WHERE: The Great Kills neighborhood of Staten Island
REACHED BY: Great Kills station, Staten Island Railway (fully accessible)
Photographs by Michael Cairl. Map courtesy Google Maps.
Tucked away in a leafy area of Great Kills is my second Staten Island stair street and 114th overall, Rustic Place. Rustic Place is two cul-de-sacs between Nelson Avenue and Cleveland Avenue connected by stairs, and a third cul-de-sac from Cleveland Avenue toward Hillview Terrace.
Upon arriving at the Rustic Place stairs, I noticed that the first few had no handrails. Down I went, carefully. The remainder had handrails but they were not at a consistent height relative to the stairs. The handrails and stairs were in good repair; it’s just that the stairs weren’t as navigable as they could easily be. There isn’t a lot of foot traffic in this suburban neighborhood and the stairs probably don’t get much use, but they are much better than a longer set of stairs in a similar neighborhood, on 125 Street in College Point, Queens. See the post on this page entitled “On the Trail of Conrad Poppenhusen.”
STAIR RECAP: 15 steps down.
Rustic Place, upper stairs.
Rustic Place, lower stairs.
The third cul-de-sac ends as shown. I walked around the highway-style guard rail onto a private driveway to get to Hillview Terrace, being greeted by a dog barking as I did so.
The rest of this walk took me past a marina on Great Kills Harbor, through Seaside Wildlife Nature Park, and past Crescent Beach Park. Crescent Beach fronts on Raritan Bay, across which is New Jersey. Raritan Bay was once well-known for its oysters until water pollution closed the oyster beds after World War II. A New York City non-profit, the Billion Oyster Project, has been re-introducing oyster beds in the waters around the city, for water purification and storm protection, not for food. A highlight of their work in the Great Kills area can be found at https://www.billionoysterproject.org/richmond-county.
Great Kills Harbor, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.