Staten Island, Apex of New York City

Barry A. Klinger
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Staten Island is often called the Forgotten Borough of New York City, but it is literally the city's apex. The top of Todt Hill, over 400 feet (122 m) above sea level, is not only the highest natural altitude in the city but also the highest along the entire US East Coast south of Maine.

The hills of Staten Island are a key feature of its geography and so the borough is a good place to include topography in road maps. The northern half of the island is divided in two by the system of ridges. North-to-south, these are Grymes Hill, Emerson Hill, Todt Hill, and Lighthouse Hill.

An Island of Museums

While Staten Island cultural activity is generally considered to be on a slightly lower level than other boroughs such as Manhattan (or Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx), Island institutions include Snug Harbor Cultural Center in the north and Historic Richmond Town in the center. Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the founders of modern Italy, spent some time in Staten Island in a home now preserved as the Garibaldi Meucci Museum. The map above marks these and other features of the borough.

Perhaps the most surprising Staten Island cultural institution owes its presence on the Island to topography. The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art sits on a cliff edge on Lighthouse Hill. When I visited it long ago I was told that the hills of Staten island comprised the most Tibet-like setting Ms. Marchais could find within New York City.

Hidden Hand of Topography

The steep hills of Staten Island affect the built environment in several ways. One dramatic effect is the way they divide the island. If one looks closely at a map of the Dongan Hills region of central Staten Island (below left), one can see that there is an invisible divide across which no streets go.

The map on the right includes topography and marks the divide. We can see that there is over a mile in which there is no connection between the eastern side of the map and the west. The topography goes a long way towards explaining the divide: streets at the top of the steep slopes of Todt and Emerson Hills do not connect to the ones at the foot of the hills. Similar breaks also occur along the flanks of the ridge elsewhere on the Island.

Though Staten Island's high ground is prominent, the low elevations can also have a huge impact. When Superstorm Sandy struck in October, 2012, eleven people drowned when a storm surge swept over low-lying neighborhoods between Hylan Boulevard and Father Capodanno Blvd.