Concord, Staten Island : NYC Tourist Guide

Concord

Concord is the name of a neighborhood on Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, USA.

Located on the island's East Shore, with Grymes Hill and Emerson Hill rising to the west and Grasmere to the east, and with Clifton to the north and Dongan Hills to the south, Concord was named Dutch Farms originally, but was renamed in the 1840s after Concord, Massachusetts as a consequence of that town's historical significance - it, along with nearby Lexington, was where the American Revolution had begun in 1775 - even though most Staten Islanders were Tories during that conflict. (Similarly, another East Shore neighborhood - Grant City - was named for Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant despite that war's having been unpopular on Staten Island also).

Early residents of Concord included Judge William Emerson (brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson and for whom nearby Emerson Hill is named) and Henry David Thoreau.

Much property in Concord was condemned to make way for the Staten Island Expressway in the early 1960s; one of its principal east-west thoroughfares, Price Street, is now a service road of the expressway and is known as Narrows Road North. In its first year of existence - 1961-62 - Monsignor Farrell High School operated out of an annex of St. Sylvester's Elementary School in Concord while the construction of its permanent campus in Oakwood was being completed.

In 1985, Staten Island's first Islamic mosque opened in Concord; it later moved to Tompkinsville, however. A small public alternative high school, named Concord High School, is located in the neighborhood, which is also home to a large medical arts complex (on Ralph Place) that had sprung up around the former Doctors Hospital, which closed in 2003.