Back Roads Of Staten Island

The rural aspect of Staten Island, so much apparent before the construction of the Verrazano Bridge in 1964, has been gradually stamped out by construction of cookie-cutter housing and suburban sprawl that has only accelerated in recent years.

But the seekers of quiet country lanes and out-of the way places still have some retreats they can seek out before the developers take full control. We'll look at a couple of them on this page.

At left we see Crabtree Avenue, west of Bloomingdale Road. When you first turn into Crabtree Avenue, it looks like many of the streets in the developing Woodrow section, with construction of new housing and sidewalks.

Continue down the road, however, and it turns into a country lane. You come upon an old shack or two awaiting demolition, and you pass an old cemetery. Soon, it looks like a country lane from Anywhere, USA.

Crabtree Avenue, though, has its own story to tell. The intersection of Crabtree Avenue and Woodrow Road was once the center of a community named Sandy Ground.

Joseph Mitchell, in his collection of stories written for the New Yorker called Up In The Old Hotel (Vintage, 1992), has an article called "Mr. Hunter's Grave" in which the caretaker of nearby St. Lukes' Cemetery tells him about Sandy Ground:

"It's a relic of the old Staten Island oyster-planting business. It was founded back before the Civil War by some free Negroes (sic) who came up here from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to work on the Staten Island oyster beds, and it used to be a flourishing community, a garden spot. Most of the people who live here now are decendants of the original free-Negro families, and most of them are related to each other by blood or marriage. Quite a few live in houses that were built by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers. On the outskirts of Sandy Ground, there's a dirt lane running off Bloomingdale Road that's called Crabtree Avenue, and down near the end of this lane is an old cemetery. It covers an acre and a half, maybe two acres, and it's owned by the African Methodist Church in Sandy Ground, and the Sandy Ground families have been burying in it for a hundred years ... they haven't cleaned it off for years and years, and it's choked with weeds and scrub. Most of the gravestones are hidden. It's surrounded by woods and old fields, and you can't always tell where the cemetery ends and the woods and fields begin..."

In the many years since that article was written, that cemetery has been restored, and today is well-kept.

On Harris Lane, just north of Crabtree Avenue, is an old shack; it has been unoccupied from soon after the tenure of NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner.

Wagner was mayor between 1952 and 1965.

Olympia Boulevard, in the slowly developing Midland Beach area, is the only through street in this swampy area, which comprises blocks of wilderness interspersed with one and two family homes. We are looking toward Slater Boulevard from Graham Boulevard.

Timeless Peterson's Lane, in Pleasant Plains, presents a double whammy: a rural, country lane atmosphere, and the preservation of an ancient 1963-vintage yellow street sign.

No sidewalks here ... and virtually no pedestrians ... on sleepy Peterson's Lane.

Not, strictly speaking, a "back road", but as desolate as any other back road in the winter, is the Franklin D. Roosevelt South Beach Boardwalk. This is one of the forgotten boardwalks of the city, nowhere near as famous as the Riegelmann (Coney Island) or Orchard Beach or Riis park boardwalks.

The Roosevelt Boardwalk stretches from Fort Wadsworth southwest to Miller Field along Staten Island's eastern shore.

E-mail me at erpietri@earthlink.net

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