Famous People
from Staten Island
Christina
Aguilera
a pop singer who was born on Staten
Island.
Alice
Austen
Pioneering female photographer documented
turn of the century life on Staten Island and around New York City.
Joan
Baez
Folk singer born on Staten Island
Alfred
Thompson Bricher
One of the best American maritime
painters of the nineteenth century. Because of his passion for the sea he bought
a home in New Dorp, Staten Island, in the early 1890s and painted there until
his death.
Nathaniel
Britton
Botanist who classified different
varieties of plants, a founder and first director of the New York Botanical
Garden, was born in New Dorp.
Aaron
Burr
Third Vice President of the United
States under Thomas Jefferson from 1801-1805. He lived his later years and died
in Port Richmond.
George
M. Cohan
Patriotic composer of You’re a Grand
Old Flag, Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway and Yankee Doodle Boy resided
for a time at the Actor’s Home in West Brighton.
Jasper
Francis Cropsey
Painter and architect who was born
in Rossville.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Arguably the most influential American
author of the nineteenth century. Spent a good deal of time on the Island visiting
his brother, Richmond County Judge.
Emilio
Estevez
a film actor who was born at 30 Daniel
Low Terrace, St. George.
Charles
Goodyear
Rubber pioneer lived in West Brighton
in the 1830s where he had a factory that made rubber toys, maps, and surgical
bandages.
Langston
Hughes
The author and "Poet Laureate
of Harlem" quit Columbia University in 1922, broke with his father, and
worked a season growing onions on a truck-garden farm on Staten Island.
Frank
McCourt
Pulitzer Prize winning author of
the best-selling autobiography Angela's Ashes (1996). Though he never actually
lived on Staten Island he was a teacher at McKee High School in St. George.
Galt
MacDermot
Composer of the Broadway musical
Hair (1967) was a former resident of Silver Lake.
Paul
Newman
Movie star lived at 30 Daniel Low
Terrace, St. George while working in the New York theatre.
Mabel
Normand
Silent screen film star who appeared
in several of Charlie Chaplin's films. Born on Staten Island, she was a New
Brighton resident.
Frederick
Law Olmsted
Landscape architect who designed
Central Park, The Biltmore estate in North Carolina, the grounds of the US Capitol
building and parks across the country.
Mary
Ewing Outerbridge
set up the first tennis court in
the United States, at St. George, on the grounds of the Staten Island Cricket
and Baseball Club.
Edwin
Arlington Robinson
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning
poet lived on Lighthouse Hill around 1913.
Antonio
Lopez de Santa Ana
Five-time Mexican President best
known in America as the man who stormed the Alamo. He spent time in exile on
Staten Island before being smuggled back into Mexico inside a piano crate.
Steven
Seagal
Action film actor lived in Eltingville
in the 1990s. He studied martial arts in Japan and is a Black Belt in karate
and aikido and incorporates these fighting skills into his films.
Martin
Sheen
a famous film actor who had lived
at 30 Daniel Low Terrace, St. George from 1962-1964.
Gene
[Klein] Simmons
Founder of the mega-selling rock
band KISS. He formed the band Rainbow in 1971 while attending Richmond College
(now the College of Staten Island) in St. George with KISS co-founder Paul Stanley.
Theodore
Sturgeon
Science fiction writer known for
the novel More Than Human, winner of the International Fantasy Award for 1954.
Julia
Gardiner Tyler
First Lady of the United States
became President John Tyler's second wife in a secret ceremony in 1844. She
moved to Staten Island in 1862 after the death of the former president.
George
Augustus Vaughn Jr.
World War I Flying Ace. He lived
on Todt Hill, Staten Island in his later years. His autobiography is called
War Flying in France (1980).
Phyllis
A. Whitney
Best selling author of more than seventy
five titles for adults and children. Dubbed "the reigning queen of the Gothics"
by the New York Times, the Edgar Award winning writer lived on the Island for
over twenty years beginning in the late 1940’s.
Charles
R. Wittemann
Founded the world's first airplane
manufacturing plant in his father's garage on Todt Hill. He built his first
glider in 1901 and his first biplane in 1907.
