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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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)