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Rossville is the name by which the western part of Prince's Bay, a neighborhood in New York City's borough of Staten Island, is often called. It is located on the island's South Shore.
The vicinity was originally called Old Blazing Star, and later simply Blazing Star, for a tavern located there; by the 1830s it was renamed Rossville after Col. William E. Ross, who had built a replica of Windsor Castle, known as Ross Castle, on a bluff overlooking the landing of a ferry crossing the Arthur Kill. However, when the Staten Island Railway opened in 1860, most Staten Islanders began referring to neighborhoods along its route on the basis of what station along the railroad line was nearest; hence Rossville became colloquially part of Prince's Bay, the closest station to it.
The oldest Roman Catholic church still standing on Staten Island is in Rossville. Named St. Joseph's Church, it was built in 1851, and the cemetery on its grounds is the second oldest Catholic cemetery on the island.
Like the surrounding area, land use in Rossville was devoted primarily to farming until well into the mid-20th Century. On April 20, 1963, Rossville was the scene of the worst of three devastating brush fires to strike Staten Island; the three fires collectively destroyed more than 100 homes, rendering over 500 persons homeless and causing in excess of $2 million in damage. Rossville's character would be transformed permanently by the fire as it turned out, for once the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was opened 19 months later, it and many other Staten Island neighborhoods would witness massive new home construction (with many of the homes in Rossville which had been spared by the fire actually being demolished to make way for new, often larger ones), and today Rossville has become largely suburban in nature — a fact lamented by its original residents, nearly all of whom have since moved away, in many cases after having been bought out under pressure from aggressive developers.
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