In the 1700s this area was known as Androvetteville after the Androvette family, who settled here in 1699, and from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s the neighborhood was known as Kreischerville. Attracted by clay deposits in what is now Clay Pit Ponds State Park and by transportation on the Arthur Kill, Bavarian immigrant and businessman Balthasar Kreischer bought land here in 1849 to build a clay product factory, and in 1854 he built a grand mansion on this site called Fairview. After his death, the property was sold to Arnold Kreusler, a Brooklyn inventor and brewer. The Kreischerville clay works and Fairview were destroyed by fire between 1927 and 1931, and the neighborhood was eventually renamed Charleston in the early 20th century. Although Staten Island's South Shore has much parkland, much of it is natural area not suited for active recreation, so this longstanding natural area was selected for recreational development in the early 2000s. The site was transferred from the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services to NYC Parks in 2003, and construction began in 2019 to create a large green space with baseball and multipurpose fields, courts for pickleball, tennis, and bocce, an ADA-compliant trail, a comfort station, and a picnic area. It also became the new home of John D'Amato Field, whose original field in New Dorp Park, dedicated in 2011 to Staten Island attorney, community leader, and athlete John D'Amato (1955-2007), was damaged by flooding from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The park takes its name from Fairview, Kreischer's Italianate mansion and estate, named for its overlooks on the Arthur Kill, and one of the two additional mansions he built for his sons still stands on adjacent Arthur Kill Road.