Mid-Island is frequently applied to a series of neighborhoods within
New York City,
USA's
borough of
Staten Island.
Under the definition most commonly adhered to, Mid-Island comprises all of the communities whose
ZIP Code is 10314, plus
Sunnyside within zip code 10301, along with the western slope of
Todt Hill. Mid-Island communities thus include
Graniteville,
Bulls Head,
Willowbrook, and
New Springville, Sometimes the localities situated along the
Arthur Kill between the
Staten Island Expressway and the
Fresh Kills —
Bloomfield,
Chelsea and
Travis — are said to be on the island's
West Shore; otherwise they too would fall within Mid-Island as their zip code is 10314.
Like all of Staten Island except for the
North Shore, farms dominated the Mid-Island region until the 1960s, when new home construction began to rise sharply. The opening of the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964 did much to stimulate this construction, but the effects of this phenomenon were first seen most profoundly on the
East Shore, not spreading inland until nearly the end of the decade. In addition to starting somewhat later, the population boom experienced in Mid-Island also exhibited some important demographic differences from that which took place to the east, as in Mid-Island
Jewish transplants (from
Queens as well as
Brooklyn) tended to predominate, in contrast to the heavily
Italian-American influx experienced on the East Shore. These demographic differences are not present today...
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