Bulls Head, Staten Island - Definition

Bulls Head is a neighborhood in west-central Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of the USA's largest city, New York.

The community received its name from an 18th-Century tavern, located at the intersection of Victory Boulevard and Richmond Avenue (the neighborhood's central point), from which a sign bearing a bull's head was displayed. During the American Revolution, this tavern became the local headquarters of the faction loyal to the British crown, or Tories, as they were colloquailly known.

As recently as the early 1960s, Bulls Head and the surrounding neighborhoods (such as Willowbrook to the east and Graniteville to the north) were dominated by farmland; dramatic change came soon after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964, opening up the area to residential development. Soon many Jewish families — mostly from the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens — settled in Bulls Head and other west Mid-Island neighborhoods, and today they form a plurality of its population. A smaller number of Asian immigrants — most of them from the professional classes — also relocated to the region.

The corner of Victory Boulevard and Richmond Avenue is one of the busiest on Staten Island, and automotive traffic is heavy in the vicinity, even during mid-day hours on weekdays. This situation has led to periodic calls to build more limited-access highways on the island, including the possible revival of the aborted spur of the Richmond Parkway through the Staten Island Greenbelt.