Staten Island Advance

Staten Islanders haven't had it easy, but at least these 10 things are no more.

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Staten Island Advance

The repeatedly vandalized Boardwalk no one wanted to visit.

Visit the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Boardwalk and you'll have no problem walking the entire 2.5-mile span. That wasn't always the case: The boardwalk was previously a hotspot for crime, discarded syringes, burned-out cars, and frequent fires. That all changed when efforts to repair and regularly maintain the site occurred in the mid-1990s. It completely reopened in 1997.

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Staten Island Advance

The New Springville DMV

No one likes visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles, but if you think it's a hassle now, it was much worse a few decades ago. The second-floor facility in New Springville opened for business there in 1982, and a visit there almost guaranteed a painfully long wait. In 1997, the Advance learned that not even the DMV liked this space. The agency moved to Travis a year later.

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Staten Island Advance

The abandoned highway

The unused overpass that spanned the Staten Island Expressway near the Slosson Avenue exits was removed in 2012. The overpass would have been part of the Richmond Parkway envisioned by master builder Robert Moses, according to Advance archives.

The photo here shows construction proceeding in 1963. Work on the Parkway and the Willowbrook Expressway, its twin, was stopped two years later due to economic and political pressures. The overpass never carried traffic.

It was removed to extend the bus and HOV lane from Clove Road to the Victory Boulevard exit.

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Staten Island Advance

Fresh Kills landfill

The most disgusting place in the world was perhaps right in our backyard. If Hell had a scent, it would be the Fresh Kills landfill during the summer. From 1947 to 2001, Staten Island was synonymous with hulking mounds of rotting trash, hungry birds, and a dreadful stench.

We revisited a portion of New Springville 10 years after the dump closed and spoke to a neighbor who recalled its awful presence: "Every summer it used to stink. Now it's like it was never there. Now kids could play outside."

Good riddance!

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Staten Island Advance

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge two-way toll

Motorists used to have to pay to get on AND off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The two-way toll was in place when the bridge opened in 1964, until 1986. Pictured here are the unused toll boothes still in place nearly 25 years after the two-way toll ended. They were removed in 2010.

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The Staten Island Ferry fare

The Staten Island Ferry wasn't always free. For about a century, the boat required a small fee to board: The 50-cent fare ended at the stroke of midnight on July 5, 1997.

Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in the spring that year that a free ferry is strictly a matter of equity and good budgeting, the Advance reported. It was also an election year, which prompted some chatter about Giuliani making the move prior to Election Day. That wasn't the case, he said.

"I made the decision based on the fact that people in Staten Island and the other boroughs outside Manhattan have for years been complaining about two-fare zones,'' Giuliani said. "This is a problem that goes back to when I was a little boy. And now we've solved that problem working with the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority).''

One of the first riders to board the first free ferry was Stuart Shenkman, who, according to Advance archives, carried a bottle of champagne through the turnstile with him, shouting, "It's free! It's free!''

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Staten Island Advance

Waiting for the train to pass ...

Staten Islanders have enough to deal with when it comes to traffic. This 1950 photo of Lincoln Avenue in Grant City shows the type of railroad crossing that disappeared throughout the Island, for good, about 50 years ago. The former Corner House is visible on the left.

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Staten Island Advance

Overgrowth on Woodrow Road

Motorists who travel Woodrow Road might know this best. As the story goes, a fenced-in, extremely overgrown property was home to mosquitoes, rats and other rodents. Residents routinely complained, and after some time, the area was transformed into asphalt for the road.

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Staten Island Advance

The horrors of Willowbrook State School.

Willowbrook State School once operated on the grounds where the College of Staten Island exists today. The former site was home to arguably the darkest moments in Staten Island history.

The state-operated center for the developmentally disabled was over capacity by approximately 2,000 patients; conditions were inhumane; abuse was rampant. Following national exposure and outrage in the early 1970s, the state took great measures to improve Willowbrook and end abuse.

On March 17, 1972, a class-action suit was filed against New York state and then-Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller for the deplorable conditions and negligence suffered by patients at Willowbrook, according to Advance archives.

The lawsuit led to the 1975 signing of the Willowbrook Consent Decree, a state law that reformed the housing and care of the developmentally disabled in New York and the nation.

In 1987, Willowbrook — which was eventually renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center — closed.

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Staten Island Advance

No tokens, please.

The MetroCard made its debut in 1993, but didn't go mainstream until the mid-1990s, ultimately taking the token and putting it "next to the buggy whip and trolley car," as the Advance wrote in 1995. The classic token became a thing of the past when the MTA discontinued the longtime coin in 2003.