Bloomfield is the name of a neighborhood on the West Shore of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle A ...

of Staten Island. It lies immediately to the north of Travis-Chelsea and to the west of

Bulls Head Bulls Head is a neighborhood in west-central Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City. It is bordered by New Springville to the south, Bloomfield to the west, Willowbrook to the east, Graniteville to the north, and Westerleig ...

Prall's Island Prall's Island is an uninhabited island in the Arthur Kill between Staten Island, New York, and Linden, New Jersey, in the United States. The island is one of the minor islands that are part of the borough of Staten Island in New York City. T ...

is situated in the Arthur Kill off its coast. Originally named Daniell's Neck when first settled in the 17th century, it was later called Merrell Town after a local farmer. Its present name first appeared on a local map in 1874.

History

20th century

Throughout the 20th century, very few people actually resided in Bloomfield, much of its land being used by construction companies to store heavy equipment, such as cement mixers. A large oil storage terminal maintained by

Gulf Oil Gulf Oil was a major global oil company in operation from 1901 to 1985. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies. Prior to its merger ...

could also once be found there, leading to one of the service roads of the West Shore Expressway receiving the name of Gulf Avenue; the terminal (built in 1936), which housed 82 tanks having a total capacity of 215 million US gallons (), was closed in 1998, and the tanks have since been demolished. Commercial, but not residential, development accelerated rapidly in the late 1980s, when several large

office buildings An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific dut ...

were constructed

Gas explosion

On February 10, 1973, during a cleaning operation, 42 workers were inside one of the TETCo natural gas tanks which had supposedly been completely drained ten months earlier. However, ignition occurred, causing a plume of combusting gas to rise within the tank. Two workers near the top felt the heat and rushed to the safety of scaffolding outside, while the other 40 workers died as the concrete cap on the tank rose 20–30 feet in the air and then came crashing back down, crushing them to death.

21st century

In the early 2000s, other businesses, including two

hotels A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

, Hilton Garden Inn in 2001 and Hampton Inn & Suites opened in 2007 on South Avenue, the main thoroughfare. Bloomfield's vast expanses of open space have made it the focus of many ambitious proposals in the 2000s, including a failed proposal to build a

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and ...

racetrack at the site of the former Gulf Oil facility. In Fall of 2018 the Matrix Global Logistics Park opened in Bloomfield, a

distribution center A distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building, often with refrigeration or air conditioning, which is stocked with products (goods) to be redistributed to retailers, to wholesalers, or directly to co ...

for companies such as

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and Ikea, bringing more than 2,000 jobs and development to the area. But the area has yet to witness the kind of new-home construction that has been encountered virtually everywhere else on Staten Island since the

Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( ) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and t ...

opened in 1964.

Transportation

Bloomfield is served by the local-limited bus pair along South Avenue, and the local-limited bus pair to the Matrix Global Logistics Park on Gulf Avenue. A proposal for the West Shore Light Rail has it running down the Travis Branch of the North Shore Railroad, stopping at a station in Bloomfield.

References

{{Coord, 40, 36, 45, N, 74, 10, 43, W, display=title Neighborhoods in Staten Island