Artist Tattfoo Tan wanted more space. He had a studio in his home in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, but needed more room for his contemporary art. Two and a half years ago he started looking around the city. Affordable space proved elusive.
“I couldn’t find it,” Tan, 30, said. “I couldn’t afford more space except in St. George.”
Tan now owns a 3,000-square-foot contemporary art gallery on Monroe Street in the Staten Island neighborhood of St. George, the closest spot on the island to Manhattan. He lives in the back of what is now the Tattfoo Gallery, a space he found through a classified ad in the Village Voice. Tan discovered a neighborhood that gets plenty of visits from thrifty tourists riding the Staten Island Ferry, but most New Yorkers probably have to puzzle over a map before they can pinpoint St. George.
The ferry, which marks 100 years of service this year, transports 65,000 weekday passengers between St. George and lower Manhattan. The five ferryboats operate 24 hours a day, making 104 25-minute trips daily. It’s the most reliable public transportation in New York. Plus, it’s free: The 50-cent roundtrip fare was discontinued in 1997.
“Unfortunately, most people turn around and get back on the ferry without exploring the surrounding area,” said Staten Island native Kevin Barry, whose Maribella X Group renovates and rents homes in St. George. “Staten Island suffers a negative perception from off-islanders. They see it as a sleepy bedroom community. That’s not the case with St. George. It’s got a more urban, gritty feel in comparison to the rest of suburban Staten Island.”
The hilly neighborhood is bounded on the north and the east by Upper New York Bay, on the south by the Tompkinsville neighborhood, and on the west by Westervelt Avenue. But the ferry defines St. George more than any other aspect of its geography.
“Most everyone I know who lives in St. George,” Tan said, “works in Manhattan or out elsewhere, like in Brooklyn.”
St. George could be a good match for couples looking to settle down in an affordable part of New York, said Tan, who is married. They can commute to Manhattan and return home to relative quiet in the city’s smallest borough.
“If you’re single and looking to meet someone, maybe St. George doesn’t have the nightlife for that,” Tan said. “The trend I’ve seen is people moving in as couples. St. George seems a good place to buy a house with a backyard.”
Even with backyards, prices in St. George generally yield a cheaper address than in other boroughs.
Barry’s company advertised in June an 800-square-foot one-bedroom apartment with hardwood floors, rooftop garden, Jacuzzi and skylight for $1,800 a month. A one-bedroom, one-bath, 725-square-foot apartment in St. George went for $105,000 in April, and a similar one-bedroom on the same street sold for $100,000 in October. Victorian- and Queen Anne-style homes mingle with modern apartment buildings, and the St. George Historic District includes 78 buildings, many of them from the late 19th century.
“It’s people relocating from Manhattan,” said Barry, 47, who started his business in Brooklyn before returning to Staten Island. “They’ve done the whole city-living thing, the walk-up shoebox, and now they’re looking for more bang for their buck.”
St. George remained a decidedly nonurban outpost into the mid-20th century. It did develop the accouterments of city life apartment buildings, traffic jams, trains faster than neighborhoods farther south. The neighborhood’s economy suffered, however, when the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Brooklyn opened southeast of St. George in 1964. The ferry became another direct way to get to the rest of the city rather than the only way. Thousands of potential consumers bypassed St. George completely. The neighborhood remains the starting and ending point for the Staten Island Railroad, which transverses the east side of the island, and 18 local bus routes end there.
The neighborhood has seen a resurgent economy in recent years. What the state comptroller’s office calls the largest redevelopment project in Staten Island’s history has helped. The project’s main parts are either near completion or done. The Staten Island Ferry Terminal reopened in May after $130 million in renovations, and the Richmond County Bank Ballpark (home of the Staten Island Yankees, a farm team for the major league Yankees) opened in 2001. A renovation of the National Lighthouse Museum is under way.
For Barry, the vibe of the neighborhood in everything but price is comparative to the Upper West Side. Transplanted artists like Tan who’ve helped fuel media speculation that St. George may be the next Williamsburg mingle with young families and professionals, near-suburbanites looking for calm among the bustle.
“It is not Manhattan,” Barry made clear. “But it is a nice form of alternative living.”