Mont Sec Avenue

Mont Sec Avenue

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

Staten Island, NY

Officers and their families lived in these houses lining Mont Sec Avenue. The oldest houses in neighborhood date to the 1870s; later houses were built during the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration. The sounds of children playing and mothers calling them home for dinner once reverberated down this street.

Walking through this bucolic neighborhood it can be easy to forget the massive fortifications standing just around the corner, but while those forts were keeping the harbor and the nation safe, residents of Mont Sec Avenue and the surrounding neighborhoods had their own safety concerns. In the late 19^th century residents complained that poor landscaping and frequent construction at Fort Wadsworth was leading to pools of standing water, from which foul vapors, known as miasmas, were issuing, causing outbreaks of diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Today we know that their fears weren’t entirely unfounded—both yellow fever and malaria are spread by mosquitos, which breed in pools of stagnant water. Major landscape work on the grounds did in fact lead to a decline in cases of malaria. It was also the start of the park like setting Fort Wadsworth has today.

How is your community kept safe? Do you spend more time thinking about national security or the security of your neighborhood?