Ingram Woods: Westerleigh, Staten Island
Posted by Anthony Licciardello on
The Staten Island neighborhood of Westerleigh became a popular place a couple of decades after the formation of the Prohibition Party in 1869. Around the late 1880s, twenty-five acres of the current Westerleigh neighborhood became 
home to the National Prohibition Campground Association, also known as Prohibition Park. Prohibition Park started off as a campground with some recreational facilities for its visitors. Soon, people began to settle there instead of having to visit.
In the early twentieth century, the neighborhood of Westerleigh started to become more a residential area. As a result, the National Prohibition Campground Association started building homes and transferred some of their land to the City of New York. By the mid-1900s,…
3733 Views, 0 Comments
Throughout the nineteenth century, farming was one of the most significant industries on Staten Island. By the turn of the twentieth century, the number of farms on the Island began to greatly diminish. Nonetheless, German immigrant Henry William Dietrich Mohlenhoff decided to relocate from his farmland in Queens to Staten Island, where he purchased thirty-two acres of land. On this land, he and his wife established a farm. The couple had one dozen children, all of whom worked on the farm with their parents. Even as the sons married, they would erect their own homes on the property so that they could still work on the farm.Â
the early part of the twentieth century, he had established a 35-acre estate near the center of Staten Island.Glauber passed away in 1944 and the estate soon came into the hands of the City of New York. By the end of the decade, almost half of the estate was assigned to the New York City Housing Authority, who planned to use the land for a public housing project. This project, which consisted of 502 apartments, was completed in 1950 as the Todt Hill Houses.
During the middle of the twentieth century, the City of New York began acquiring land for the current Staten Island Expressway. In 1958, a parcel of a little over thirteen acres of land was acquired in the neighborhood of Bulls Head. Grass was planted on the parcel, but nothing else was done to the site for decades. It is bounded to the north by the Staten Island Expressway, to the south by Lamberts Lane, to the west by Fahy Ave., and to the east by a ramp connecting to the Staten Island Expressway.
known as the Neck Creek Marsh, named after the creek that runs through it.
missing. Hundreds of volunteers joined together in a search that lasted thirty-five days. On August 13, 1987, a body had been found in a shallow grave at the site of the Staten Island Developmental Center in Willowbrook, an institution for mentally disabled children. As it turned out, the body was indeed that of Jennifer Schweiger.
residents of Staten Island.
fore the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge first opened.
. On January 17, 1958, the estate was acquired by the City of New York, who transferred the site to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Soon afterward, a little less than five acres were transformed into a park.