Meiers Corners, Staten Island

Meiers Corners is the name of a neighborhood on Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, USA.

Meiers Corners is sometimes confused with the adjacent neighborhood of Westerleigh; however, Westerleigh is generally understood to mean the area immediately west of Castleton Corners that is also north of Victory Boulevard east of Jewett Avenue and Watchogue Road west of the latter, while Meiers Corners is west of the aforementioned community but south of that line. The name "Meiers Corners" is also applied to the commercial district where Watchogue Road, Jewett Avenue, Victory Boulevard and Bradley Avenue all meet &mdash; and was formerly the point where three different city bus routes terminated (and a fourth one passed by) until two of the three were combined and the third was extended to the St. George ferry terminal on a full-time basis in the early 1980s.

The area is named for a prominent 18th-Century Dutch resident named Joachim Meier, who lived at the Martling-Cozine House &mdash; one of the oldest private homes still standing on Staten Island until it was demolished in 1981. The house stood near the corner of Watchogue Road and Bradley Avenue.

South of Victory Boulevard, the altitude gradually increases, and the south end of the neighborhood is situated on a high plateau (sometimes referred to as Manor Heights) where can be found Susan Wagner High School; opened in 1968, the school is named for the wife of former New York City mayor Robert Wagner, and was built to meet the increased demand for classroom space caused by the population growth that accompanied the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge a few years earlier &mdash; growth that has seen Staten Island's population skyrocket from 212,020 in 1957 to 459,737 by 2003.