History
Victory Boulevard was established in 1816 by the Richmond Turnpike Company as the Richmond Turnpike. The toll road was owned by Daniel D. Tompkins, a prominent Staten Islander who, a year later, became Vice President of the United States. The route was "promoted as the fastest...from New York to Philadelphia." Ferries from Manhattan and Brooklyn would dock at the eastern end of the turnpike, at Bay Street. Horse-drawn carriages would carry passengers to Travis, known at the time as Long Neck or the New Blazing Star Ferry, whence a ferry would carry people over the Arthur Kill to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. From the 1860s to 1930, Travis was known as Linoleumville, the home of America's first Linoleum factory.
After World War I, the Richmond Turnpike was renamed Victory Boulevard in honor of the allied victory. The segment of Victory Boulevard from Richmond Avenue (then-NY 440) in Bulls Head to Forest Avenue (then-NY 439) in Silver Lake was designated as NY 439A in the late 1940s. East of Forest Avenue, Victory Boulevard was designated as part of NY 439 down to Bay Street. Both designations were removed from Victory Boulevard c. 1968.
Read more about this topic: Victory Boulevard (Staten Island)
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“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
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“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)