Kreischer House


Kreischer House, also known as Kreischer Mansion, is a historic home located at Charleston, Staten Island, New York City. Built by German immigrant Balthasar Kreischer about 1885, it is a large, asymmetrically massed -story, wood-frame house in the American Queen Anne style. The rectangular house features spacious verandas, gables with jigsaw bargeboards, decorative railings, posts and brackets, tall chimneys, and a corner tower. It was one of two mansions built by Kreischer for his sons. The surviving house belonged to son Edward Kreischer; the other one had been his brother Charles's. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

History

On June 8, 1894, Edward B. Kreischer committed suicide by shooting himself in the right temple near his place of business. Since then, there have been claims that Kreischer has haunted the property. Along with other local stories of the house's violent history, this has given the house a supernatural reputation, leading it to be used as a location on television shows including Boardwalk Empire.
In 1998 the Kreischer Mansion was bought with the intention of restoration and eventual sale by Isaac Yomtovian. In 2008, then caretaker Joe Black was revealed to be a hitman for the Bonnano crime family. He was convicted of the murder of rival mob associate Robert McKelvey, committed three years earlier on the property.