(“Huguenot neighborhood,” 2009)
Huguenot is a New York City neighborhood in the borough of Staten Island. As one of the lesser-known neighborhoods in the “forgotten borough,” there are few people who know of this neighborhood who don’t live in Staten Island. Most of its publicity comes from the fact that it is a stop on the Staten Island Railway, which was created in 1899 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and then taken over by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1971 (Darlington & Eisenstein).
Although there is no formally established set of boundaries for the neighborhood of Huguenot, the boundaries defined on the website City-data.com are reasonably drawn. On this website, Huguenot is bordered by Woodrow Road to the northwest, Arden Avenue to the northeast, the Raritan Bay coast, and Wolfe’s Pond Park and Foster Road to the southwest. However, if I were to personally delineate the borders of Huguenot, I would extend the northwestern border to the West Shore Expressway and make the northwestern boundary a chain of streets consisting of Poillon Avenue, Albee Avenue, and Arden Avenue and the southwestern boundary Foster Road and Alverson Avenue. These borders would better represent the de facto boundaries of the residents of Staten Island who consider themselves residents of Huguenot. However, these boundaries do not correspond to the demographic information provided by any source; therefore, my research focuses on the former set of boundaries described from the City-data source, on which there are many statistics about the populace.
History:
The name of this neighborhood originates from one of Staten Island’s earliest settlers, the French Huguenots. The Huguenots were a group created during the Protestant Reformation who were followers of the theologian John Calvin and followed the example of Martin Luther in breaking away from the Catholic Church (DeLisio & Proscia, 2012). As Roman Catholicism was the religion practiced by a majority of the population, Protestants, including the Huguenots, were rejected by the French monarchy. Despite their suppression, the Huguenots’ popularity grew, which only augmented their tension with the Roman Catholics, who persecuted them, forcing them to flee to more religiously tolerant environments. Some moved to neighboring European nations while others decided to set sail for North America or South Africa.
The Dutch colony, New Netherland, was reputed for its toleration and diversity, an image promoted by the Dutch West India Company because they wanted to attract settlers, which was the key to the colony’s prosperous economy. The Huguenots who came to New Netherland found this image to be true, for it had a permissive social environment in which they were able to practice their religion freely. The Huguenot immigrants adjusted well to colonial life more than just religiously, for they were known for their wide range of skills and capability as a community. Many were physicians, artisans, sailors, soldiers, farmers, laborers, politicians, and ministers, allowing them to accommodate to the demands of being an independent society (“Huguenot history”). A sizeable number of Huguenot refugees settled in present-day Staten Island, where their namesake lives on as the neighborhood of Huguenot.
Staten Island was initially home to two of the native American Lenape tribes, the Hackensack tribe and the Raritan tribe (“History: A timeline,” 2013). Today, Hackensack is the name of a New Jersey city, and Raritan is the name of the bay between the southern border of Staten Island and New Jersey. The Lenape tribes spoke different dialects of the Algonquian language (“About the Lenape,” 2009). A vestige of this native American culture survives in Huguenot as the name of a small residential street, Algonkin, a variant of Algonquian. With the arrival of European explorers and subsequent colonists, these tribes were driven out with hardly a trace for they had preserved the natural woodlands of Staten Island.
After European colonization, Staten Island has undergone continuous development from trails to dirt roads to paved roads and from forests to farms to residential complexes to become the suburb it is today. This process was accelerated in the mid-20th century when an exodus of city dwellers moved out of the city to the less densely populated areas surrounding Manhattan, which were Staten Island, Long Island, and Westchester County. The high demand for houses led to the eradication of many of Staten Island’s trees to make room for couples trying to raise families. Present efforts are being made to preserve the woodlands that remain, which are under the protection of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Housing, Demographics, and Politics:
Although it is part of New York City, much of Staten Island is considered to be a suburb. Huguenot is one such characteristic area, containing mostly houses and condominiums. This lends itself to the high number of families in the neighborhood, given that there is a high population of children and middle-aged adults and the average household size is 3.0 people instead of 2.8, which is the average household size of Staten Island overall. According to City-data.com, Huguenot housing consists of the following:
There are no apartment buildings in Huguenot, so the building topography is consistent for the most part throughout the neighborhood aside from the churches and schools. The residents of Huguenot are overwhelmingly middle class, including lower middle class and upper middle class, with only 2.9% of the population under the poverty level. The median Huguenot household income in 2009 was $88,439 (“Huguenot neighborhood,” 2009). Some occupational categories are popular among members of the Huguenot community, particularly sales and office jobs, in which 43.0% of the employed women in Huguenot work (“Huguenot neighborhood,” 2009). The males in the community do not have such a concentration in any one particular field, but the most popular jobs among the men are management, service, construction and maintenance, and sales and office.
(data obtained from City-data)
As of the year 2009, the resident population in Huguenot was 22,794 and the density, consisting of mostly white people at about 90%, with about 5% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 1% other (“Huguenot neighborhood,” 2009). Substantially less diverse than the rest of Manhattan, it comes as no surprise that Huguenot’s foreign-born immigrant population is a modest 11.4% as reported by City-data.com. As Staten Island is the conservative bastion in a liberal city, Huguenot is representative of this aspect. The borough president James Molinaro is a conservative and District Attorney Daniel Donovan is Republican. Other politicians that represent Staten Island are Andrew Lanza, State Senator, and Michael Grimm, congressman, both of whom are part of the Republican Party.
(“Huguenot neighborhood”, 2009)
Education:
The schools in the area have received good ratings, which attracts many parents to this neighborhood so their children can be zoned for these schools. The elementary school, Public School 5 Huguenot, holds the highest rating for public schools in Staten Island on a popular school information and rating website, Greatschools.com. It is a small school of 215 students total from Kindergarten to fifth grade (“P.S 5,” 2013). The two public intermediate schools in Huguenot, I.S.7 Elias Bernstein and I.S.75 Frank D. Paulo provide the first and third best public education, respectively, for the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades on Staten Island according to Greatschools.com. Tottenville High School is the only public high school in the region, and has the largest student body in Staten Island, totaling 3,875 students from ninth grade to twelfth grade (New York, 2013). Our Lady Star of the Sea and St. Joseph by the Sea High School are both private Roman Catholic schools. The former teaches students from Pre-Kindergarten up until eighth grade, and the latter has grades nine through twelve.
Religion:
As religion was a major impetus for many immigrants to move to New York throughout its history, it is important to consider the religious institutions established in Huguenot. The oldest church in this neighborhood is, unsurprisingly, the Reformed Church of Huguenot Park, which originates from the Calvinist Protestants who fled France and were part of the first European settlement of Staten Island in 1624. It wasn’t until 1849 that a small group of western Staten Islanders founded the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Westfield in a small wooden building that they referred to as the little Brown Church (DeLisio & Proscia, 2012). The congregation met there until it caught fire in 1918, causing irreparable damage, which gave rise to the movement by Reverend Frost to create from the wreckage a national memorial church to commemorate the original Huguenot settlers. He succeeded in gaining the support local Huguenots and even the Huguenot Society of America. The new church, the Memorial Church of the Huguenots (also known as the Reformed Church of Huguenot Park), designed by architect Ernest Flagg, was built using Staten Island’s own natural resource, Serpentine stone. In 1924, it was dedicated as the National Monument of the Huguenot-Walloon-New Netherlands 300th Anniversary of Religious Freedom, but unfortunately, it did not become the hub of Huguenot heritage that was envisioned (DeLisio & Proscia, 2012). Engraved on the columns are names of significant Huguenots and other Protestants. At the back of the chancel is the French word “Resistez” in gold leaf, which was what Marie Durand carved into the wall of her prison in sixteenth century France, incarcerated for her religious beliefs (Graves, 2009). Today, it is a small church of only about 100 congregants, most of who were originally baptized under other Christian denominations than the Reformed Church in America.
Postcard of the Reformed Church of Huguenot Park taken in the early to mid-1900s
(from the NYPL Digital Gallery)
Less than a block away is the much larger Roman Catholic church, Our Lady Star of the Sea, established in 1916 that currently serves over 4,200 congregants in the fourteen weekly Masses (“About us,” 2013). Our Lady Star of the Sea serves many Huguenot-residing families as well as many in adjacent neighborhoods—a grand total 4,100 families. The large congregation was a serious issue before 2008, when the church was demolished to be re-erected with more space for the worshippers. The new church, now complete, has an occupancy of 1,175 compared to the 500-person limit before the renovation (Palma-Simoncek, 2009).
Two other churches, the Grace Christian Church and the Staten Island Korean Seventh-Day Adventist Church were established in the 1980s and 1990s, representing the comparatively recent influx of East Asians families to New York. Before they had their own place of worship, the members of the Grace Christian Church used the Reformed Church of Huguenot as a temporary venue to hold their services. In 1996, they obtained the property for their current location on the corner of Huguenot Avenue and Woodrow Road, where their congregation continues to flourish and sermons are conducted in Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English (Gold & Weintrob, 2011). The Korean Adventist Church is located on land that was once owned and used as a parking lot by Our Lady Star of the Sea on Huguenot Avenue at the southwestern end of Algonkin Street. There, they hold separate sermons in Korean and English. Another local religious group is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a recent institution, which holds services at the Kingdom Hall on Huguenot Avenue.
Business:
Along Huguenot Avenue is where the majority of the neighborhood’s commercial activity is located. One may even call it the heart of Huguenot, especially the stretch between Amboy Road and Drumgoole Road West. This is also where the Huguenot train station is situated, as well as a municipal parking lot, where many commuters park for free to take the Staten Island Railway to work. Besides being the transfer point for commuters, the Huguenot train station is also used by many Tottenville High School students (and some from the other schools, but not nearly as many) to get to and from school. These students also provide the local businesses with customers.
On weekday mornings, you can find many people on line at the Dunkin Donuts, waiting to get their daily coffees before going off to class or their job. Across the street along the tiny strip mall is the 24-hour deli, Fiesta, where you can pick up a sandwich for lunch and grab a few snacks, unless you prefer Subway sandwiches, which is within a 200-foot radius of the deli. Unfortunately, there is a very small variety of food products in Huguenot. There are two pizzerias, one Chinese take-out restaurant, a small burger and shake restaurant, and Ralph’s Italian Ices in addition to the Dunkin Donuts adjoined to the Baskin Robbins and the Subway previously mentioned.
If you have to run errands, you’ll probably stop by the bank first to get money. In Huguenot, you either go to TD Bank or the Sovereign Bank across the intersection of Huguenot Avenue and Amboy Road. After that, you might visit the library, just a walk up the hill. In the children’s section on the library’s lower level, toddlers are entertained by the wooden bead maze, while primary school children are occupied with a basic mathematics computer game. What used to be the Huguenot library is now Amboy Locksmith and Screen Repair, a building with a base of about 15 feet by 10 feet. Walking back toward Amboy Road, you pass by Hana Nails, which on weekends is usually brimming with customers. It’s a good thing there’s another nail salon, Huguenot Creative Nail, right across the street to lighten the load of impatient patrons. For anniversaries, birthdays, and Valentine’s Day, many people stop by the Evergreen Florist to pick up a bouquet for someone special. For other holidays, like Christmas, Halloween or the Fourth of July, it would probably be your best bet to go to the Richmondtown Garden Center for outdoor and indoor decoration.
The healthcare available in this community has quite a few options. For dental care, you can choose between C & K Dental Boutique on Amboy Road, Family Dentistry next to the Huguenot Branch Library, and the Staten Island Aesthetic & Implant Dentist near I.S.75. On Hylan Boulevard, Comprehensive Pediatrics and Staten Island Physician Practice are the local general practitioners; however, if you require more specialized services, look to Huguenot Avenue, where there’s Staten Island Foot Care, a neurologist, and a chiropractor, as well as Staten Island University Hospital Drug Testing Service on Hylan Boulevard.
The parks also have a significant presence in Huguenot. Although there is a lot of park property, as in owned by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, much of it is not open to the public for use. The landmark park of Huguenot is Wolfes Pond Park, located on the beach of Raritan Bay. It’s a sizable park abundant in trees with a pond offset from the bay. Some of its other amenities include two playgrounds, tennis courts, a roller hockey arena, basketball courts, multiple swing sets, a dog run, a footpath around a field, and a barbeque area. Wolfes Pond Park is also the home of the Battle of the Bulge Memorial Plaza. The park has also been the venue of some community events such as holiday celebrations, especially those involving fireworks like Independence Day and New Year’s. In 2011, Wolfes Pond Park hosted its first Spartan Race event, an eight-mile obstacle course race with hundreds of participants. On a regular day, you can still find a good number of runners, including local high school track teams.
Being in a big city, it’s easy to overlook the small, quiet communities that spot the metropolis. However, these peaceful localities, like Huguenot, provide respite from the seemingly endless hubbub of Manhattan. Although Huguenot has developed significantly since its settlement in the seventeenth century over the course of time, progress does not always culminate to an urban center. Progress can mean a little neighborhood that celebrates its history, yet encourages improvement in its infrastructure, economy, and education.
Kari Andresen
Macaulay Honors College
Class of 2016
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References
About the lenape. (2009, December 07). Lenape Lifeways. Retrieved from http://www.lenapelifeways.org/lenape1.htm
About us. (2013). Retrieved from Our Lady Star of the Sea, http://olssparish.org/about-us/
Darlington, P., & Eisenstein, H. (n.d.). SIRT Staten Island Rapid Transit. Retrieved from http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/SIRT_Staten_Island_Rapid_Transit
DeLisio, P., & Proscia, R. S. (2012, March). SI350 and the Memorial Church of the Huguenots. Retrieved from The Reformed Church at Huguenot Park, http://huguenotparkchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/History_of_the_French_Huguenots-history_book-updated-20121.pdf
Gold, K. M., & Weintrob, L. R. (2011). Discovering Staten Island: A 350th anniversary commemorative history. Charleston, SC: The History Press.
Graves, D. (2009, April 08). Marie Durand (1715-1776) immured 38 years for her Huguenot faith. Retrieved from http://www.captivefaith.org/post-reformation/durand.php
History: A timeline of Staten Island. (2013, April 22). Staten Island Advance. Retrieved from http://www.silive.com/guide/index.ssf/2010/04/history_staten_island.html
Huguenot history. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Huguenot Society of America, http://huguenotsocietyofamerica.org/?page=Huguenot-History
Huguenot neighborhood in Staten Island, New York (NY), 10309, 10312 detailed profile. (2009). City-data.com. Retrieved from http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Huguenot-Staten-Island-NY.html
Island residents like to think locally. (2012, April 22). Staten Island Advance. Retrieved from http://shopping.silive.com/SS/Page.aspx?sstarg=&facing=false&secid=118054&pagenum=14
New York State Education Department, Office of Information and Reporting Services. (2013). The New York State report card 2011-2012 (Tottenville High School). Retrieved from website: https://reportcards.nysed.gov/files/2011-12/RC-2012-353100011455.pdf
Palma-Simoncek, L. (2009, August 02). Construction of Staten Island church taking shape. Staten Island Advance. Retrieved from http://www.silive.com/southshore/index.ssf/2009/08/construction_on_staten_island.html
P.S. 5 Huguenot. (2013, March 27). Retrieved from http://www.greatschools.org/new-york/staten-island/2039-P.S.-5-Huguenot/
