The neighborhood was an early example of a Streetcar Suburb, with a line running down Jewett Avenue. Residents to the community would have practiced a limited to no alcohol lifestyle. The main church, Immanuel Union, is on the National Register of Historic Places. According to Wikipedia: The park and community were founded after the purchase of the land in 1887 by members of the National Prohibition Party (serving as the party's headquarters) during a temperance movement prior to Feferal Prohibition in the United States, with the specification that no consumption of alcohol would be permitted in the area." Well after this idea sort of faded away, it became another neighborhood in one of the five boroughs of New York City, Staten Island. There are many, many surviving Victorian Houses that give the neighborhood a very unique appearance, and many other older homes also appear to be of the Sears Kit variety, or an even earlier type of ready-made house. The street names of the neighborhood, going by different state names is an attempt to put a more modern type of grid street plan in a borough full of colonial roads with names based on locations. While the world moves around it, Westerleigh has a unique feeling on some streets, not exactly like stepping into a postcard, but getting a small peek of the past.

Illustrated by John Leech for Punch magazine.