Grymes Hill, Staten Island
Grymes Hill is a neighborhood, situated upon a hill by that name, on Staten Island, in the U.S. state of New York, one of the five boroughs of New York City.
The hill is named after Suzette Bosque Grymes, widow of the first governor of Louisiana, William Charles Cole Claiborne, who settled on Staten Island in 1836 (she had remarried a prominent New Orleans lawyer, John R. Grymes, after Governor Claiborne died in 1817).
A local developer, Major Charles Howard, built many of the hill's earliest homes, and his name survives in Howard Avenue, the hill's main street; a portion of this street was known for a time as Serpentine Road due to the hill's bedrock consisting of serpentinite. The neighborhood has many fine homes dating from the 1920s that overlook New York Harbor.
Grymes Hill is best noted currently for being the home of two institutions of higher learning: Wagner College, and the Staten Island campus of St. John's University. The St. Johns campus of 16.5 acres (67,000 m2) was originally a small Catholic women's institution, Notre Dame College, which closed in 1971, when St. Johns University took over the campus. Also on the hill is Notre Dame Academy, a Roman Catholic elementary and high school for girls. Adjacent to (and owned by) Wagner College is the site of a former Roman Catholic high school, named Augustinian Academy after the order of monks who ran it; the school closed in 1969. Near the foot of the hill, on Foote Avenue, is P.S. 35, the Clove Valley School. Also located on Grymes Hill is Casa Belvedere, a center for Italian culture and studies in Italian language and culture.
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