Ellyn and Vinnie Amessé, a married couple who run a commercial photography business in Staten Island, moved with their two daughters to Lighthouse Hill in 1994. They paid $250,000 for a 1950s ranch home on Manor Court and added a second floor.
Given a choice of bedrooms, their younger daughter, Leah, who was 3 at the time, picked the one with the “big night light.” She was alluding to the Staten Island Range Light lighthouse a block away, which was visible through the window.
“We could look out the other side of the house, and there were horses below,” Ms. Amessé, 60, recalled. Wild turkeys trespassed. In winter, the view from their home swept over Lower Bay and Sandy Hook Bay, all the way to Atlantic Highlands, N.J.
The horses and turkeys are gone, but Lighthouse Hill, a neighborhood in the center of Staten Island that feels like a suburb with semirural tendencies, still teems with wildlife. It has songbirds and garden-chomping deer and at least one garter snake that has been camping out in the Amessés’ yard for years.
340 LIGHTHOUSE AVENUE A three-bedroom, two-bathroom home with a separate one-bedroom cottage, built in 1925 on .36 acre, listed for $1.25 million. 718-667-1800Credit…Robert Wright for The New York Times
Recente reacties