Ocean Breeze Park, South Beach Staten Island
Posted by Anthony Licciardello on
On the eastern shore of Staten Island's Mid-Island section, you can find Ocean Breeze Park. This park is right across the street from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Boardwalk and behind Staten Island University Hospital North and the South Beach Psychiatric Center. Ocean Breeze Park is an approximately 110-acre nature preserve that has been undergoing some changes.
Before the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation took over this land to make it a park, the land was a part of Staten Island University Hospital. Prior to becoming a park and as a park today, the land is filled with sand dunes, wetlands, shrub forests, and grassland areas. With Ocean Breeze Park containing all of these natural habitats, the New York City Department of Parks and…
4927 Views, 0 Comments

moved to 60 Foote Avenue, in the Grymes Hill neighborhood. Around that time, an adjacent plot of land was acquired by New York City. This less-than-two-acres parcel was transferred to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, as well as the New York City Board of Education.
In the first half of the twentieth century, it was rare to find an architect who had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright had made a name for himself by developing new styles of housing, including the Prairie style and the Organic style. He was known for his practical house designs and for his love of manufactured homes. After the Great Depression, he realized that what people needed were affordable homes. By the 1950s, he had teamed up with Marshall Erdman, a house manufacturer, to create a series of affordable prefabricated homes which would cater to middle-class Americans.
Gothic architecture was popular in Europe during the Middle Ages-specifically between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. It is best known for its use in churches and cathedrals. Prominent features of Gothic-style buildings included flying buttresses and pointed arches.
When the English Puritans settled in America during the first half of the seventeenth century, they brought with them the architectural styles of England. Their homes and meetinghouses would be constructed in what is now known as the English Colonial style of architecture. These homes, along with their variations, were constructed until the mid-1850s.
The British Raj began to control India in 1858. While in India, members of this governance would often stay in banglas, which were simply single-family homes in Bengal. Members of the government grew quite fond of these houses and brought the style with them when they would retire and return to the United Kingdom. Soon, the term "bungalow" began to be used to describe this new type of housing for the British.
The construction of Raised Ranches or began around the same time as its parent style, the Ranch. This was around the mid-twentieth century, when the need for practicality was evident. Much of the Raised Ranch style is the same as the ordinary Ranch style, though there are a few obvious features which make Raised Ranch-style houses distinguishable among ordinary Ranch-style houses. The most similar feature of the two home styles is all of the homes living quarters exist on one floor. Consequently, the homes bedrooms, kitchens, full bath living and dining room are all accessible on a single level.
The construction of Ranch-style houses began in the 1920s.This architectural style emerged as a variant of the Bungalow, a single- or one-and-a-half-story house with a verandah. The Ranch seems to be a simplification of the Bungalow, though it was made to be a convenient house. While some Ranches do have front porches, many are just simple, one-story houses with an attached garage.