Captains' Row on the shore road
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Stephen D. Barnes House at 2876 Richmond Terrace on July 13, 1976. Its report places the house, built about 1853 for Stephen D. Barnes, "an oysterman," in Mariners' Harbor, and describes it as a surviving house of the "Captains' Row" of oystermen's homes that lined the Shore Road, now Richmond Terrace, facing the Kill van Kull and Newark Bay. The same report describes an oyster trade along the shore of Mariners' Harbor that lasted until about 1900.
Farther along Richmond Terrace, at number 2589, the Standard Varnish Works Factory Office Building was designated on October 30, 2007. Its report calls it "the Standard Varnish Works Elm Park factory"; the LPC dataset places it in the Elm Park section of the city's Mariner's Harbor-Arlington-Graniteville area.
Housing by the numbers
Counted in the tax-lot file the city publishes as PLUTO, the official Mariner's Harbor-Arlington-Graniteville area holds 10,611 homes on 5,607 lots. Single-family houses supply 34.0 percent of them and two-family houses 33.7 percent, with condos at 11.3, elevator rentals at 10.8, walk-ups at 7.4 and three-family houses at 1.2. Construction since 1980 accounts for 42.4 percent, the postwar decades through 1979 for 31.9 percent, and prewar building for 20.6 percent. Half the area's one- and two-family lots measure under 25.1 feet at the street and half measure over it.
Census estimates for ZIP code tabulation area 10303, home to the Barnes House, cover 2020-2024: free-standing single houses near 27.6 percent and two-unit buildings near 25.5 percent (units in structure); about 22.0 percent standing since 1939 or before (year built); and owners in about 65.2 percent of occupied homes (tenure).
Checking a house built since 1980
In the official Mariner's Harbor-Arlington-Graniteville area, about four in ten units date from 1980 or later and the median one- and two-family frontage is 25.1 feet. For a house of that era, the pressure points are:
- Flashing where vinyl siding meets windows, doors and the deck ledger, the usual entry points for wind-driven rain.
- Roofs shared across a row, where one owner's reroof ends at a seam with the next.
- Fire separation at the party wall and between an attached garage and the rooms above it.
- A furnace, water heater and air conditioner that may all be reaching the end of a normal service life at once.
- Condo or homeowners' association documents, which set who pays for roofs, facades and common drainage.
The 1940-1979 share of the stock brings a different list: original steel oil tanks, abandoned or still in use; early aluminum branch wiring in some houses of the late 1960s and early 1970s; and basements finished long after the house was built, often without permits. For any lot near a manufacturing district, it is reasonable to ask your attorney about environmental records before closing.
Flood maps for the official area
FEMA's effective layer draws Zone A and Zone AE along the shoreline of the city's Mariner's Harbor-Arlington-Graniteville area, and 500-year (shaded X) and unshaded X areas too; the proposed update puts a VE zone on the map as well. The official area's outline reaches into open water, where New Jersey map panels also intersect it, so a zone that touches the area may lie at or beyond the shoreline; equally, Zone X is not a finding that a house is dry. Sandy's mapped flooding, in the city's inundation layer, extends inside this area. For one address, the panel comes from FEMA's Map Service Center.
What the sewer records do and do not say
DEP's plant list describes the Port Richmond plant's drainage area as the "northern section of Staten Island." In 2010, the department's capital release said the borough "lacks storm and even sanitary sewers in some areas." Neither names a Mariners Harbor street, both speak about large areas, and the release dates from June 2010. Whether a particular house connects to a public sewer is a question for the lateral camera and the city's records for that lot.
Zoning, transit and two city laws
The island's lower-density districts, as section 12-10 lists them, carry growth-management rules with requirements of their own, which an architect should check before an addition; ZoLa gives a lot's district. No Staten Island Railway station in the state's railway records lies inside the official area. Gas-piping inspections under Local Law 152 skip one- and two-family homes; a three-family building here is due in calendar 2028. The basement legalization law, Local Law 126 of 2024, leaves out every Staten Island district, and its rules remained at the proposal stage in September 2026.
Graniteville
Graniteville shares the official area's housing and flood figures above. Several facts are its own. The Department of Education lists P.S. 022 Graniteville at 1860 Forest Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10303. NYC Parks lists two nature areas under the name (Parks Properties): Graniteville Quarry Park, 4.465 acres at Forest and Wilcox Avenues between Van Name Avenue and Eunice Place, and Graniteville Swamp Park, 9.187 acres by Goethals Road North, Meeker Avenue and Morrow Street. And in August 2019 the city Comptroller urged the state DEC to reject permits for commercial development affecting a wetland the release calls the Graniteville Swamp. The release does not map the wetland, so no street can be placed in or out of it.
Putting a house on the calendar
Mariners Harbor walkthroughs are offered in English or Bangla; expect the written findings by the end of that day. Start here.