A Day trip to the Botanic Gardens on Staten Island New York
My sister and I took the Staten Island ferry, on a recent warm spring day, across to see the Chinese Scholar's Garden. We had to catch a bus from the Staten Island end to Snug Harbor, and the Botanical Gardens. Some of these photos are the closest we got to the Scholar's garden, as, because of the late arrival of our 4pm ferry into the NY terminal at 5.15pm, the garden was closed by the time we got there! However we did enjoy a pleasant stroll through the whole gardens themselves...at Snug Harbor. I tried to do a little research on this bell. It is called the Merchant Marine bell. According to a search on google, Snug Harbor was started in 1833 for elderly retired seamen. Opened in 1833, Sailors' Snug Harbor became the first and only home for retired merchant seamen in the United States. It saw a peak of 1,000 residents by 1900--a number that would decline after the Social Security system was implemented. By the mid 1950's, fewer than 200 residents remained and by 197...