Pest Control in Tompkinsville, Staten Island
Tompkinsville sits just south of St. George along the harbor, a compact, hilly neighborhood where Victory Boulevard begins its long climb across the island. Bay Street carries most of the commercial life, and the blocks around Victory and Tompkinsville Park hold one of the largest Sri Lankan communities outside South Asia, with restaurants and groceries that have earned the area the nickname Little Sri Lanka. The Tompkinsville station on the Staten Island Railway and several bus lines make it an easy walk or short ride to the ferry. Housing runs from aging frame houses on the slope to apartments stacked above storefronts.
Also known as: Little Sri Lanka.
About Tompkinsville
Daniel D. Tompkins, governor of New York and later vice president under James Monroe, laid out a village here around 1815, and a ferry landing and watering place for ships soon followed. The state Marine Hospital, a quarantine station for immigrants and sailors, operated on the waterfront until residents, fearful of disease, burned it in 1858. Through the late nineteenth century the village filled with modest frame houses and shops serving the busy waterfront.
Common Pest Problems in Tompkinsville
Restaurant kitchens, groceries and bakeries line Bay Street and lower Victory Boulevard, and the alleys and trash corners behind them are where Tompkinsville's rat problem starts. Norway rats burrow under sidewalk tree pits and in the embankments near the railway tracks, then move toward whatever garbage is set out overnight. Mice take advantage of the mixed-use buildings, slipping from a ground-floor shop into apartments upstairs through utility gaps around gas lines and radiators.
German cockroaches are the other constant. Walk-ups above storefronts share plumbing walls with commercial kitchens, and older frame houses converted into several units often have gaps under baseboards and behind kitchen cabinets that let roaches travel between apartments. Because tenants in one unit can treat while neighbors do nothing, infestations tend to bounce back unless the whole building is handled together. Humid summers near the harbor make kitchens and bathrooms especially attractive to them, and the same dampness keeps silverfish active in old basements.