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REAL ESTATE DESK
If You're Thinking of Living In/Livingston, Staten
Island; Filmgoers May Find the Streets Familiar
By JANICE FIORAVANTE
Published: November 24, 2002, Sunday
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ARTICLE TOOLS
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A LOCATION scout from Paramount Studios visited Thomas
Paulo's four-bedroom 1910 Colonial Revival house at 20 Walnut Street in Livingston
three times in late October, seeking exterior shots for a new movie, ''The
School of Rock,'' starring Jack Black. Mr. Paulo, the Staten
Island borough commissioner of parks, said the area has been a
favorite lately among film and television companies. Parts of the movie ''A
Beautiful Mind'' were filmed along the neighborhood's eastern border, Kissel Avenue,
at the edge of the Snug
Harbor Cultural
Center, a National
Historic Landmark district. Richard Dreyfuss's canceled television program
''The Education of Max Bickford'' was also filmed here and at Wagner College on Grymes Hill.
Residents see this interest in Livingston
as a testament to its elegant tree-lined streets with well-kept homes in a
variety of styles and dearth of any real traffic. In places, the
neighborhood has a sort of 1950's feel. ''It evokes something a little more
suburban -- even rural -- just seven miles from downtown Manhattan,'' said
Peter Barry, a lifelong resident whose five-bedroom 1912 Dutch colonial
house at 49 Donald Place is just around the corner from where he grew up.
This is a rather common situation here, where houses are passed down to
children or are bought by neighbors.
While movies and television have discovered today's Livingston,
they have not completely neglected its history either. The movie ''Glory''
featured a 19th-century resident, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who lost his life
while leading the first black regiment -- the 54th Massachusetts -- in the Civil War. To
commemorate this, a sign on Davis
Avenue reads Glory Way.
Livingston is at the northern edge of Staten Island, on the Kill Van
Kull, directly across from Bayonne,
N.J. The area was a hotbed of
abolitionists in the 1800's, and Richard Brown, president of the Livingston
Community Association, which itself dates back to 1936, said several homes,
especially along Davis Avenue, have hiding places that were part of the
Underground Railroad.
The Snug Harbor Cultural
Center, set on 83
acres, has more than two dozen historic buildings used by 70 cultural
organizations; its attractions include museums, artists in residence and a
720-seat Music Hall that is being restored and is expected to reopen in the
spring. Snug Harbor originally was the site of a
home for retired seamen, called snugs, and dates back to 1830. ''All
sailors who sailed under the American flag were welcome here,'' said
Kathryn Venezia, an education associate at Snug Harbor.
''That included all races and religions.''
This kind of openness still seems to permeate Livingston.
Mr. Brown cited the the community's diversity as a reason for moving his
family here. ''I have teenage kids, and I want them to go to school and
play sports with a mixture of people from many different countries,'' he
said. ''They get exposure to that, especially at Walker Park.''
Walker Park, covering 5.3 acres, whose main entrance is at Delafield Place
and Bard Avenue,
is central to the neighborhood. The Community Association holds its monthly
meetings in the clubhouse at the park. Softball, basketball, football and
tennis players find games at the park. Then there is the Staten Island
Cricket Club, established in 1872, when British ships stopped frequently in
Staten Island, said Joseph Madory, an
honorary vice president of the club and vice president of Victory State
Bank. Many early members had connections to England,
and players at the matches still come from many countries, including Australia, Trinidad,
Sri Lanka, India and Zimbabwe. It is the oldest
continuously operated cricket club in the United States. And lawn tennis,
discovered by a Staten Islander, Mary Outerbridge, on a trip to Bermuda in 1879, found a home at the club. There are
six courts at the park.
The area's history dates back to 1668, when the land was farmed as part
of the plantation of Francis Lovelace. The area was first called
Elliottsville, after Dr. Samuel Elliott, an early eye specialist, who built
homes for himself as well as about 11 others in the first half of the 19th
century. His house, from the 1840's, made from granite both outside and
inside, still exists at 69
Delafield Place. ''I've heard it referred to
as the Stone Cottage,'' says Rosemarie Walsh, who with her husband,
Douglas, and 4-year old son, William, has lived in the house for 11 years.
Mrs. Walsh owns Walsh Theatrical Dance
Center and Studio in Snug Harbor.
''We have been told that this house was part of the Underground
Railroad,'' Mrs. Walsh said. ''A hearth in the basement may be part of
it.'' Mr. Walsh added, ''We've heard they put tunnels under hearths.'' The
basement has eight-foot-high ceilings and the fireplace opening is four
feet by three feet high. ''It's bricked over now, but I'd like to expose
and restore it,'' he said.
Mr. Walsh is a harbor pilot, and this is an appropriate place for him to
live, considering how much of a presence the Kill Van Kull is to the
neighborhood. Container ships, sometimes four stories high, navigate
through this narrow passageway between Staten Island and New Jersey.
R. H. Tugs, a restaurant serving American fare, sits alongside the water
at Bard Avenue
and Richmond Terrace, on the site of the Livingston
station for the North Shore Railroad, which is now defunct. The station sat
where the house of the Anson Livingston family had existed. The family had
been prominent on Staten Island.
A RESIDENT who feels the pull of the water and ships is Geraldine
Lawless, director of operations at the Parks and Recreation Department on
Staten Island, who bought a home in Livingston
last January. Ms. Lawless lives in a two-family house with three bedrooms
at Rachel Court.
It is one of seven such homes that were built in 2001 on a property that
formerly held an older home, once owned by the editor Sidney Gay, an
abolitionist. ''It had been in disrepair for many years,'' Mr. Brown said.
Although residents who are interested in history were saddened to lose a
home that was said to have been a part of the Underground Railroad, Mr.
Brown said he thought the new houses were preferable to the original
proposal for the site. ''They were going to build twice as many town
houses, and our association was able to fight that,'' he said. The
two-families were listed for $309,000.
The community association is worried that other older homes will be sold
primarily for their large properties. While Livingston
was rezoned so that town houses would not be allowed, more developments
like Rachel Court
are expected. One objection to such projects at the time of the rezoning
was that the land is denuded, destroying trees more than 100 years old.
With the Rachel Court
homes, however, a 100-year-old beech tree was saved.
Another trend, according to the real estate brokers Faye Radin of
Weichert Vitale Sunshine Realty and Lee Labita Stanzione of Wetlesen
Realty, is that many people are advertising their houses for sale and simply
calling the area Snug Harbor, apparently seeking to capitalize on one of
the area's best-known attractions.
The prices of homes recently sold or now on the market in Livingston range from $96,000 for a two-bedroom co-op
to $950,000 for a 1905 colonial with 14 rooms on a lot that is 70 feet by
220 feet. The co-ops are converted two-story brick garden apartments built
in 1947 on Bard Avenue,
Mrs. Stanzione said. There are also garden apartments on Davis that remain rentals. A two-bedroom
rents for about $800 to $1,000 a month.
The local public elementary school, Public School 45 on Lawrence Street,
with 930 students, is short of space. ''Our facility was built in the
mid-1920's, and we've added a modular building, and still we're tight for
space,'' said the principal, Joyce Fonollosa. The school offers English as
a second language classes for parents on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
''Among the languages our non-English speakers speak are Spanish, Urdu and
French,'' she said. In 2002, 65 percent of fourth-grade students taking
statewide tests were at or above grade level in math, while 70 percent are
at or above grade level in reading.
The neighborhood also has several private preschools and elementary
schools. St. Paul's
Roman Catholic Elementary School, with 240 students in kindergarten through
eighth grade, charges about $2,200 per child. Another Roman Catholic
school, the Sacred
Heart School,
enrolls 550 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. Tuition for
parishioners ranges from $1,900 to $2,900 depending on how many children
from the same family attend; for nonparishioners, the tuition is $2,500 to
$3,800.
For children at the Montessori School at Snug Harbor
and the Walker Park Preschool, the environment itself is a learning
experience. ''We have 60 students, from 18 months to 6 years who are
exposed to the woods and the green,'' explained Kati Koppel, director of
the Montessori school, which ends at kindergarten. Tuition at the school is
about $6,000, although discounts are available for 4-year-olds through a
state grant.
Intermediate School 61, the William Morris
School, is a magnet
school for the arts on Castleton
Avenue with 1,400 students. In 2002 reading
tests, 38 percent of students were reading at or above grade level, while
in math, just 25 percent scored that well.
Curtis High
School is named for George William Curtis, a novelist,
poet and columnist for Harper's magazine who lived in Livingston
more than a century ago. About 72 percent of its graduating seniors head to
four-year colleges. Curtis students averaged 451 on the math section of the
SAT reasoning test last year and 456 on the verbal section, compared with a
state average of 506 on math and 494 on verbal.
Residents spontaneously offer paeans to their neighborhoods. ''It could
snow 10 feet and I'd be able to walk to everything I need,'' said Mr.
Barry. ''There's St. Vincent's Hospital,
hardware stores, Key Food supermarket and R. H. Tugs.'' He added that his
family enjoys Adobe Blues, a Tex-Mex restaurant on Lafayette Street, where jazz is
played several nights a week.
And Mr. Walsh, the harbor pilot, said he puts little mileage on his car
because everything his family needs is convenient. Even the Staten Island
Ferry is either a nice half-hour walk away along the new North Shore
promenade that encircles the ballpark at St. George or just a short hop on
any of four buses along Richmond Terrace.
Published: 11 - 24 - 2002 , Late Edition - Final , Section 11 , Column 2
, Page 5
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