A station village that became a house district
Annadale's name goes back at least to the railway's opening. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's report on Brougham Cottage records that the Staten Island Railway began running in 1860 with major stations at Eltingville and Annadale, "named for local landowners, who had invested in the railway," and that small village enclaves grew up near those stops. The cottage itself, at 4746 Amboy Road, was designated in December 2016; LPC dates its west wing to about 1725, its mid-section to about 1790 and its kitchen wing to the early nineteenth century.
The station still carries the name. The MTA's station list describes Annadale as an open-cut stop that is not wheelchair accessible, with northbound trains signed "Ferry," for the boat at St. George.
Sewers arrived here within recent memory
For a buyer, the headline is drainage. In March 2013 the Department of Environmental Protection wrote that "prior to this project the Annandale section of Staten Island did not have a sewer system and street flooding was a common problem when it rained" (DEP release 13-024). That project extended sewers to 136 homes in what DEP called "the Annandale area," and added stream restoration and larger culverts on Grantwood Avenue. One geographic caution: most of its streets, around Grantwood Avenue and Carlton Boulevard, lie north of the city's official Annadale-Huguenot-Prince's Bay-Woodrow neighborhood area, inside the neighboring Great Kills-Eltingville and Arden Heights-Rossville areas.
A second project followed. DEP's January 2015 release says new sanitary service "will allow 105 homeowners to connect to the City's sewer system" in the Annadale neighborhood, alongside new water mains, storm sewers and 76 catch basins.
Keep two limits in view. These are area records from 2013 and 2015, not a 2026 status report, and a sewer in the street does not prove a given house is tied into it. DEP's 2010 south-shore releases told owners they were "required to hire a Licensed Master Plumber to connect their homes to the new sewers within six months of notification" (DEP 10-58); some owners may have connected late, and some old tanks may still sit in back yards.
Paperwork worth requesting
- The DEP house-connection permit and the plumber's sign-off.
- Whether the retired septic tank was pumped and filled or removed.
- A camera run of the building sewer, which shows pipe condition that no document can.
What the tax-lot file says about the housing
The city's tax-lot file (PLUTO) counts 15,653 residential units in the official Annadale-Huguenot-Prince's Bay-Woodrow area. Of those, 55.2 percent are in two-family houses, 43.5 percent in one-family houses and 0.1 percent in condos. By year built, 71.2 percent of units date from 1980 or later, 22.9 percent from 1940 to 1979 and 5.9 percent from before 1940, and the median frontage of one- and two-family lots is 41 feet. These are figures for the whole official area, which Annadale shares with Huguenot, Prince's Bay, Woodrow and Pleasant Plains.
ZIP Code Tabulation Area 10312, which holds the Annadale station, counts 22,697 housing units in the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 survey, and 17,770 of its 21,549 occupied units are owner-occupied (tenure table). The ZIP area does not match the neighborhood.
A detached or semi-attached two-family house from the 1980s or 1990s is now at the age when original roof coverings, early vinyl siding, the first gas-fired boiler or furnace and the original water heater typically come due together. Two-family layouts add a second kitchen, a second set of meters and, often, a basement entrance whose drainage deserves a look.
Flood maps: look up the lot, not the name
FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer shows coastal VE zones along the shoreline of the city's Annadale-Huguenot-Prince's Bay-Woodrow area, and that official area contains or borders AE zones, regulatory floodways, Zone A and shaded Zone X, the 0.2 percent annual chance band. Shaded X is still mapped flood hazard. The effective maps date from September 5, 2007, and FEMA's Community Status Book shows New York City with no Community Rating System class, so no CRS discount applies to its flood insurance. Pull the panel for a specific address from the FEMA Flood Map Service Center.
Rules that bind an addition or a new driveway
The Special South Richmond Development District is the special zoning district mapped over this official area, though not necessarily over every lot. In residence districts, when a house is built, altered or enlarged, it asks for "one tree credit for each 1,000 square feet of lot area or portion thereof." Grade existing on November 2, 2023 may be changed by up to two feet of cut or fill, provided trees of six-inch caliper or more are not destroyed, and no grading may happen within eight feet of a tree counted toward the credits. On top of that, City Planning's 2011 metadata describes the Lower Density Growth Management Area as requiring more off-street parking, larger yards and more open space for new development on Staten Island. Check each lot in ZoLa.
Two newer local laws have limited reach for a one- or two-family buyer. Gas-piping inspections under Local Law 152 exempt one- and two-family homes; for other buildings in Community District 3 the next window is calendar 2028 (DOB). The basement-apartment program under Local Law 126 is not yet in effect: rules were proposed in November 2025, DOB says it is not yet accepting applications, and no Staten Island district is currently in its program area (DOB ADU page).
Huguenot
Huguenot has a station of its own, also an open cut and also not accessible, according to the same MTA list. Its landmark is the Reformed Church of Huguenot Park at 5475 Amboy Road, at the corner of Huguenot Avenue, designated in November 1990: the church was built in 1923–24 to a design by Ernest Flagg, and a library building of about 1903–05 stands on the same landmark site. LPC's school reports list an old Westfield Township district as "No. 2, Bloomingview (Huguenot)." None of the DEP sewer releases cited on this page names Huguenot, so for a house there, the connection question has to be answered from the lot's own records.
A 2024 state notice records a city application for tidal-wetland and coastal-erosion permits for a sheet-pile wall at the southern ends of Huguenot and Swaim Avenues. It is an application naming streets, not the neighborhood; whether the wall was built is unknown. NYC Parks lists Huguenot Ponds Park, a nature area at Billiou and Comely Streets (Parks Properties).