Oneata, "kissed by the sun"

For capers, there are not many that can measure up to the scrapes we get into while in college or shortly thereafter, the stuff we do before we have really started to put our roots down and get all respectable.

One of the strangest but most sublime adventures I ever got involved in was spending most of a night in the attic of the Ward House on the Wagner College campus.

The Ward House, named after the family that owned it and lived it until the college bought it in the late 1940s, was used for a long time for music classes and performances. During the time I was in school, my friends and I grew to love the building like no other part of campus. Part of the reason was its location, across the street from the rest of campus and therefore rather isolated. Also, its history was rather compelling: it was built after the Civil War by William Green Ward, a retiring Union officer (Colonel or General, depending on who you ask). After he and his wife died, his two spinster daughters lived in the house until they died in the 1940s. Most of all, we loved the house, I think, because we thought it was haunted, or at least a repository for weird disturbing energy.

More than one student had had bizarre experiences while in the house - things like suddenly feeling cold, getting dizzy. Friends of mine had identical dreams about the house. I myself had dreams, some beautiful and some nightmarish, and continue to have them to this day.

The dreams and bizarre experiences aside, we loved the house, and prized the classes that were held there. So when, after my junior year at Wagner, it was announced that the house was being closed down, it was a blow to all of us. The college's administration had decided that the house was too expensive to heat and maintain, and they were concerned about security issues since it was so far from the rest of campus. They locked it up while it was decided what was to be done with the house.

We feared the worst, that the school would get rid of the house, probably tear it down. And that is what eventually happened. But it took a few years of vandalism and then finally a terrible fire before they could justify tearing it down.

A friend of mine, B., had taken up the cause of the building in the meantime, and he began learning about the background of the house, the history of the neighborhood where it stood on Staten Island, and all about the family. He interviewed elderly relatives who remembered spending time in the Ward house when they were children, back when the two sisters and their parents were still alive. And he started collecting memorabilia about the family and the house - photographs and the like. He discovered that the family had named the building "Oneata", a Native American word that means "kissed by the sun," inspired by the fact that the front of the house faced east, more or less.

When the house was shuttered, B. became concerned about important things being lost if the house should be demolished. One area he focussed on was the attic. It was said that, when Wagner College took over the building in the late 1940s, all the Ward's possessions still in the house, including materials found in closets and the attic, were either sold or discarded. But B. was sure that there were still things left behind, perhaps belongings that might shed light on the family.

At this point I had already graduated from Wagner, but B. and many of my friends who were great lovers of the house were still students. The only access to the attic was a door in the ceiling of the main hallway in the house. The scheme was hatched, not sure by whom, to steel a ladder that we could then bring into the house and prop up in the hallway beneath that door and then climb up the ladder. It was decided we would remove a fire escape ladder from another building on campus, Kairos House (which housed the campus's chapel), with the idea that after we were done using it, we would return it, and noone would be the wiser.

Keep in mind that, as students, we knew the security force on campus, and knew them to be inept and largely ineffectual. We figured that if we were careful and timed things out well, we could avoid detection and not have any trouble. The snatching of the ladder went well; however, getting into the house did not. We had the ladder in place - Me, B., two friends named Chris (we knew a lot of Chris's back then), and maybe one other person - and sat in Chris's car waiting for security to make their pass before we made a move to get in (luckily, we didn't have break in, because due to vandalism and the college's carelessness, there was at least one door that was open). Unfortunately, when security made their pass and saw my friend's car, they lingered, until we drove away.

I wanted to go back, walking through the woods to the house, but everyone else thought it was too dangerous, that now that security had seen someone near the house, they would keep a close eye on it. Ultimately, I gave in, because I knew my friends weren nervous, thinking that if they were caught they might be expelled from school. Before we left, we had ditched the ladder in the woods, thinking we could come back after a week or two, find the ladder, and go on with our plan.

However, when we looked for the ladder on a night a few weeks later, we couldn't find it. So we had to steal another ladder. Luckily, Kairos House had a second ladder. So we took that one, snuck across campus with the ladder in our hands (crap, that thing was heavy), and got into position well before it was time for the security sweep. The door was open, and we got the ladder inside and into position.

Our friends had had enough excitement, so they decided to leave. But B. and I stayed. We climbed up the ladder, pushed the door up, and found ourselves in a place that noone had been for who knows how long. The attic was dusty the way that oranges are filled with juice. It was not tall enough for either of us to walk standing up so we had to crouch and waddle. Over time, our backs and legs grew very cramped and sore. But we stayed there for several hours, until we had explored every inch of it.

Did we find much? Not really. A handful of pieces of porcelain dolls. Lots of postcards, and some early glass photograph negatives, some whole, some broken. A couple of books that were in horrible shape. But we looked over it all, and gathered together whatever seemed like it might be useful or interesting. B. kept most of the stuff, but he let me keep a couple things that were not historically interesting - a title page from a score of Verdi operatic instrumental music arranged for playing on the piano, and some other stuff I've forgotten.

At around 6 in the morning, after being in the attic for 4 or 5 hours, we snuck out, left the ladder behind, and scooted off the campus through the woods to avoid detection. We made for the house where one of our Chris friends lived, and crashed on his couch and in an extra bedroom, exhausted, cramped, and absolutely filthy. I swear it took a week for me to get the smell of that must and dust out of my nose.

A year or more later, after the house had gone through more setbacks, B. and I snuck inside once more. What we saw was shocking. The school was using the house as a place to store all kinds of junk like old rusty bed frames and God knows what. But all the walls were crumbling, the paint was gone, the wood door frames were scratched up if not gouged, it looked like there had been about 50 years worth of destruction in one year. The door to the attic was open, revealing that someone had cut a square hole in the roof of the house. Whether this had been done by vandals or by the school, the effect was the same: rain coming directly into the house would destroy it much faster than just vandals. We scouted around and took what few momentos of our time as students in the building remained: the numbers on the rehearsal room doors, etc. We knew after all this that it wouldn't be long before the house was gone. And sure enough, just a month or two later a mysterious fire was set, ruled as arson by the police though the culprit was never caught. And after the fire, Wagner College finally got what it wanted: now condemned by the Board of Health, they had to tear down Oneata. We were heartbroken, but we had a good number of momentos.

With all the information B. collected, all the interviews, etc., there could be at least one book written about the Wards of Staten Island and their home. But I gather he abandoned the project. I hope some day he will pick it up again, so that people can hear again about the property and the house that so captured our imaginations.