Rossville, Staten Island, New York City
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Rossville is the name of a neighborhood of Staten Island, New York, located to the west of Prince's Bay, on the island's South Shore.
History
Originally inhabited by the Raritan Indians, the area that eventually became known as Rossville remained largely free of European settlers until 1684 when the first land survey of the area was made by the British, who obtained Staten Island from the Dutch in the Treaty of Breda, which ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
In 1692, Daniel Perrin, a Huguenot originally from Jersey, was granted 80 acres of land in the area (then known as Smoking Point) by Governor Benjamin Fletcher.
During the mid 18th century, the area was known as Old Blazing Star, and later simply Blazing Star, for a tavern located there. The Blazing Star Burial Ground, an abandoned cemetery dating from the mid-1750s, can be found just off of Arthur Kill Road, east of Rossville Avenue.
The Blazing Star Ferry, which crossed the Arthur Kill to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, was established in the years before the American Revolution. When the Richmond Turnpike (known today as Victory Boulevard) was built across Richmond County in 1816, it improved connections to the western parts of the island and to the competing New Blazing Star Ferry in Long Neck (known today as Travis), which had steamboat and stagecoach connections to Philadelphia.
By the 1830s the area was renamed Rossville after Colonel William E. Ross, who had built a replica of Windsor Castle (originally known as Ross Castle, later known as Lyon Castle) on a bluff overlooking the landing of the Blazing Star Ferry.
By the mid 19th century, Rossville was a thriving farm community and the village grew around it. However, when the Staten Island Railroad, which bypassed Rossville, opened in 1860, most Staten Islanders began referring to neighborhoods along its route on the basis of what station along the railroad line was nearest; hence Rossville became colloquially part of Prince's Bay, the closest station to it.
The lack of access to transportation caused the town's decline until the completion of the West Shore Expressway in 1976. The resulting residential building boom encouraged long time farmers to sell their land to developers which fueled rapid growth in the area, continuing to this day.
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