Silver Lake, Staten Island

Silver Lake is the name of both a reservoir and an adjacent neighborhood in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

Located inside Silver Lake Park, the first city park to be established on Staten Island, Silver Lake in its current form was created in 1917 when water was piped in to fill it from the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County, New York, 119 miles (192 km) away. The water started arriving on October 25, and the reservoir would become the largest body of fresh water on Staten Island.

Silver Lake Park, located on Staten Island’s north shore, is bounded by Forest Avenue, Victory Boulevard and Clove Road. The original Silver Lake was a spring-fed body of water formed at the end of the ice age, and now makes up the south basin of the reservoir at this site. Silver Lake was once known as Fresh Pond, but maps show that by the middle of the nineteenth century, the name Silver Lake had come into use and the two were used interchangeably until about 1860.

Silver Lake has a long history of both recreational and commercial uses. During the 19th century, a casino and saloon existed on the lakeshore and several companies harvested its ice. Staten Islanders used the lake for boating and ice skating in that era, and in February 1897, Silver Lake hosted the National Skating Amateur Championship races.

By the end of the 19th century, the population of Staten Island was growing rapidly and residents were calling for land to be set aside for parks. Noting that it was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for families to visit Manhattan’s Central Park or Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, prominent Staten Island writer and resident John De Morgan appealed in February 1900 to the State Assembly Committee on Cities to appropriate funds to establish Silver Lake Park. “The people of the community have a right to recreation and pleasure grounds,” he addressed Assembly members in Albany, “Where . . . their children [can be] kept from the contaminating influence of the saloon.”

De Morgan’s plea to the State Assembly worked; the Silver Lake Park Commission was created and in their 1900 session legislators appropriated a modest amount for acquiring the land around the lake. The original parcels for Silver Lake Park around the perimeter of the lake were condemned and purchased in 1901, 1902, and 1904, at which point Staten Island parks officials began to convert the area to its current state.

...
Wikipedia