Port Ivory, Staten Island : NYC Tourist Guide

Port Ivory

Port Ivory is a locality situated in the northwestern corner of Staten Island. The island forms one of the five boroughs into which the largest city in the United States - New York City - is divided. The Kill van Kull and Arthur Kill lie to the north and west respectively.

The area bore the name of Milliken originally, and became known as Port Ivory after Ivory Soap, one of the best-known products from Procter & Gamble, which operated a factory at the site from 1907 until 1991. Located nearby is the Howland Hook Marine Terminal.

Another transportation resource in the vicinity is the North Shore branch of the Staten Island Railway, which crosses the Arthur Kill on its own bridge, adjacent and parallel to the Goethals Bridge, and eventually reaches Cranford Junction, New Jersey. However, passenger trains stopped serving the Port Ivory (formerly Milliken) station several years before passenger service on the branch as a whole ceased in 1953, and freight activity on the line became rare by the 1970s and nonexistent by the beginning of the 1990s. Proposals have been studied to restore the freight and/or passenger trains, but no single plan had been adopted by 2005.

The Staten Island Expressway is generally cited as Port Ivory's southern boundary. The island's lone mobile home park is on Goethals Road North, a service road of the expressway; the only other residents of the heavily industrial neighborhood live in a few older single-family homes a short distance to the east, along Forest Avenue.