photograph. What I want to know is how these men, as the chief executive of the least populous borough, coped with the unique problems they faced while in office.

I readily admit that the easiest assumption to make is that Mr. Cromwell, who took office 116 years before I did, likely encountered none of the difficulties presently confronting the borough. Yes, that assumption would indeed be easy to make—but it would be wrong. Incredibly, maddeningly, some of the conditions that might have discouraged Richmond County from agreeing to join the Greater City of New York in the 1890s still exist today.

Certainly, some of them suffered from unique, but temporary, circumstances—wars, a depression and, in the case of my predecessor, Jim Molinaro, a devastating superstorm known as Sandy. And obviously, there have been incredible advances in science and technology over the past hundred-plus years, advances most of these men could never have imagined and with which they never needed to deal.

Of course, the march of time has dictated that whoever has held this job faced different circumstances and challenges; as I said earlier, though, some problems that existed for this Island, even long before the consolidation, still exist today. The report of the Staten Island Improvement Commission of 1871, which the legislature had authorized to study the problems of our Richmond County, sometimes seems weirdly prophetic.

In French, the phrase is plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more that changes, the more it’s the same thing). The deeper you get into this book, the more you will understand this.

The County of Richmond, which in 1898 concurrently became the Borough of Richmond and, in 1975, the Borough of Staten Island, has had issues that remain intractable even to this day. The reasons for this are myriad, but a principal one is that we share little in common with the rest of what was then known as the City of Greater New York. It is likely that we never will.

If you’re blessed with the privilege of sitting in The Chair in the Borough President’s Office, what should always be lurking in the back of your mind is the Great Law of the Iroquois—that our most sacred duty is to think seven generations ahead. In making any decision, wrote author Warren Farrell, one must be aware of whether the decisions we make today will benefit not just ourselves and our children, but our children several generations into the future.

In effect, there is a dual constituency a borough president must serve: the Staten Islanders of today and those of tomorrow. In order to do so effectively, it is crucial that we understand the Staten Islanders of yesterday.

The challenge is this: how to address problems that began in the past by utilizing the technology and finances we possess in the present, while at the same time honoring the responsibility we have to future generations as yet unborn. Many of the issues that cross my desk on a daily basis, here at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, result from decisions made by others in centuries past—from action that was taken…and action that was not.

Our history is replete with choices made, great and small. Some of them affected only a handful of people for a brief moment in time; some affect our entire borough to this day. But knowing that history, knowing how we got here, is a critical variable in the decision-making process of the here and now. An emphasis on deliberate thought, with our past keenly considered, is a huge part of the calculus for moving forward.

As Edmund Burke wrote in 1790, People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

So now let’s take a look back.

—STATEN ISLAND BOROUGH PRESIDENT JAMES S. ODDO

Introduction

In 2017, I started jotting down notes as I skimmed, for the third time, the masterpiece entitled Staten Island and Its People, by Charles Leng and William T. Davis. Staten Island—and its people, as it were—occupied a great share of my mind as I proudly represented it and them in the State Assembly and City Council, and I knew that I wanted to write a book chronicling the history of my hometown for a modern audience. Two years later, I had a working manuscript of about 120,000 words and more than 1,000 notes. I had created a monster.

The fantastic team at The History Press immediately saw the problem: I had written two completely separate books that just happened to be connected by a chronological timeline. The former bore little resemblance to the later.

The first half became Revolutionary Staten Island: From Colonial Calamities to Reluctant Rebels, which was published in September 2020. Its goal was to tell a story that would be exciting to Staten Island’s history buffs and anyone interested in painting a picture of the borough throughout its first two hundred years. I hope readers were shocked to learn how unique Staten Island was in the colonial history of the country and its important role during the war.

This book is different. Sure, it is a continuation of the chronology, but it is also meant to frame a new idea. Staten Island fared pretty well in the early republic and throughout its first century, and perhaps we would be better off had we continued on our own and not joined in with the great experiment of urban expansion known as Greater New York City.

Although a whopping 84 percent of Staten Islanders voted to consolidate, the modern reader will soon realize that the hopes and dreams of those who supported the policy never materialized. The long-awaited benefits of the new mega-city didn’t come, and in many cases, they are still owed.

Contrast that with Richmond County before 1898. It was a place of expansion and opportunity, of community spirit and optimism. It was a community of immigrants, business magnates, natural beauty and massive factories; in the same moment, it served as a seaside resort, rail hub and the city’s repository for the desperate. It had breweries, brickworks and racetracks; military camps, icehouses and trolleys. It was the refuge of world leaders, revolutionaries and the rich. There were fishing, tennis and cricket clubs, and the toughest contests were political.

In short, Staten Island developed like all other thriving American cities and towns in the 1800s. As we look back on its prosperity when it stood on its own, it is my hope that readers begin to imagine what could be achieved by going our own way once again. It’s time we reimagine Staten Island as anything but the forgotten borough. It must reassert itself as one of the largest, safest and most successful communities in the United States—an honor we held throughout the nineteenth century and one we would soon attain through our political independence from city hall.

CHAPTER 1

Richmond Republic

At the conclusion of the American Revolution, no other county in the newborn United States suffered through more time under occupation, and few had spent as much on its front lines under threat of attack. As such, the rebuilding of Staten Island took much time, due, in part, to the lack of true government throughout its duration. The growth and prosperity that eventually occurred in Richmond County in the early nineteenth century was not unique in the United States. What is noteworthy, however, is that this occurred while Staten Island was self-governed, and its citizens saw little need to be affiliated with, or subjected to, the governing powers of New York City. In fact, city officials looked to the Island to solve some of their own problems.

One thing the county did not lose in the Revolution was its population, which stood at 3,838 souls in 1790,¹ 25 percent more than there were in 1771.² While it shed many of its most prominent Tory citizens, it was made up for by the large number of soldiers and refugees who opted to remain after the British evacuated.³

This new population needed a restoration of public services, but like elsewhere, the county first had to reorganize a government according to the new state constitution. The four towns that existed before the war—Castleton, Northfield, Westfield and Southfield—were officially rechartered by the state legislature on March 7, 1788, and an election for their municipal offices followed.⁴ In prior contests, the county’s electors would have turned to their de facto aristocracy, but its Tory landowners like Christopher Billop, owner of the Conference House, were already resettling elsewhere and wealthy families like the Dongans, descendants of Governor Thomas Dongan, were subdividing and selling parcels for profit.⁵ At the Island’s first public meeting as part of New York State and the United States, held at the home of Abraham Reckhow at the Old Blazing Star ferry in modern Rossville, Westfield’s electors chose supervisors, assessors and other Necessary officers.⁶ They opted for the Whig slate: John Totten, supervisor, and Peter Winant, town clerk. They also elected officers to serve as assessors, inventory takers, road commissioners, highway commissioners, pound masters and damage appraisers.⁷ The other original supervisors were Cornelius Corsen, Northfield; Anthony Fountain, Southfield; and a Moravian Church leader, Richard Connor, Castletown. Johannes Van Wagonen and Adrian Bancker, who spent part of the war as British captive while General Howe used his home as a headquarters during the battle for New York, were elected to the State Assembly.⁸

Soon the county was operating. In 1785, the position of overseer of the poor was created, and both Benjamin Larzellier and David LaTourette were elected⁹ and tasked with finding lodging in private homes for impoverished families. In 1803, the county purchased property on Richmond Road for its first poor house, but it quickly proved too expensive and unable to accommodate the demand. In 1829, the state legislature authorized a tax levy to purchase a county farm where those housed could work the land.¹⁰

In 1795, the state legislature also allocated $50,000 toward establishing public schools around New York. Staten Island opened four, listed as Indian Hill, Smoking Point, Wood Row and Bently.¹¹

The restoration of justice was a priority as well, since no court sat between September 1775 and May 3, 1784. On that day, the defendant’s own home in Richmond served as the courthouse, as the real one was burned during the war. Judge David Mersereau heard the grand jury indictment of Thomas Frost, accused of using profanity.¹² Frost’s house ended up being used as the courthouse for eight years before the authorities purchased it and constructed a new building. Another twelve dollars was allocated in 1801 to construct public stocks.¹³

Road construction dates back to the first years of British rule, and the colonial authorities appointed dozens of surveyors to map several throughout the eighteenth century, right up until the outbreak of war.¹⁴ But it was during the early federal period that the two most important roads in the Island’s history were planned. Under the personal ownership of Governor Daniel Tompkins, the Richmond Turnpike Company was formed and authorized to purchase land to shorten the stage coach journey from New York to Philadelphia. The toll road would run for eight miles from a spot near the Watering Place, which Tompkins owned as part of his seven-hundred-acre estate on the north shore, through the Island to Long Neck, where it terminated at the edge of a salt marsh. From there, the New Blazing Star ferry took travelers to New Jersey.¹⁵ In the twentieth century, this road would be renamed Victory Boulevard.

Daniel D. Tompkins. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Around 1836, Henry Seaman designed and constructed the Richmond Plank Road and a wooden drawbridge crossing Fresh Kills at Greenridge. In the period leading up to the Civil War, this was the most important commercial road connecting the farms and factories of the south shore with the north shore ferry landings to New Jersey and Manhattan.¹⁶ The future Richmond Avenue was the Island’s major freight road for decades.

STATEN ISLAND IN THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE

The period shaped by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars was extremely profitable for the United States, especially its eastern port cities, as our nation reaped the benefits of Britain and France effectively blockading each other. Exports climbed from $19 million in 1791 to $108 million in 1807, as overall tonnage shipped shot up from 124,000 to 984,000 tons.¹⁷ In Richmond County, tax receipts quadrupled between 1788 and 1811.¹⁸

To guard the nation’s commerce, the Federalist government embarked on a program of naval expansion and fortification of major ports. Richmond’s prospering residents favored this protectionist approach, and it was the only county south of Albany to vote for the Federalist candidate against Dewitt Clinton for governor in 1801.¹⁹ It sent Federalists to Albany to represent them in almost every election that decade. Commerce led politics.²⁰

In April 1806, the American schooner Richard was approaching New York just two miles off Sandy Hook when it was confronted by the sixty-six-gun Leander.²¹ The British warship was patrolling the waters off New York Bay in order to impress seamen back into British service. Leander fired a warning shot across Richard’s bow,²² and a second went through its stern, decapitating a crewman.²³ Newspapers sensationalized the murder and claimed that the ship was just a quarter mile off the Hook. The funeral procession included the mayor and Common Council of New York, and every ship in the harbor flew its colors at half-mast.²⁴

Similar incidents ensued, and soon the government had to act. The Non-Importation Act and the Embargo Act, both passed in 1807, protected American seamen but also devastated American shipping.²⁵ The impact throughout New York Harbor was felt everywhere, and on Staten Island, county tax receipts fell by nearly 40 percent.²⁶ Islanders soon resorted to smuggling, an activity they mastered during the Revolution, and their reputation was so well known that as soon as one trafficker was caught in 1807, the newspapers falsely proclaimed him a Staten Islander.²⁷

The other noticeable change around the harbor was fortification fever, which dominated the opinion columns and public debate for years as the federal government digested the inevitability of war.²⁸ Staten Island became noticeably militarized, and the Fourth of July festivities of 1807 included an out-of-the-ordinary parade of the county’s militia through Richmondtown, led by Captain Guyon, with his troop of light dragoons…mounted, with swords drawn.²⁹

The state legislature ordered a defensive plan for the harbor. Ideas ranged from a flotilla to fire ships, floating cannons, or batteries with moveable carriages.³⁰ The federal government appropriated funds to develop an experimental sunken torpedoe plan thought up by steamship pioneer Robert Fulton; they could be mounted strategically across the Narrows and the Long Island Sound. By 1812, they were in operation and working as planned.³¹

The additional fortification of the Narrows was critical. Due to its height and history as a colonial signal station, the Staten Island side would played the dominant part, and some of the original designs had already been furnished by Britain’s most famous engineer, Marc Isambard Brunel.³²

In 1808, a seventeen-gun salute marked the moment several Gentlemen from New York and Staten Island proceeded to lay the foundation stone on a formidable work on the beach near Signal Hill on Staten Island.³³ It was named Fort Richmond in honor of the county, and when completed in 1810, it housed up to ninety-two guns.³⁴

By the war’s beginning, another 74 guns had been added, and soon, another $125,000, an astonishing number, was allocated to complete the Island’s defenses. Earthworks, stone ramparts and batteries were quickly thrown up into a pentagonal fortress with large round towers on top the bluff above Fort Richmond. To the south, two outer batteries called Fort Morton and Fort Hudson were installed and could fire far into Lower New York Bay.³⁵ Smaller batteries and earthworks were positioned at Prince’s Bay and at the old British fortifications above the Watering Place.³⁶ Had all of the planned naval guns around Staten Island been in place, there would have been more than 220, including 27 massive thirty-two-pounders.³⁷

New York’s defensive works did prove their worth. During the War of 1812, the British did not attempt a landing or any attempt to penetrate the fortifications. The closest they came was in January 1813, when a British blockading squadron was sighted off Sandy Hook. Instead of approaching the Narrows, they commandeered vessels offshore. The seventy-four-gun St. Domingo came within three miles of the coast³⁸ and the furnaces for heating cannon shot were readied, but the guns remained silent.³⁹

Staten Island was strongly garrisoned throughout the war. At its outbreak, Governor Tompkins ordered four artillery and seven infantry companies