Bloomfield is a neighborhood on the West Shore of the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English language, 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 ...

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is the southernmost of the boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York (state), New York. The borough is separated from the ad ...

. It lies immediately to the north of Travis-Chelsea and to the west of Bulls Head. Prall's Island is situated in the

Arthur Kill The Arthur Kill (sometimes referred to as the Staten Island Sound) is a tidal strait in the New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary between Staten Island (also known as Richmond County), New York, and Union and Middlesex counties, New Jersey. It ...

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 Seven Sisters (oil companies), Seven Sisters oil companies. ...

could also once be found there, leading to one of the service roads of the

West Shore Expressway West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

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 the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various 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 refr ...

Hilton Garden Inn Hilton Garden Inn is an American chain of full-service hotels targeting business and leisure travelers looking for an upscale experience. The brand is owned by Hilton Worldwide. , it has 862 properties with 126,086 rooms in 49 countries and ter ...

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. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...

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 c ...

for companies such as

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

and

Ikea IKEA ( , ) is a Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in Sweden that designs and sells , household goods, and various related services. IKEA is owned and operated by a series of not-for-profit an ...

, 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 ( ; also referred to as the Narrows Bridge, the Verrazzano Bridge, and simply the Verrazzano) is a suspension bridge connecting the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It spans ...

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