Early one morning in August 1963, an 8-foot shark that washed up on the Annadale beach was discovered by two 5-year-old boys. One of them was
Buddy Martinez of Spanish Camp. The other was my youngest brother, John Hughes, who lived in the second bungalow on Barat Lane (Zephyr Avenue). I assume someone who follows this blog will remember Buddy Martinez. I didn't know him and don't know anything about his family. St. Josephs by the Sea appears in the background.
(Click the photo to see it larger.)
The Staten Island Advance published a different shark photo with a caption that was wildly incorrect in several respects (e.g., referring to Spanish Camp as the Spanish Village). I can't reproduce that one because my only copy is a clipping, deeply faded and stuck to a board.
3 comments:
A great photo! In my memory, the building in the background was "the nunny's," an orphanage that remained in operation through the early 1960's. Was the proper name of the orphanage, St. Joseph by the Sea, the same name as the high school that has occupied the land for over 30 years? Does anyone know the history?
Originally it was a summer camp for children on what was known as the Schwab Estate. [See a fascinating 1909 article from the New York Times, plugged in below, for that story.] Sometime later it became a retirement home for nuns, St. Joseph's by the Sea. The nuns still lived here, and walked the pier, in my time (1959-1963 or thereabouts). Eventually it was razed and they built the high school complex and gave it the same name (St. Joseph's by the Sea). I don't know how that developed. Perhaps the same order of nuns owned the land and just changed its purpose. That's probably an interesting story, too. Anyway, here's the Schwab Estate orphanage story. It's LONG!
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Schwab Playground for Poor Children
Steel Man Turns Over Beautiful Tract on Staten Island to Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul.
BATHING BEACH AND SHELTER
The Donor Met a Party of Foundlings on a Ferryboat and Their Stories Aroused His Interest.
Charles M. Schwab, President of the Bethlehem Steel Company, transferred yesterday to the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul one of the most beautiful and well-equipped playground in this part of the country. It comprises sixty-one acres of upland on Staten Island and fifty-six acres under water, fronting Raritan Bay, about a mile and a half from Huguenot. It is equipped with a bathing pavilion and a main building, where 1,000 children can easily be taken care of in a day. The land is carefully graded and laid out in groves and gardens. The entire cost of the tract and the buildings upon it comes to something more than $500,000.
The grounds, known as Richmond Beach Park, will be used by the New York Foundling Hospital, which is under the charge of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. This is according to Mr. Schwab's wishes, for he requested that it be used for the benefit of the poor children of New York City.
Although there are at present no quarters fitted for more than a day's excursion to the park, the sisters plan to arrange for accommodation which will make it possible to lessen the crowding of te hospital by keeping a considerable number of children for several weeks at a time at the park.
Probably a large farm house which stands at one corner of the tract and was at one time used as a Summer hotel will be so arranged as to make this possible. Mr. Schwab bought the property for its natural beauty and accessibility from the Richmond Beach and Railway Company some year ago. He had always intended to turn it over to some charity once he had it in shape.
The ground rises sharply from the beach with its frontage of 1,700 feet to the level on which stand the two buildings of white stucco and red tile, with their pergolas and colonnades. The entire estate, inclosed by a twelve-foot iron fence, runs back from the water front with its little hills and valleys, its clumps of shrubbery and thick growth of trees for something like a quarter of a mile and in the centre lies Arbutus Lake.
This is a body of fresh water whose natural beauties have been enhanced by the work of Charles A. Platt in landscape architecture. The lake itself is about 2,000 [?] feet in length. It is very broad at the end near the water front, but its banks, wooded with willow, ash, and elder, taper unevenly to a sharp angle at the further end. About the shores and the carefully macadamized roads have been planted gardens of hydrangea, lilacs, and geraniums. There are clumps of button-bush, barberry, and red dogwood. The grounds are doted [sic] with elms, maples, lindens, and cedars carefully placed.
The buildings themselves were also planned by the architect, Charles A. Platt. They are built so as to be consistent in architecture with each other, and also with the wooden pier 500 feet long that runs out into the bay.
The main building, intended for the offices of a Superintendent and his staff, for kitchen, laundry, and bedrooms for the employes [sic], and for eating space for 1,000 children, is 800 feet long by 70 [?] feet wide. Its walls are of white stucco, with green finishings, its slanting roof of red tiles. It consists of a long colonnade, open on either side, and ending in two pavilions, each of them 45 feet long. One of these is used for offices and living rooms, the other for pantry, kitchen, laundry, and the servants's [sic] dining room.
The brick-floored space inclosed by the colonnade, with its raftered ceiling, will be used instead of dining rooms. There will stand the tables and the benches for 1,000 children, who while they eat can look out either upon the deep green of Raritan Bay or the still blue surface of Arbutus Lake.
Although the building, designed so much for convenience, is compact, it is not stiff, and the vines of ivy, already beginning to crawl up its white surface and to entwine the columns in its centre, give it a very picturesque aspect, either from boats approaching the pier or across the length of the placid lake.
As for the bathing pavilion, it stands some 1,000 feet from the main building. It is 88 feet wide and 137 feet long. The bathhouses are the ordinary ones of wood, arranged in long rows, which run out from the rear of the pavilion in the shape of a big square.
This building, too, is formed of white stucco and red tile, with loggia and five arches in front and winglike pergolas at either end. Directly behind the loggia comes the suit room, where the bathing suits are to be kept, and on either side of that are the separate dressing rooms for girls and boys and the shower baths. Directly opposite the pavilion, or nearly so, stands the 500-foot pier, on which the children will land from the steamer. It is strongly built of wood and railed along the entire length.
Mr. Schwab gave personal attention to the arrangement of the buildings and grounds. He saw that the property was graded carefully, supplied with top soil from a neighboring tract acquired for the purpose, and fitted with an elaborate system of drainage. There stands to the rear of the main building an iron water lower ninety-five feet high, supplied by artesian wells, and the several roads and driveways on the property, all macadamized, are furnished with gutters and catch basins.
For a long time the final use of this property after Mr. Schwab took it over was a matter of speculation. Mr. Schwab said from the start that he intended to give it to a charity of some kind. Twice in the Summer before last he met bands of the children in charge of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the first time by accident on a ferryboat to Jersey City. His natural fondness for children led him to talk and play with some of them on the way across, and to ask questions of the sisters. He learned from them that every year the hospital finds homes for
2,000 children outside the city, and that many others are taken weekly on excursions to seashore or mountains.
After that came consultations with John D. Crimmins, Judge Morgan J. O'Brien, Thomas F. Ryan, and other members of the Advisory Committee of the Foundling Hospital. After that the work, now practically completed, of fitting out the Staten Island playground was pushed forward more rapidly than before. The final steps in the conveyance of the property were taken yesterday, though the arrangement was practically decided some days ago.
The New York Times
Copyright © The New York Times
Originally published December 12, 1909
Thanks for the information. We continue to uncover so much rich material!
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