Pest Control in New Brighton, Staten Island
New Brighton stretches west from St. George along the Kill Van Kull, rising from Richmond Terrace up steep, tree-shaded streets toward Brighton Heights. The Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, with its row of Greek Revival buildings and landscaped grounds, is the neighborhood's best-known landmark. The Hamilton Park section preserves some of the island's finest nineteenth-century cottages and villas. Jersey Street and the blocks near the water are more working-class, with small apartment buildings and multifamily frame houses. Buses along Richmond Terrace connect residents to the ferry, and many streets offer views of the Bayonne waterfront and the busy shipping channel.
Also known as: Hamilton Park, Brighton Heights.
About New Brighton
Developer Thomas E. Davis bought land here in the 1830s and marketed New Brighton as a resort suburb for wealthy New Yorkers, complete with a hotel and Greek Revival villas. Sailors' Snug Harbor, a home for retired seamen funded by Robert Richard Randall's bequest, opened in 1833 and grew into a large campus. Industry and shipping lined the Kill Van Kull by the late nineteenth century, and the hills filled in with a mix of mansions and more modest housing.
Common Pest Problems in New Brighton
New Brighton's elegant old houses are also its biggest wildlife liability. Large attics, decorative cornices, dormers and wooden eaves that have weathered for well over a century offer raccoons and gray squirrels plenty of entry points, and the mature oaks and maples overhanging roofs give them a direct path up. The open grounds of Snug Harbor and the wooded slopes around Brighton Heights keep both animals close. Pigeons roost along the older commercial buildings and the waterfront structures on Richmond Terrace.
Along the Kill Van Kull, shipping piers, industrial yards and vacant waterfront lots support a steady population of Norway rats that forage uphill into residential blocks, particularly around Jersey Street. Multifamily buildings in that area also contend with mice and German cockroaches, which move between apartments through shared walls and trash chutes. Homeowners converting large houses into several units should expect to seal old utility openings as part of any renovation.