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Kreischer Mansion is a historic home located at Charleston, Staten Island, New York. It was built originally about 1885 and is a large, asymmetrically massed -story, wood-frame house in the Late Victorian style. The rectangular house features spacious verandas, gables with jigsaw bargeboards, decorative railings, posts and brackets, tall chimneys, and a corner towerThe bucolic setting belies this landmark building's turbulent past-for decades, rumors have circulated that spirits live in the home, which is on the market for $1.3 million. Several years ago a former caretaker was convicted of a murder on the site. By HILKE SCHELLMANN Oct. 24, 2012 9:19 p.m. ET A Victorian mansion painted in orange and military-green sits on a knoll on Staten Island, surrounded by trees and overlooking the Arthur Kill. But the bucolic setting belies the landmark building's turbulent past, which includes long-circulated rumors that spirits live in the home. "The house is haunted. Everybody says that," said Jeanne Green, 26 years old, who moved to Staten Island from Florida in January and works in a local bakery in nearby Charleston. The surviving mansion that Balthasar Kreischer built for his sons. KEVIN HAGEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The mansion, which is on the market for $1.3 million, was built around 1885 by Balthasar Kreischer, a German immigrant who had started a successful brick-making business, first in Manhattan and later on Staten Island. According to Linda Hauck, director of the Tottenville Historical Society, the patriarch built two similar buildings for his sons, Charles and Edward, on the hill overlooking his plant on the Arthur Kill, the strait that separates Staten Island from New Jersey. Now, only Charles's residence remains. Ms. Hauck described the family's fortune—and fame—as huge for the time. The town at the foot of the mansions was even called Kreischerville, after the brick magnate. It is believed to have been renamed Charleston around World War I on account of anti-German sentiment, according to Patricia Salmon, a historian at the Staten Island Museum. A combination of fires and the deaths of Balthasar and Edward, who died under mysterious circumstances and was found near the brick factory, devastated the family, and it eventually sold the business. "Rumors of infidelity, mismanagement, financial troubles, and even murder and ghosts linger after all these years," said Ms. Hauck. "Nobody fully understands that such a prominent family just vanished off the map." The service staircase ENLARGE The service staircase KEVIN HAGEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL But the tales connected with the house didn't deter Isaac Yomtovian, an engineer and developer based in Cleveland, from buying the mansion and surrounding acres for $1.4 million in 2000. He learned about the property from his mother-in-law, who lived on Staten Island at the time. It was Kreischer's immigrant success story that first attracted Mr. Yomtovian to the mansion. "When I think about myself, it's a very similar situation," he said, referring to his own immigration from Iran to the U.S. via Israel. So Mr. Yomtovian decided to try to bring the mansion back to its former glory. It was no small task, as he said the roof was falling in, the paint was peeling, the foundation was damaged and a porch wrapping partly around the building was "destroyed." He estimated it cost almost $1 million over the course of about two years to restore the building, which measures about 3,300 square feet. But after the restoration, events at the house took another dark turn. Joseph "Joe Black" Young, a caretaker for the mansion who was associated with an organized-crime family, was charged with killing a man on the premises in 2005 and later convicted, according to court documents. Carved fireplace ENLARGE Carved fireplace KEVIN HAGEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "When I think about it, it becomes part of the history again of this site," said Mr. Yomtovian. "Not that I'm proud of it, but it is something that happened here.…I think it enriches the house rather than damaging it." Another blow came in the summer of 2007 when financing for an active-adult community, which Mr. Yomtovian had imagined for the site, fell through, according to the developer. Mr. Yomtovian listed the house for sale in 2011 for $3 million and recently dropped the price for the mansion to $1.3 million. The adjacent 3.58 acres are on the market for $8.5 million. Michael Schneider, a broker with Massey Knakal, is the listing agent for both properties. There is one more dream that Mr. Yomtovian says he has related to the property: making a film recounting the mansion's turbulent past. He has written a treatment of what he described as "a very meaningful film" that he predicted would have viewers sitting at the edge of their chairs. Meanwhile, the Kreischer mansion has had a chance to provide the backdrop for another drama, although not a real-life one. Parts of the pilot of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" series were filmed on the property in 2009..〔 ''See also:'' 〕 It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.〔 ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kreischer House」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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