Quick answer
Snug Harbor is an 83-acre cultural campus on the North Shore of Staten Island, founded in the 1800s as Sailors' Snug Harbor, a retirement home for sailors paid for by an 1801 bequest. Its Greek Revival row, botanical garden and museums make it a National Historic Landmark.
Full transcript
The sailors' city
Snug Harbor began as a retirement home for the men the sea had worn out. Captain Robert Richard Randall died in 1801 and left his fortune to shelter aged and disabled sailors, and after a long legal fight the trustees built on Staten Island's North Shore, beside the Kill Van Kull. The first building, known as Building C, opened in 1833, and eventually more than two dozen structures rose around it — a self-contained town with a chapel, a music hall, workshops and gardens, run by a succession of former sea captains. Walk down the main lawn and the five interlocking Greek Revival buildings of Temple Row line up like a Roman forum.
A landmark that kept living
When the sailors' home moved south, the campus did not fall apart — it changed jobs. Since 1976 the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, a nonprofit affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, has managed the 83 acres, and the buildings now hold art galleries, the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and the Music Hall. The Staten Island Botanical Garden covers 55 acres of the grounds. The Staten Island Children's Museum and the Staten Island Museum are tenants, so the old retirement town is now a working arts district. Follow the sound of children and you will find the energy of the place.
How to do it
Ride the Staten Island Ferry to St. George and catch the bus a few minutes along the waterfront to Richmond Terrace. Give the gardens the morning — the greenhouse, the wetland path — then spend the afternoon inside Temple Row, where the galleries and the Children's Museum are. Check the Music Hall calendar before you go, because a show there is the reason to stay past sunset. Stand at the edge of the Kill Van Kull before you leave and watch the tankers slide past.