Staten Island Stats

This article relates to The Force

New York City consists of five boroughs: Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. The latter is the home of Sgt. Denny Malone, the street-wise detective in Don Winslow's The Force. Denny may keep an apartment in Manhattan, but Staten Island is home. That's where he grew up. That's where he keeps his wife and kids safe.

Today, the billion dollar glitz of the modern National Football League is certainly familiar to the half-million residents of Staten Island, but there are probably only a few who realize Staten Island once had a professional National Football League team. The team was the Staten Island Stapletons. The Stapes, as they were called, made their debut on October 6th, 1929. They weren't much good, but here's another bit of trivia to win a refill after you stump your friends with the There really was a NFL team from Staten Island! factoid. The Stapleton's played their final game in 1932 against the Green Bay Packers, four-time Super Bowl champions. The Stapletons lost.

So that's sports. What else about Staten Island?

The least populated of New York City's buroughs, the island was sighted by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524. Don't say "discovered" because tribes from the Delaware Nation had lived there for 500 years. Henry Hudson named the island Staaten Eyelandt - after the Staten-Generaal, the Dutch parliament which had financed his voyage to the New World - after his expedition saw it 1609. When the Dutch settled in the Americas, it became a fur-trading post, and soon Governor Peter Stuyvesant permitted settlers to move onto the island.

Staten Island is the site of a center for Tibetan Art and the St. George Theater, and the location of one of the highest points on the eastern seaboard (Todt Hill at 410 feet above sea level.) At one time or another, the island has been home to institutions as varied as the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, Proctor and Gamble, and S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company.

Staten Island wasn't connected to the rest of New York City by any transportation other than water ferry until the completion and opening of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964. The ferry remains a very good option, though, especially for tourists, considering it's free and offers outstanding views of the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and the majestic Manhattan skyline.

The Staten Island Stapletons at Thompson Stadium, courtesy of sportsecyclopedia.com
St. George Theater, courtesy of www.oldstatenisland.org

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Force. It originally ran in July 2017 and has been updated for the March 2018 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

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