Kreischer House, also known as Kreischer Mansion, is a historic home located at
Charleston,
Staten Island
Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Built by German immigrant Balthasar Kreischer about 1885, it is a large, asymmetrically massed -story, wood-frame house in the American Queen Anne style. The rectangular house features spacious
veranda
A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure.
Although the form ''veran ...
s, gables with jigsaw
bargeboard
Bargeboard (probably from Medieval Latin ''bargus'', or ''barcus'', a scaffold, and not from the now obsolete synonym "vergeboard") or rake fascia is a board fastened to each projecting gable of a roof to give it strength and protection, and to ...
s, decorative railings, posts and brackets, tall chimneys, and a corner tower. It was one of two mansions built by Kreischer for his sons. The surviving house belonged to son Edward Kreischer; the other one had been his brother Charles's.
It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1982.
History
On June 8, 1894, Edward B. Kreischer committed suicide by shooting himself in the right temple near his place of business.
Since then, there have been claims that Kreischer has haunted the property.
Along with other local stories of the house's violent history, this has given the house a supernatural reputation, leading it to be used as a location on television shows including ''
Boardwalk Empire
''Boardwalk Empire'' is an American period crime drama television series created by Terence Winter and broadcast on the premium cable channel HBO. The series is set chiefly in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era of the 1920s and ...
''.
In 1998 the Kreischer Mansion was bought with the intention of restoration and eventual sale by Isaac Yomtovian.
In 2008, then caretaker Joseph "Joe Black" Young was revealed to be a hitman for the
Bonanno crime family
The Bonanno crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, and in the United States, as part of the criminal phenomenon known as the A ...
, more specifically serving under Bonanno Soldier Gino Galestro.
He was convicted of the murder of rival mob associate Robert McKelvey, committed three years earlier on the property.
[ ''Note:'' This includes an]
''Accompanying three photographs''
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Reputed hauntings
The house is reputedly haunted. In 2019, paranormal
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...
investigators from American television series ''Paranormal Lockdown
''Paranormal Lockdown'' is a paranormal reality television series that was executively produced by Nick Groff, formerly of ''Ghost Adventures''. The series follows Nick Groff and fellow paranormal researcher Katrina Weidman (formerly of ''Parano ...
'' visited the house; the resulting investigations became an episode of the show's first season.
See also
* List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Staten Island
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), formed in 1965, is the New York City governmental commission that administers the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. Since its founding, it has designated over a thousand landmarks, class ...
*
References
External links
Spirits Moving on S.I.
The Kreischer Mansion
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Staten Island
Victorian architecture in New York (state)
Houses completed in 1885
New York City Designated Landmarks in Staten Island
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