Oakwood, Staten Island : NYC Tourist Guide

Oakwood

Oakwood is the name of a neighborhood located on the East Shore of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, USA.

The community's station on the Staten Island Railway bears the name Oakwood Heights, because of the streets similar to Dyker Heights streets in Brooklyn, New York as to the heights of the hills such as Dalton and Coverly Street. Oakwood has some Irish origin as to Behan Court going toward the New Dorp train station. The area's bus service is provided by the S57 (along Amboy Road), S78, and S79 buses (along Hylan Boulevard).

Dominated by farmland until the mid-20th Century, Oakwood underwent rapid suburbanization after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in November of 1964.

Points of interest located in Oakwood include Monsignor Farrell High School and a string of cemeteries on the neighborhood's southwest side, most notably Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, an African-American burial ground - a curious anomaly as very few African-Americans actually reside in Oakwood or any of the neighborhoods that surround it. Historic Richmond Town lies immediately to the west.

The neighborhood has a coastline on the Lower New York Bay; the coastal area is sometimes referred to as Oakwood Beach, and is the site of a sewage treatment facility. Bordering this facility on the south is the Staten Island Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, also known locally (and formerly, officially) as Great Kills Park.

Oakwood's ZIP Code is 10306, the post office serving it being located in New Dorp, the community's northern neighbor.

The greenbelt woods located along Riedel Avenue have some concrete artifacts (such as a piece of sidewalk located near the pond at Riedel and Thomas Street), and pieces of the Great Depression can be occasionally found along the trails, such as bricks or chimneys or foundations of houses that were once located in the area, when it was still rural.