• In which I realize I’m going to be visiting three neighborhoods

• In which I gawk at the Kingsbridge Armory and eat lunch nearby at an appropriately-logo-ed diner

• In which I wander the streets with “Kingsbridge” in their name and admire the stair-streets

• In which an inspiring executive conducts an inspiring tour of an inspiring community center

• In which I explore Van Cortlandt Village, where I am reunited with the Jerome Reservoir, and where I introduce two of the four early 20^th-century Jewish socialist housing complexes

• In which I make my way down the hill to Kingsbridge proper, with a stop at a new library

• In which I see a famous park, a newish library, and some pretty normal-looking houses

• Music for today

*******

Today’s visit to the northwest Bronx brought the greenest views I’ve seen in my wanderings. The foliage has exploded, obscuring vistas and popping pollen, but I’m not complaining. This is glory.

I traveled with a friend to visit the neighborhoods jointly known as Kingsbridge. They are really three distinct neighborhoods: Kingsbridge Heights, Van Cortlandt Village and Kingsbridge. Kingsbridge Heights sits above (literally, up the hill from) and to the east of the Major Deegan Expressway; Van Cortlandt Village lies to north of the Heights, and Kingsbridge proper lies in the flats to the west of the Deegan.

I hadn’t realized before I arrived that I was going to visit three neighborhoods. Three for the price of one! I love a bargain.

The New York Times has reassured me that I can be forgiven for confusing the Kingsbridges and Van Cortlandts, though: there is not even close to a consensus among the locals on what to call their neighborhood.

Kingsbridge is named for the King’s Bridge, the first crossing from Manhattan to the mainland at what is sort of the Bronx. The bridge, built in 1693, was buried when the City filled in the creek it traversed. Legend has it that parts of the bridge are buried near Marble Hill.1

Kingsbridge has a proud history and its very own, very active historical society. They will remind you that between 1775 and 1777, Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere crossed the King’s Bridge at least ten times, a slo-mo comms system that served to warn the colonial army of British positions and plans.

Kingsbridge was initially part of the Town of Yonkers. It included all of the western Bronx including today’s Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil (and Kingsbridge Heights, depending who’s opining). Eventually it broke off and became an independent town called Kingsbridge. In 1874, the City of New York annexed the western part of the Bronx, including Kingsbridge, and voilà, Kingsbridgers were Big Apple dwellers.2

In the 20th century, Irish families began to move into Kingsbridge. The Irish enclave remained strong until the 1970s. Read on to meet some relics.

On our visit today, we spent most of our time in the upper level, that is, Kingsbridge Heights and Van Cortlandt Village. The diversity we saw – socioeconomically, architecturally and topographically – was striking.

The Armory

Our arrival was complicated by the straphanger’s worst nightmare: a fatality on the tracks at a distant station, in this case on the #4 line. The tragedy shut the system down when we were still more than 80 blocks from our destination. We didn’t have time to take the bus, so we took a cab to our starting point: the Kingsbridge Armory, which sits atop the #4 train’s Kingsbridge Road stop in the area known as Kingsbridge Heights.

The armory is staggering to behold. It’s the largest armory in the country – some say in the world. The fortress-like behemoth takes up most of its five-acre lot, commanding a presence in the neighborhood that you would associate with a military installation in, say, medieval France. Its 180,000-square-foot interior makes it one of the largest indoor spaces in New York City.

Built between 1912 and 1917, it served as an armory for the first half of the 20^th century. Since then, it has served no consistent purpose, with stints as a homeless shelter, a meeting place for the U.N. while its current headquarters was under construction, a production site for the Will Smith film I am Legend and the occasional location for music videos.3

The City acquired the Armory in 1996, about 20 years after it was landmarked and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its redevelopment has been a thorn in the side of many a mayor. Two serious proposals have failed: one, for a shopping center, and one for a skating rink. The City recently closed a $1 billion competitive solicitation for new proposals, informed by a nine-month community engagement process which culminated in a planning document called Together for Kingsbridge/Juntos para Kingsbridge. The plan prioritizes diverse industries, from film and TV to manufacturing to urban agriculture and recreation.

According to the New York Times, the likely winner is a nonprofit economic development coalition that would create a multi-use facility intended to benefit the local community.4

How many armories are there in New York City, you may wonder, as I did? It’s hard to say, because most of them are no longer used to store armaments or to garrison troops (though the National Guard does continue to use some of them). This wonderful tracker counts 24, with another 14 that no longer exist. Four are in The Bronx. Many of them have been repurposed. I believe Kingsbridge is the only one that remains completely vacant.

Poor Kingsbridge. Its emptiness is preposterous in a city that hungers for useable space. I’m keeping my eye on what happens here.

Capitol Assets

There are not many dining options around here. We ate lunch at the New Capitol Restaurant, a family-owned diner whose logo (imprinted on its menu) features the mighty turrets of its once-military neighbor across the street. The staff were exceptionally friendly, even bringing us unsolicited cups of soup when they learned we’d declined the fries that came with our orders. Let’s say that other than that unexpected gift (oversalted but generous), we got what we expected.

I noticed the building that housed the restaurant had a For Sale sign. I asked the waitress about it. She said she didn’t know much, that there were rumors of a galleria/shopping center. She told me she didn’t live in the neighborhood - she commutes from Washington Heights in Manhattan - so she’s not very invested. Aren’t you concerned about your job, if the new owner closes the restaurant? I asked. No, she responded – nothing lasts forever. What about the Armory? I inquired. What would you like to see there? Again she demurred, resorting to her not-my- neighborhood explanation, as if it were an explanation. It’s pretty clear she wasn’t among the 4,000 people who stand Together for Kingsbridge/Juntos para Kingsbridge.

The Kingsbridges

After gawking at the Armory for a while, we followed its south-facing façade along West Kingsbridge Road, which is the southern border of Kingsbridge Heights. A makeshift flea market separates the street from the Armory’s wrought iron fence. Clothes, shoes, electronics, serving platters – you name it, someone was selling it. (Unfortunately for the vendors, I didn’t see that anyone was buying it.) The area inside the fence is referred to as the Armory’s “moat,” though water likely never flowed there. But the density of the market’s wares created its own sort of defense.

Kingsbridge Heights’ residents, by the way, are demographically similar to much of the Bronx. About two-thirds are Latino (majority Dominican), 31% are Black and the tiny balance is white, Asian, mixed or unknown. That’s pretty much what I would have guessed from my anecdotal observation.

At the corner of Webb Avenue is the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, a 431-bed hospital and nursing home that’s been around for more a century. I was surprised to learn that every borough has at least one VA healthcare facility, though the Kingsbridge facility is, well, the king of them all. In 2019, the VA built accommodations for the families of veterans receiving care here - two Tudor-style houses, 16 rooms each. That’s rare for a New York City hospital, and beautiful.

My friend and I were walking with purpose, because we were expected (and running late) for a tour of the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center (KHCC). From West Kingsbridge Road, we walked up Kingsbridge Terrace (Road, Street, Terrace, Heights – where’s their imagination?).

Kingsbridge Terrace is a really pretty street, lined by houses and apartment buildings of all styles, from the non-descript to the fanciful. One house (#2744) is a veritable castle, a stucco structure with a high crenellated turret. It’s ubiquitous in Kingsbridge neighborhood profiles.5 At a neighboring house, a tower narrows to a dramatic spire.

All the houses on the east (uphill) side of the street are built into the hill, with their entryways atop sometimes long and steep stairways. Some homeowners have decorated their stairs with plants and flowers, their railings draped with colorful ribbons. I tried to imagine toting bags of groceries up those flights, especially on an icy day. Hats off - and cleats on - to the residents who do.

Some of the cross streets are literally stairways – quite steep ones in most cases. The stairs serve as shortcuts between the switchbacking hillside streets. The City confers street names – including numbered street names – to stair-streets.6

One of those stair-streets is just steps (sorry) away from P.S. 360. This stairway, otherwise known as West 231^st Street, is bordered on both sides by children’s paintings of trees. On the left the kids have portrayed a bright blue tree in the winter, with a few sparse flowers; on the right, blossoms blanket a bright tree. The paintings follow the six tiers of the stairway, each with a small landing in between, in what is a clever and quite beautiful design. Sadly, the paint has faded and cries out for a re-do.

The artwork is the creation of children from the programs at KHCC, a vibrant organization providing services for families that operates out of three buildings across from the “tree-lined” stairway.

KHCC is a valued community stakeholder, and as such, it was part of the Together With Kingsbridge/Juntos Para Kingsbridge advisory group. My companion had recently joined KHCC’s Board of Directors, and had arranged for us to tour the facility.

It’s no fun if you don’t try other options once you know they exist

KHCC h​​as been providing services to the Kingsbridge community for half a century. Children and youth, from infancy through adolescence, find imaginative, safe and affordable care and activities here, while older neighborhood residents come for food assistance, mental health services or just to work at the extensive vegetable garden.

My friend and I were ushered into a small room to wait for the Administrative Director of the organization. The waiting room had recently been used for a “Girls’ Group” – a gathering of middle school-aged girls where no topic is taboo. The girls had placed signs on the wall. One poster, decorated with balloons, proclaimed “It’s no fun if you don’t try other options once you know they exist.”

Jeez, I loved that. I thought it could be the title of my entire neighborhood exploration project, if not my outlook on life. You go, girls!

The executive joined us a few minutes later and showed us around KHCC’s comprehensive facilities. Her tour was exhaustive and passionate. She knew everything about every program: its goals, funding and contractual requirements, its history and staff, its physical plant challenges. She showed us the multi-tiered garden, the childcare rooms, the library and after-school activity room, the gym, and the food pantry.

We met the director of food programs, at work on his day off to prepare for the next day’s food distribution (the pantry is open twice a week). No surprise – remember, these are my peeps. As I’ve said, they are unsung (and generally undercompensated) heroes.

Van Cortlandt Village

Leaving KHCC and our magnificent guide, we continued on Kingsbridge Terrace until it changed names, becoming Giles Place (which I’ve heard pronounced with a hard “G”). It’s not just the street that changes names here; this is more or less where Van Cortlandt Village begins.

Well, some people call it that. The NYC Historic Districts Council, in connection with the local community board, coined the name in the mid-1970s as a means of preserving the neighborhood’s distinct housing and history.7 Most people who live there consider their home to be Kingsbridge, but don’t write off the proud and persistent VCVers.

Van Cortlandt Village is bordered by the Deegan Expressway on the west, Van Cortlandt Park on the north, the Jerome Reservoir on the east, and West 238^th Street on the south. Ish.

Tree-lined Giles Place curves around (another curved street!) toward Sedgwick Avenue and the Jerome Reservoir. Single-family houses line much of the east side of the street while apartment buildings trace the west. The further north you walk, the higher you seem to move along a socioeconomic ladder too, until the area feels solidly middle class compared to blue-collar Kingsbridge Heights (where 30% of the population lives in poverty).

The winding streets tracing Van Cortlandt Village’s hilly terrain are notable for being part of one of the few extant street plans designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (of Central Park and Prospect Park fame). The story goes that after the west Bronx became part of New York City in 1874, the “City” (read: Manhattan) pushed its numbered street grid and urban designs north, usurping local planning efforts for such features as business districts, parks, housing and transit routes.

Bronx officials, unhappy about the imposition of outside decision-making, hired Olmsted to craft a design they felt was truer to local topography. In the middle of construction, however, a new planning administration took over and dismissed Olmsted, aborting his plan except in the few places it has already been completed - including Van Cortlandt Village.

Socialist Jewish Housing in The Bronx: The Shalom Aleichem Houses

Just before we arrived at the end of the street, we found the entrance to the Shalom Aleichem Houses, one of four cooperative apartment complexes built by and for working-class socialist Jews in the Bronx in the 1920s. In addition to providing affordable, cooperatively-owned housing, each complex had an overtly leftist non-housing orientation: the preservation of Yiddish culture (this one), trade unionism, labor Zionism, or communism. But significant overlap among them meant that prospective buyers had a veritable menu of options to consider, and most could just as easily have lived comfortably in any of the complexes.8

Cooperative housing, a concept less than ten years old at the time these complexes were developed,9 would have appealed to the leftist garment workers who moved here from the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side. The northwest Bronx would have been bucolic at the time, and one can only imagine the awe, courage and resolve these workers would have felt at owning cooperative homes in such a beautiful setting. (Management, it goes without saying, was not welcome.)

The Shalom Aleichem Houses (Yiddish Cooperative Heimgesellschaft) were built in 1926-27 by the Workmen’s (today: Workers’) Circle. Baked into Shalom Aleichem’s purpose and programming was the preservation of secular Yiddish culture. Residents were determined to create a bulwark against the assimilationist tendencies of immigration. The complex attracted intellectual and artistic residents who celebrated Yidddishkeit. Lectures, performances and exhibits took place in extensive common spaces - in Yiddish, of course.10 Shalom Aleichem also included a childcare center, a market, artists’ studios and a cafeteria.

Alone among the four complexes, Shalom Aleichem’s founders built schools - not just weekend enrichment or pre-school programs but actual elementary, middle and high schools. The political environment was famously contentious. To accommodate residents’ political “diversity” (read: friction), two schools operated on-site, one for the Communists and one for the Socialists.

Alas, like two of the other three Jewish workers’ housing complexes, Shalom Aleichem went bankrupt only a few years after it opened; its reserves were no match for the newly unemployed cooperators who had fallen victim to the Depression. The building reverted to a rental property under private ownership. It remains so today, having changed hands several times.

Surprisingly but perhaps not surprisingly, Shalom Aleichem’s failure to thrive as a cooperative entity did not diminish its cultural focus or political activism. In 1932, not long after it became a rental building, tenants - now organized in a (non-owner) cooperative association - staged a rent strike, pledging mutual support no less “cooperative” than if they had been fellow communal owners. It may actually have been a more familiar impulse for them to protest against their capitalist landlords than to muddle through the messy financial machinations and uncomfortable politics required of cooperative ownership.11

One person who grew up at Shalom Aleichem described its residents as “a bunch of Eastern European Jews, every one of them an artist or an intellectual trapped by circumstances in a garment factory.” The daughter of two such residents was Bess Myerson, who in 1945 won the Miss America beauty pageant.12 Myerson went on to serve in New York City government and ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 1980.

The beautifully landscaped garden in the peaceful interior courtyard we encountered today included a plaque commemorating Sholem Aleichem13 (born Solomon Rabinowitz), the complex’s eponymous writer. Sholem Aleichem’s work has been celebrated throughout the world, most famously for the book Tevye the Milkman, which inspired the musical Fiddler on the Roof. Aleichem died in 1916 in his Bronx apartment.

The Shalom Aleichem Houses’ Yiddishist culture and leftist convictions prevailed until the 1950s and ‘60s, when many left for Riverdale or Westchester County, “replac[ing] the Yiddish socialist dream with the American dream,” as one person put it. Their departure coincided with the arrival of Puerto Rican and Black families to the area. Their “flight” was a painfully ironic one.

Others left because of the fear that their noted radical address made them targets for McCarthyites and the FBI. Still others, of course, left because as they aged, the lack of elevators in the buildings became onerous.

And many did not leave, even if their adult children did.

My friend and I were awed by the 15 five-story brick-and-stucco Tudor style buildings that comprise the complex. It felt like its own small village (and I don’t mean a shtetl). If you closed your eyes, you could hear the arguments (in Yiddish, naturally) between the socialists and the communists, those whose activism involved leaflets and those who painted or played music.

Shalom Aleichem is still a working-class enclave, with some elderly Jewish residents who may even have grown up in the buildings.

Read on for our encounter with another of the projects. The remaining two are further east and destinations for another day’s visit.

Jerome Reservoir and Fort Independence Park

Giles Place dead-ends into Sedgwick Avenue. On the other side of Sedgwick, Fort Independence Park stretches along the northern edge of the Jerome Reservoir. As was true when I visited Bedford Park on the other side of the reservoir, the water itself isn’t visible from the street; the retaining wall is too high for even the tallest person to see over even at the crest of a high jump. (You do get a narrow stripe of a view from the park, though, and recent improvements are intended to enhance the views.)

Fort Independence itself was indeed a fort. Built in 1776 at the direction of General George Washington, it was destroyed by the British three years later. In 1915, cannons were discovered buried underground at the site of today’s park, presumably from Revolutionary War days. That’s when the City memorialized the space as a park bearing the fort’s name.

I smiled as I considered that the name had survived for almost a quarter of a millennium while the fort lived only three years.

The reservoir opened in 1906 on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack. It was part of the City’s water supply system, holding the water that came in from the Croton aqueduct upstate. To this day the reservoir plays a small role in our water system, with about 10% of the city’s drinking water passing through.

The northeast portion of the reservoir was emptied in 2008 because of the City’s failure to comply with a federal mandate requiring more rigorous water filtration. It’s an unusual look: a stone wall separates the water from the grassy knoll of the drained portion. Locals are frustrated and skeptical that the City will ever implement the enhanced filtration system so it can return the water.

We got a first-hand account from a friendly pony-tailed guy named Mark, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly his whole life – which I’d guess is 60-plus years. His family moved to Kingsbridge Heights from the South Bronx when he was a kid, and he went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the days when white kids like him would have made up about a third of the student population; today, it’s fewer than 2%. (He would also have been among the 100% of students who were male, since the school did not admit girls until 1983.)

Mark was eager to share his experience living in the neighborhood and gave us a few recommendations. In fact, he walked us around the park on Sedgwick. Van Cortlandt Village boasts some beautiful and interesting houses, some of which he - or others along the way - pointed out. One proud homeowner, who waved to Mark, made sure we understood his house was almost 100 years old; Mark showed us another home with brilliant blue stained glass trim above all the windows and doors; still another stood out for its solar panels installed atop a severely pitched roof.

We passed the former Van Cortlandt branch of the New York Public Library, which was a big deal when it opened in 1969 after operating out of a private apartment. In 2019, the library moved around the corner. Next to the (former) library14 is the Van Cortlandt Jewish Center, a modern Orthodox synagogue with space rented to two social services agencies that serve people at either end of the life cycle. (Mark was quick to reassure us that the organizations serve “all kinds of people.”) The VCJC moved here in 1965 and now seeks to sell it.15

We said goodbye to Mark here and walked a block north on Orloff Avenue to Van Cortlandt Park South. (Yes, north to South.) The park – the third largest16 in New York City, at 1,146 acres - was verdant and alluring. I really wanted to hike along its trails, but that would have to wait for another day with more time.

Amalgamated Housing Cooperative

Across from the park is the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, another of the four socialist Jewish developments from the 1920s. This complex, 11 buildings built along the park’s southern border, was the nation’s first limited-equity co-op, initially built by and for members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of the most important trade unions in the garment industry.17 (“Limited equity” means, among other stipulations, that there are effectively limits placed on re-sale to ensure the permanent affordability of the units.)

Built around a series of courtyards and gardens, the Amalgamated’s physical design, like Shalom Aleichem’s, was inspired by the English garden city housing model, an early 20^th century urban planning philosophy that sought to meld city and agrarian life in residential communities. That such an environment could be available - for ownership, no less - to working-class trade unionists and others working in the garment shops was a reflection of remarkable political mobilization and courageous risk-taking.

The Amalgamated Houses are the only one of the four progressive Jewish co-ops that has entirely retained its ownership structure. (Another one, the Farband Houses, has kept two of its four original cooperatives; the other two faced bankruptcy and reverted to rentals not long after they opened.) Originally 300 apartments, Amalgamated expanded in the post-war years to 1,468, the most recent one built and occupied in 1971.

The building’s original financing structure required creative state legislative action and a host of loans (including one from the Yiddish Daily Forward). Above all it involved strategic vision, in this case from socialist-anarchist labor organizer and garment worker Abraham Kazan. Then-governor Franklin Roosevelt praised the model, which has now been replicated for tens of thousands of similarly-structured apartments in New York City and beyond. Kazan himself went on to develop other subsidized housing for middle-income families, continuing into the 1960s with his largest project, Co-op City.

The reasons for the Amalgamated Houses’ success as a co-op, while the other projects fared so poorly, are unclear. They may have had more rigorous governance, assistance from the unions or more creative financial management. Whatever it was, they survived the Depression and marched on. They are still middle-income cooperative apartments.

However, the Amalgamated Houses are experiencing dire financial challenges today. Their infrastructure is outdated, they owe $1.5 million to vendors and tens of thousands to former cooperators. Compliance with State and City inspections is beyond the reach of their diminished reserves (some reports place the cost at $150 million). Amalgamated is seeking a loan from the State’s housing agency and its management is facing angry pushback from residents and former residents. Hopefully a resolution will honor the buildings’ covenants and history. It would be tragic if they too lost their cooperative structure.18

Despite the rumors of their financial challenges, there’s a ten-year waiting list to get in. Just listen to the enthusiasm and devotion of today’s cooperators. It’s infectious.

All Downhill from Here

My friend headed home from here. I continued west.

My first stop: the relocated Van Cortlandt branch of the library, on Orloff Avenue. Mark had indicated it was nothing special, but I beg to differ. True, the building is a simple rectangular space. But I loved its red-shingled exterior, with its in-your face sans serif name tag and its light-filled reading room. I understand (and Mark probably does too) why the community appreciates it: it’s more than twice the size of its predecessor, with activity rooms for kids of all ages, Spanish and Russian language books, and an inviting outdoor space with tables and chairs.19

From the library, I followed the twists and turns of Orloff Avenue down the hill toward the Deegan. Detached single-family homes lined both sides of the avenue, most with modest yards and driveways. The home abutting the library happened to be on the market. From the street it was striking, and when I got home I learned it was a 1901 stone-stucco-brick house with four bedrooms, an exposed brick wall with a fireplace, and a huge outdoor patio. The asking price of $999,000 in an area where the median home sale in the past year was $373,500 suggests that gentrification may have arrived in Van Cortlandt Village, a neighborhood that may not remain a hidden gem for much longer.

More of those step-streets dead-end at the bottom of the hill into Bailey Avenue, which hugs the Deegan on the Kingsbridge Heights side. Given that the closest subway to Kingsbridge Heights is in the flats, you might have to hike up those stairs – at least 90 of them – to get home. On a dark, icy night, it wouldn’t be fun. On the other hand, it’s certainly faster than winding your way up the street I had followed down the hill, and you’d definitely get a better workout. (On the other hand, as Tevye might say, you could take the bus.)

Kingsbridge

On the other side of the Deegan Expressway is Kingsbridge. Crossing at 238^th Street, I immediately noticed the area had a higher concentration of white residents than its uphill neighbors, though it’s still mixed.20 Broadway, the major commercial corridor, is where the elevated #1 train at 238^th Street takes you south to Manhattan (43 minutes to Times Square) or north to the next and final stop in Riverdale.

Kingsbridge isn’t a wealthy neighborhood, but its average household income is about 25% higher than the rest of the Bronx overall and than Kingsbridge Heights specifically.

Gaelic Park

A block west of Broadway is the larger-than-I-remembered-it Manhattan College (“100 Years in the Bronx,” its banners proclaim).21 The school is a Lasallian Roman Catholic university, which began in - surprise! - Manhattan. It was founded in 1831 but received its charter in 1863, before its move to the Bronx.

In the mid-20th century, Manhattan College, I’m told, was the go-to place for local Irish Catholic young men interested in engineering, particularly electrical engineering, as it was the only Catholic school in New York with an undergraduate engineering school. (Fordham University was by custom for the humanities, and/or women.)

In 1991, Manhattan College acquired nearby Gaelic Park, a sports stadium on West 240^th Street with a storied history. The park was built in 1926 by the Gaelic Athletic Association of New York to provide a social gathering place for the area’s substantial Irish immigrant community - and in particular for Irish sports.

The biggest draw was hurling, a men’s sport involving sticks and balls, which - from descriptions and images I’ve seen - sounds and looks vaguely like lacrosse with sticks that look like oversized mixing spoons. The sticks are called “hurleys” (or maybe “hurlies”?). The women’s version of hurling is called camogie (pronounced ca-MO-ji), which also found a home at Gaelic Park. Both sports remain hugely popular in Ireland, where local teams battle it out in front of large and fanatical crowds. (Here’s a short description of hurling that 60 Minutes made for Americans, and here’s one about camogie, if you’re interested.)

Gaelic Park has also hosted concerts, including, in 1971, one by the Grateful Dead, who played there to 15,000 fans. Deadheads will want to know that the band opened with Bertha.

Manhattan College’s acquisition did not interfere with the athletic programming: the site continues to host Irish as well as American sports. Today, those sports are hurling and Irish football - another Gaelic sport, a strictly amateur one, which is neither like American football nor international “football” (soccer). Tournaments for both continue to fill the stands.22

Alas, however, there’s no more rock and roll at Gaelic Park.

In addition to Gaelic Park’s events, a small organization is keeping hurling and camogie alive in nearby Van Cortlandt Park as well as at CitiField in Queens.

Single-Family Homes

Walking through the streets of Kingsbridge was pretty unremarkable – the kind of unremarkable that appeals to me because it’s a window into how ordinary people live here. But it leaves me without much to report! I saw mostly modest single-family homes notable only to a Manhattanite who covets space – small gardens, sweet little porches, fireplaces.

Free books: Kingsbridge Library and the Pharmacy

I paid a quick visit to the Kingsbridge public library. Kingsbridge has had a library since the early 20^th century. The first branch was designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1905, one of 67 funded by Andrew Carnegie in a ten-year period and one of 18 to open that year.23

This lovely essay, by someone who grew up in the neighborhood, recalls the branch in the 1940s when the library was, in her recollection, a “dark one-room site with books waiting to be devoured.” She recalls the hallowed day she got her first library card, becoming, at age five, “a loyal member of the reading community of Kingsbridge.” I expect the thrill persists through the generations here, as it certainly has in my own family.

The current building is the library’s third incarnation, reflecting the growth of the collection and the community. The bare concrete-and-glass Brutalist exterior, with its boxy angles, is a striking (and, to my eyes, elegant) neighborhood attraction. Debuting in 2011, the library’s two floors – even the inviting basement-level children’s room, with its colorful, injury-minimizing soft flooring and foam chairs – are filled with light. Even now, at this late hour (the library is open till 7 p.m. most days), the adult floor was still crowded.

The branch houses the Latino and Puerto Rican Cultural Center, a small room (“El Cuartito”) featuring books, artwork and other resources dedicated to promoting “Latinidad,” or Latino unity.

As I headed to the subway at 231^st Street, I passed RiteCare Friendly Pharmacy, where matching English and Spanish signs were taped to the glass doors. The signs advertised “Free Copy of the Muslim Bible (Quran) – English [Spanish] version available upon request.” Now that’s a Friendly Pharmacy.

Vexing Voyage

Once again, the subway wasn’t running. No one, including the MTA employee stationed at the 231^st Street station, knew why. A kind teenager also traveling downtown (but never below her home on 211^th Street, she announced defiantly) accompanied me to a bus stop a block away. Predictably, the bus was jammed, and I lost her once I joined the crowd on board. That was disappointing, because I would like to have understood her hesitation about points south. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. (Or maybe she does, and that’s why she sticks to her boundary.)

The bus crossed into Manhattan, where I got another train home, a few miles and half a city away.

Music for Today

• Here’s the entire 1971 Gaelic Park Grateful Dead show.

• Wilfrido Vargas, ‘80s Dominican merengue, El Hombre Divertido (ha, ha, ha, or in Spanish, ja, ja, ja).

• Motl der Operator, a Yiddish song about a machine operator who is shot while on a picket line. It was written in 1940, for a film of the same name. Residents of the Shalom Aleichem Houses and especially the Amalgamated Co-ops at that time would have known this song. Performed here by Kapelye, an early contributor to the klezmer revival movement of the 1980s.

Notes

NOTE FROM RACHEL: Before we go to the Bronx, two quick notes: first, please consider reading these posts in the Substack app and/or on a large screen! The photo format is much better on a large screen, and the footnotes - the lively digressive and extra-resource footnotes! - are interactive if you read in the app. From your email, just click on “Read in App,” which you should see above the map. (You have to download the Substack app, of course.)

Second, change of plan about the order. You may not even notice that the posts won’t necessarily be chronological. Enjoy!

Bedford Park

• In which I track down my mother’s childhood home, with great delight and not a little sadness

• In which I find her school and another school whose terror she greatly overestimated

• In which I gape at a half-block historic district and feel for its sacred neighbor

• In which I express admiration for, and caution along, Mosholu Parkway

• In which I discover superb Mexican salsa but cannot watch TV

• In which I admire the Grand Concourse, and recount a remarkable story of faith

• In which I explore more area schools

• In which I marvel at a vertical immigrant village

Norwood

• In which I introduce Norwood, and finally discover a part of Jerome Avenue not dominated by auto repair shops

• In which I gasp at the size and scale of Montefiore Hospital; in which I learn about an experiment in language preservation

• In which I face my fears to see an oval-shaped park (or a park-infused oval) and find it rewarding

• In which I experience a small miracle and visit a library

• In which I burrow around Bainbridge, and return home

******

Bedford Park

Wherefore Bedford Park (and Norwood)?

I had come to explore the northwest Bronx community of Bedford Park, where my mother lived as a small child, from approximately 1944 to 1951. She left at age 12 without even knowing the name of the area; it was just home. Her childhood memories are less about the area than about those who populated her life: eccentric neighbors, school friends, her mother’s piano students, and of course, her parents themselves. I looked for the places she’d mentioned, but there aren’t many; what I found I’ve recorded here.

Bedford Park is bordered to the east by Mosholu Parkway, which runs on a southeast-northwest diagonal. Mosholu Parkway separates Bedford Park from the adjacent area known as Norwood (and sometimes by its older name, Bainbridge). The two neighborhoods are commercially and politically connected.

I sought to explore both neighborhoods, which are home to notable schools, the New York Botanical Gardens, significant medical institutions, and homes occupied today and historically by working-class New Yorkers.

Bedford Park is named for a fashionable London suburb. It was largely farmland for most of the 17th, 18th and 19th century. In the 1870s, the streets were laid out, trees planted and water mains constructed when a prominent landowner named Leonard Jerome sold it to developers. Jerome was a successful stock speculator known as “the King of Wall Street.” He chose this area to build the Jerome Park Racetrack, site of the first Belmont Stakes race in 1867. (He was also the maternal grandfather of Winston Churchill.)

With the infrastructure of the community established, single-family homes, apartment buildings, churches and commercial districts emerged. The opening of the subway in the early 20th century further accelerated development.

Starting the Day: House of Memories

The MetroNorth Railroad delivered me from Grand Central to the New York Botanical Gardens station in 22 minutes. (The Gardens are called “New York,” not “Bronx,” even though there are also botanical gardens in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. When they opened in the Bronx in 1891, they were the city’s only such gardens.)

Webster Avenue, a block away, was quiet on this bracingly cold Thursday. A barber shop and a nail salon were beautifying a few customers each, and a shop selling uniforms and equipment for first responders had hung decorative holiday lights on its facade - an ironically warm feel for a place that sells firearms.

I was looking for the house where my mother had lived, on Marion Avenue between 200^th and 201^st Street. Walking up 201^st Street (and I mean up - the Bronx is inclined to inclines), I noticed immediately what would surprise me all day: while most of the housing is apartment buildings, a significant portion is composed of private houses or duplexes.1

I’d visited my mom’s house with her about 15 years ago. She’d been moved by the sight of the dilapidated duplex we encountered. I recall the poor house listing slightly to the right; dwarfed by the apartment buildings on either side, it clung defiantly, if feebly, to the block, as if aware it didn’t have long to live.

The house had two residential sides, each with its own entry, and on each side, an apartment or a series of rooms on each of its three floors. In my mother’s memory, it had been a place of comfort. She lived on the first floor of the right side of the building, with her parents and the upright piano where her mother gave lessons. On the second floor lived old Miss M, an agoraphobe who seldom left the house and often didn’t even leave her unit to use the toilet down the hall (for her exclusive use, but it involved leaving her own rooms). To avoid the walk, she kept a chamberpot in her apartment, which my mother remembers lent a distinctive reek to the building’s common spaces.

On the third and top floor were two units, one where the gentle Mr. W lived, and the other where another couple of women lived, Charlotte and Laura. Charlotte was an extroverted full-time caretaker for the other, who my mother recalls as physically and emotionally unwell.

The landlady lived on the ground floor of the left side. Upstairs on the second floor were the Grecos, a firefighter and his wife who were, my mother thought, unhappily childless. At Christmastime, they invited the neighborhood children to admire their elaborate toy train set. My mom recalls being dazzled and delighted by the intricate cars and tracks and the miniature city the owner had created.

The neighborhood was almost all white then. After the completion of the Jerome Avenue subway in 1917, Jews from the tenements of lower Manhattan moved up – up, that is, both geographically and economically. They joined the Italian and Irish families who had stayed on after working on construction of the Jerome Reservoir in the late 19^th century. The composition of the area began to change in the 1960s, with the influx of Puerto Rican families, and over the next few decades, with the arrival of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Albania, Bangladesh, Mexico, West Africa and elsewhere – and the departure of most of the white residents to the suburbs or further afield.

I photographed the Marion Avenue/201^st Street sign. A man standing on the block commented that the neighborhood was pretty, wasn’t it. I heard his East European accent, a reminder that the area – from Belmont to Norwood – is home to almost 10,000 Albanian immigrants. (Nearby Belmont, the home of Arthur Avenue, the Bronx’s Little Italy, is just as likely to be known as Little Albania – or Big Albania, as one local put it.) Yes, I told him, it is pretty, and I am visiting my mother’s childhood home. Bravo! he cried, with what I took as authentic enthusiasm.

I walked down the quiet residential block, counting down the buildings. A few private homes, some apartment buildings….number 2968, 2966, 2962….but where was 2958?

Alas, a construction crew was hard at work on a brand new building in the lot where my mother’s house had been. Its demise had seemed inevitable when we’d visited, but oh, how heartbroken its disappearance left me! As though the razing of the house had torn some make-believe tendons connecting our family to the lot, and perhaps to the Bronx itself.

Well, it was a comfort at least that this new building would house far more people than the frail six-unit house had. The new one was spectacularly ugly, but it wasn’t finished, so perhaps it will turn into a swan with the arrival of its exterior siding. I will return to bear witness.

I tried to talk with the workers about it, to learn when they had started construction, when the building would be ready for occupancy. But their English was poor and my Chinese worse, and we didn’t understand each other.

A woman got out of her car and came over to chat. Her English was poor too, but we spoke in Spanish. Yes, she said, they tore down that house a little over a year ago. She knew an elderly lady who had lived there – an Albanian woman, she told me, who had died some years ago.

She was delighted to hear my mother had lived here, and glad to hear she was almost 85 and well. She told me about a 97-year-old woman in her building, two doors up. The woman lives alone. Her children visit but it’s mostly the neighbors who look after her. But she is sharp! She sets aside her money – this much for the rent, this much for the electric bill, etc. And when you deliver her groceries, she checks the receipt to make sure you haven’t cheated her. My friend cackled at this. We wished each other well.

Schools and Scares

At the southern end of the block is Bedford Park Boulevard, a curvy, busier street. At the top of a hill on a three-acre campus there lies the imposing Academy of Mount St. Ursula, the oldest continuously operating Catholic girls’ high school in New York State, located here since 1892. My mother remembers her parents cautioning her about the school because of its reputed but unspecified antisemitism. When I told her it was a girls’ school, she was shocked – the rumors had connoted big boy bullies, perhaps with swastikas tattooed on their muscled biceps. They were just BICs!2

On 202^nd Street between Briggs and Bainbridge Avenues is P.S. 8, my mother’s elementary school. She had to walk four or five blocks to get there, which she recalls doing with her friend Irene. The school had a dirt play yard where kids played “Ringolevio,” a variation on tag where the taggers place the tagged in “jail” until or unless they are “freed” by a member of their own team. A 1972 autobiography by Emmett Grogan called Ringolevio, A Life Played for Keeps3 describes the game like this:

It's a game played on the streets of New York, for as long as anyone can remember. It is called Ringolevio, and the rules are simple. There are two sides, each with the same number of players. There are no time limits, no intermissions, no substitutes, and no weapons allowed. There are two jails. There is one objective.

The school, now called Briggs Avenue Academy, is also known as the Isaac Varian School, after the 63^rd mayor of New York City (1839-41). It hosts children in grades pre-K to five. Next week - the week before the holiday break – they’ve organized special winter festivities every day. Monday is “Wear Cozy Flannel to School” Day. I’d like that.

Grace in Fall Colors

A couple of blocks away on Perry Avenue, my jaw dropped at the sight of a row of lovingly maintained Queen Anne attached houses. I learned later that they comprise the Perry Avenue Historic District (Perry Avenue between Bedford Park Boulevard and East 201 Street), landmarked in 2009.4 I was overjoyed to learn they’d been recognized.

Nine brick row houses, nearly identical except in color - red, orange or yellow - reign from the north side of the street, overlooking the block from their perch on the uphill side. Built between 1910 and 1912, their unifying details, such as their cornice and dormers, make clear they were constructed as part of a development. It’s a beautiful block, captured by numerous New York City photographers.

A block away is the quaint Bedford Park Congregational Church, with an appealing square tower. The church was built in 1891-92 in the elegant Queen Anne and Romanesque style. It has a quiet presence at the corner of 201^st Street and Bainbridge. The church was designated a historic landmark in 2000. It has evolved with the neighborhood, and today serves a multi-cultural congregation likely inconceivable to its founders. Sadly, the church needs help: last year, to finance the replacement of its boiler, it launched a Go-Fund-Me campaign with the memorable name GoFundMe/Warm-Hearts-Cold-Church.

Mosholu Parkway

P.S. 8 abuts Mosholu Parkway. “Mosholu” is a Native American name from the Weckguasgeeck language (a Lenape language that I think is now extinct). It means smooth stones, sometimes translated as small stones.

Parkways were the brainchild of Federick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, the designers who gave us Central Park and Prospect Park. Their aim was to create pleasant park-like roadways that would connect neighborhoods. The passages would provide separate routes for pedestrians, bicycles and carriages. Olmsted and Vaux’s most famous parkways are in Brooklyn: Eastern (1870-74) and Ocean (1874-76).

Mosholu Parkway was originally constructed in the 1880s as a link between Van Cortland Park and Bronx Park. It was modernized by Robert Moses in the 1930s, part of the 416 miles of parkways he built or updated during his tenure. It winds through the Bronx for just three miles. It is park-like, with ample green in the median strip. Some of the topography, like the area near my mother’s house on Marion Avenue, is densely wooded and cuts across an otherwise impassable ravine. Farther north the park is flatter, with easier access on the footpaths that traverse it.

The Parkway has four busy lanes, with limited crossings. In compliance with the State’s rules for parkways, it’s restricted to passenger vehicles, although unlike many of Moses’s parkways, Mosholu Parkway makes an exception for buses5

Traffic along the Parkway is fast and unforgiving, with serious pedestrian and cyclist injuries. Last year, the City announced several changes intended to reduce those incidents, including lowering speed limits, constructing more east-west crossings and separating biking and pedestrian paths. These plans have not yet been completed.

I walked north along the Parkway, grateful for the wide sidewalk separating me from the buzzing traffic. I gawked at the apartment buildings abutting the Parkway. Largely from the 1920s and 30s, they are Art Deco gems, with magnificent period details.

Columbia University’s School of Architecture maintains a digital library of advertising brochures for residential and commercial real estate in New York City. This one-pager describes an apartment building at the intersection of Mosholu Parkway and Marion Avenue. I love the list of “improvements.” Venetian mirrors! Electric refrigeration! Radio Outlets! The brochure isn’t dated, but the library suggests it was in the 1920s. It must have been very classy.

Salsa Soul Sister

One of the first things I noticed after getting off the train had been a photo menu in the window of a bodega, which proclaimed confidently: “Su Comida Favorita del Bronx” (“Your favorite food in the Bronx”). Every single image portrayed deep-fried foods – plantains, fries, empanadas, chicken tenders - not really my thing. But I took it as a challenge. Could I find my favorite food in the Bronx today?

I’d been intrigued by the number of Mexican restaurants in the area I’d seen online, and set out to find one. Mexicans are a fast-growing addition to Bedford Park6 as they are in many NYC communities.

I turned on Valentine Avenue, a sweet name with a distinctly unromantic history. It’s named for Isaac Valentine, a blacksmith and farmer who built a farm in 1758 in what is now Norwood, across the Parkway. During the Revolutionary War, British and American troops variously seized his house for war purposes, ultimately destroying Valentine’s wealth. After the war, he sold it to another Isaac V. – this one, Isaac Varian, would eventually become mayor of New York (and have PS 8 named after him). Today the house sits on the Norwood side and serves as the Bronx Historical Society at the Valentine-Varian House.

A Mexican grocery on Valentine caught my eye. Connie’s Deli Grocery displayed some food photographs in the window. Looking in, I saw only a typical bodega deli – sandwich fixings, beer, soda. But beyond the grocery counter I spied a handful of tables, suggesting an actual kitchen. Edging my way in around the display cases and tight shelving, and past a few men drinking Coronas, I found the prize: a full Mexican menu.

I chatted with the server and ordered a burrito. ¡Caramba! Fantastic. I enjoyed the burrito itself – a plump, tightly-wrapped papoose, the chicken crispy and smoky, the beans understated but giving the thing respectable bulk, a sprinkling of cheese artistically zested on top. It was love at first bite, or more precisely second bite, when I added Connie’s homemade salsa picante. I found the perfect burrito complement in the combination of the richness of the green sauce and the zing of the red. When the server asked how I liked the food, I explained my approach, and she told me she herself shares my approach: at the same moment we proclaimed combine them! I’d found a salsa soul sister.

I swore I’d eat only half of that big mama, but ahem…the second half kept getting smaller. I thanked the chef behind the grill, who was chopping such immense mounds of cilantro that I suggested it looked like she was in an herbal forest. She let me photograph her in the woods, but to protect her unknown immigration status, you’ll have to trust me that it’s a cute shot.

Here’s my lunch and its source:

The men were speaking Albanian. They took turns buying rounds of beer and I wondered if they - even the young one - were retired, or if they were self-employed and/or just taking a long lunch hour when the boss was away. I regret that I didn’t ask.

Connie, or the person I assumed to be Connie, approached them to ask if they could help repair the television she’d carefully mounted on the wall high above the tables. She said she’d bought it just a few months ago on Amazon, for $79, and already it didn’t work.

Did you check the batteries of the remote? asked the Albanians. Oh my! No, she hadn’t. A brief search for new batteries ensued. (No bodega worth its awning could possibly not sell batteries, after all.) Old triple-As removed; new ones inserted….we all held our breath…but…no go. Our little group let out a collective sigh of disappointment. The Albanians fussed with the remote; Connie used a broom handle to reach the power button on the TV.

In the end they could not repair it, at least not in my 45-minute stay. If you’re handy with these things, stop by. Connie’s is at 240 East 204^th Street. But be aware they close at 8:50 p.m. every day, according to their take-out menu.

On my way out, I chatted with Connie. She told me there were lots of Mexicans in the neighborhood and that her store/café was doing well. She acknowledged the Albanians’ business and said everyone got along great.

I left Connie’s with a promise to myself to return for the salsa, if nothing else (and maybe to watch something on TV if she’s managed to fix the set).

The Very Grand Grand Concourse and a Very Poignant Miracle

The Grand Boulevard: From Connie’s, it was just a few blocks to the Grand Concourse, the crown jewel of early and mid-20^th-century Bronx, its Park Avenue, its Champs Élysées (on which it was actually modeled).

The Concourse became a destination address in advance of its construction. It opened in 1909; eight years later, the opening of the nearby subway - and the anticipatory years during its construction - boosted more and more development. Builders erected elegant Art Deco and Moderne apartment buildings that flanked the boulevard’s 5.2 miles, from its southern tip at 138^th Street to its terminus at Mosholu Parkway, a couple of blocks from where I was standing. (The central portion of the thoroughfare, from about 149th to 167th Street, includes the grand civic institutions that befit the grand boulevard - courthouses and the Borough President’s office among them. I will visit them another day.)

When they opened in the 1920s, 99% of the apartment units had private bathrooms and 95% had central heating.7

The Concourse was home to at least a generation of Jews and Italians who had “made it” – those who were able to leave the squalor of the Lower East Side for middle-class and even upper-middle class homes in the smart art deco apartment buildings that lined both sides.

Theaters and synagogues packed the boulevard. The elegant Loews Paradise Theater, at 188^th and the Concourse, was constructed in 1929, a place to see and be seen at the height of its popularity. I’ll write more about it when I visit the Fordham neighborhood, just south of Bedford Park.

The Grand Miracle: I crossed the Concourse at 202^nd Street. On the west side of the street is St. Philip Neri Roman Catholic Church. The church is beautiful from the outside, a Gothic revival house of worship and school built in 1898 for the Italian laborers who built the Jerome Reservoir. Members of the congregation themselves hauled the church’s stones from the reservoir. A couple of fires, including one in 1997, have resulted in the present structure’s new roof and sanctuary.

In 1945, a miracle is reported to have happened here. A nine-year-old parishioner at the church, Joseph Vitolo, saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. He reported that the Virgin had told him to return for 16 consecutive nights, instructing him to pray for peace.

News spread of the miracle. In the end, as many as 25,000 people came to join him, including Cardinal Spellman and even Frank Sinatra! Time and Life magazines reported on him, and locals began to refer to him as St. Joseph.

The unanticipated fame brought Joseph neither success nor ambition, however, and he grew up holding a series of low-level jobs in the Bronx, dying in 2014.8 He did, however, return to the church every day to pray - for 60 years.

The New York Times wrote a touching piece about him in 2002, noting the violence and unhappiness in his childhood home of 18 children. The shrine is still there next to the church, evidently in poor condition. I did not see it myself, but I find this story so incredible that I want to include it. If a kid made that claim today, I think his parents would come under some scrutiny. And imagine how many Instagram followers he’d have.

Wheels at Work and at Ease

I walked up the Concourse to 204^th Street, passing the Bedford Avenue D train stop (the penultimate stop on the line), and walked a block west to Jerome Avenue. I marveled that even this far north, Jerome Avenue was home to as many auto repair shops as I knew it to be a couple of miles further south. And this is only one stretch of car shops in the borough! How the Bronx sustains so many auto-related businesses is one of New York City’s great mysteries, not only because of their numbers but because New Yorkers have the lowest rate of car ownership of any city in the country.

At Bedford Park Boulevard I crossed the bridge over the railroad tracks, peeking through the chain-link fence. I photographed the maintenance station for the city’s B and D trains; from the bridge they really look like toy trains, asleep on their tiny wheels.

School Jewels: Education Mile

Here my route began to track a series of significant Bronx educational institutions. The area is sometimes described as Education Mile.

Lehman College

Arriving on the west side of the bridge you are greeted by Lehman College, the only City University of New York (CUNY) school in the Bronx that confers bachelor’s degrees (what used to be called four-year colleges before the schools acknowledged it could take much longer to earn a B.A.). The north side of the campus, spanning two blocks along Bedford Park Boulevard, features a sleek student athletic center from 1994, designed by the late Rafael Viñoly.9 It houses what I believe is the only Olympic-sized swimming pool in a CUNY facility (open to the public for a fee!).

Once inside the entryway (unlike at Brooklyn College, they let me in without as much as a glance, let alone a security check), I walked around Lehman’s impressive campus, which includes a few obligatory, very pretty, campus quadrangles, Gothic-looking academic buildings and a world-class Performing Arts Center – the largest concert hall in the Bronx (don’t even try to include Yankee Stadium). At its establishment in 1931, Lehman was the northern campus of Hunter College, serving exclusively women; it did not admit men until 1951.

Two attractions of the campus stood out. First, nearby the performing arts center sits a massive white stone Olmec10 head, a gift from the Mexican state government of Veracruz in 1964 when Lehman established a Mexican Studies Institute. At ten feet tall, the statue is a commanding presence; I would not want to encounter its blank iris-less eyeballs on a dark night.

Second, above one of the lovely campus quads there’s a sign erected in 2008 that commemorates the United Nations staff stationed on the campus in 1946 (a year after the founding of the UN). The area is known as the “Peace Grove.” There is some suspicion that that year, with the suspension of wartime classes and the repurposing of the campus for women’s auxiliary military activities, the tunnels under the campus - miles of them – were used to store wartime equipment and materiel.11

I wish I could report on my visit to the Lehman College library. I didn’t enter, but I regret the omission, and here’s why. Subsequent to visiting Lehman, I learned that in the library stands a full-length portrait of Superman. Yep, that guy: the Man of Steel, of DC Comics fame.

The story of how the painting wound up at Lehman is long and charming, the result of deft sleuthing on the part of a writer, David Saunders, about 15 years ago. Saunders was writing a book about H.J. Ward, the painter of the portrait. Long story short, in 1940, the then-publisher of DC Comics, Harry Donenfeld, commissioned the painting to promote the new Superman radio program. The illustration hung behind his desk until he retired in 1957, taking the painting home with him. It remained in his family’s home after his death. At some point his widow donated it to Lehman, but it took Saunders’ detective work to discover it. I can’t figure out what Mrs. Donenfeld’s connection to Lehman College is, but that is for the next sleuth.12

Bronx Science

The block-long Harris Park separates Lehman from the Bronx High School of Science (“Bronx Science”), one of the jewels of the New York City public school system. Ambitious students (or more precisely, the children of parents who want their kids to be ambitious) prepare – sometimes for years – for the exam that will determine whether they will be admitted to one of the city’s elite high schools; many believe, with considerable justification, that admission to Bronx Science will open doors for them for the rest of their lives.

Bronx Science is the top choice of many of the city’s best and brightest (or at least most hard-working). Alumni include eight Nobel prize winners, including Claudia Goldin, this year’s Nobel laureate in economics (the “dismal science” – but despite the school’s name, you don’t need to be a science nerd to find excellence here).

The main school building is a massive structure a full city block in size. Its workaday style belies the drive and success of its students and alumni. The building is dotted with air conditioner window units, underscoring the fact the students’ rarefied academic status does not extend to their facilities.

Bronx Science moved to this location in 1959 from its original location less than two miles away. Its facilities were considered state of the art at the time. Woe to the current faculty and students who must concentrate over the loud drone of those A/Cs! (Or worse yet, their silence.)

In 2022, the school unveiled a brand-new auxiliary building, the Stanley Manne ‘52 Research Institute. Privately funded and designed by Dattner Architects (a woman-owned firm known for award-winning institutional and residential projects), the state-of-the-art science research facility, with more than 10,000 square feet of lab space, was completed in a record two years. Bronx Science’s alumni association calls it “the most transformative improvement in the school’s history.” The Manne Institute will be available to several nearby schools as well. More to come?

New York City high schools remain stubbornly segregated, and at many of the specialized academic high schools these discrepancies are writ large. The subject of annual angst and political hand-wringing, the student body at Bronx Science does not reflect the city’s demographics, and certainly not those of the Bronx. 61% of the school’s students are Asian-American and 21% are white, while citywide in the public schools those groups comprise 16.3% and 14.4%, respectively. So many students - 57% - come from Queens that some people quip that the school should more accurately be called the Queens School of Science.

Given that fewer than 5% of the Bronx’s population is Asian and less than 9% white, there’s little doubt when you are in Bedford Park at 2:30 on a school day where the kids are coming from.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Bronx Science is located at the edge of the Jerome Park reservoir, which was built on the site of a former Jerome Park Racetrack built by Leonard Jerome. The reservoir continues to play a role in New York City’s water supply system, receiving water from the Croton Water Supply System through the 33-mile-long New Croton Aqueduct. The reservoir is technically in Kingsbridge and thus the subject of another day’s exploration. Nevertheless, I tried to no avail to see the reservoir itself from its eastern shore, climbing parts of the retaining wall and jumping as high as I could without injuring or humiliating myself or getting arrested.

I followed Goulden Avenue along the reservoir up to the corner of Sedgwick Avenue. To the west, Van Cortland Park South borders that great park, the third largest in New York City and a destination for another day.

DeWitt Clinton High School

I continued east on Mosholu Parkway to the next school, DeWitt Clinton High School. Clinton more accurately reflects the demographics of the neighborhood. Reflecting the City’s interest in breaking up large schools into more intimate groupings (often even schools within schools), Clinton is organized by programs of interest, from the arts to an accelerated early college program to new English language learners. It’s in the top quarter of NYC public college prep schools and in a survey, a plurality of students grade it “good or excellent.” (Faint praise?)

The building itself, from 1929, is imposing and grand, built in a Romanesque style with three central arches.13 The city really did have a grand plan for the area in the late ‘20s, of which the reservoir and the high school are examples.

Among Clinton’s illustrious alumni are photographer Richard Avedon (class of 1940) and James Baldwin (‘41) (Baldwin was one of a small number of Black students at Clinton). One of Baldwin’s teachers was Abel Meerpol, himself a Clinton alum (‘21). Meerpol, a poet and songwriter, focused national attention on lynching in the South in his 1937 poem, and later song, Strange Fruit, made famous by chanteuses Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. After Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on espionage charges in 1953, Meerpol and his wife adopted the Rosenbergs’ sons, who eventually adopted the surname Meerpol.

Tower Records

Across from Clinton High, Mosholu Parkway and park offer accessible walking paths to Norwood. I joined the tide of students leaving their school day as they trekked across.

From the park, I had a straight-on view of the striking Tracey Towers, two residential apartment buildings on the Bedford Park side. When they opened in 1974, the towers were the highest buildings in the Bronx – yes, taller than Co-op City’s 1968 towers by more than 40 feet. (Co-op City beats them by a long shot for capacity, though, with its 15,372 units, compared to the Tracey Towers’ 871.) The towers’ height - 41 stories - and heavy brutalist style stand out (or should I say up) in the otherwise low-rise community. They are part of the city’s Mitchell-Lama program, which provides subsidized housing for middle-income tenants.

The towers themselves are home to unusual concentration of Ghanaian immigrants, leading some to refer to them as “Little Ghana.” One report indicates that advertisements for the towers appear in the airport in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Talk about networking.

Under the Towers’ parking lot is Jerome Yard, the resting place for #4 trains until they are refreshed and commissioned to go out there and do their duty again.

On the other side of Mosholu Parkway is the distinct but closely connected community of Norwood.

Norwood

Norwood didn’t get its name till the 20^th century, having rotated through a few others before this one stuck. The name is likely an abbreviation of North Woods, a common English place name. It’s also been known as Bainbridge, and some people still call it that, though most reserve that appellation for one of its commercial areas - at the intersection of Bainbridge Avenue and 204^th Street. (Below I describe my quick visit to that immediate area.)

Norwood is a funny-looking downward-facing triangle. On its northwest border, it has protruding upward-facing triangle that burrows into Woodlawn Cemetery. Its western edge is Mosholu Parkway, until it runs into the Botanical Garden. The Garden forms its eastern border until it reaches the cemetery again:

My mother had described Jerome Avenue as her family’s go-to shopping street (along with Fordham Avenue). I had never understood that, because I knew the avenue for its miles of automotive repair shops further south. Finally, seeing the Avenue up here, I got it. Both sides of the street were buzzing with commercial activity (as well as the thundering sound of the 4 train overhead).

Virtually every store I saw was local. An important exception is the Starbucks at 208^th Street, which opened in 2021 at the site of a 50-year-old Twin Donut shop. On the day I walked by, Starbucks was doing a brisk business with what appeared to be high school students. While there has been opposition to Starbucks displacing local coffee vendors elsewhere in the Bronx, this one seems popular and was welcomed by the Norwood Business Improvement District. Not your typical Bronx cheer.

Block after block of small businesses as far as I could see: streetside produce carts with popular Caribbean and Latin American items, housewares, barber shops and hair and nail salons, medical offices and grocery stores. The dominant street language was Dominican Spanish, but it wasn’t universal; I heard English, African dialects and Mexican Spanish too.

Not so long ago, Norwood was home to many Irish and Northern Irish immigrants. During the “Troubles” of the 1970s and 80s, it was known to some as Little Belfast. Today, while a few remnants of Irish life remain, the area is home to new waves of immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador, West Africa, Albania and Bangladesh.

Warming Up

I turned east on East Gun Hill Road. Within a block, I encountered the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, which advertised childcare facilities, programs for seniors, athletic spaces, after-school programs and more. Its lengthy mission statement was posted in the window next to its inclusive holiday decorations.

I entered the lobby to check it out – and, I must admit, to warm up. Imagine my surprise when I found a sign designating MMCC as an “approved NYC Cooling Center.” The employee behind the front desk saw me looking around and came out to speak to me – suspiciously, I thought. I asked him some questions and pointed out the irony of the cooling center sign. He and I did clearly not share a sense of humor.

Montefiore

As I made my way down East Gun Hill Road, the imposing Montefiore Medical Center, which shares a campus with North Central Bronx Hospital,14 appeared as a sort of beached whale on the south side of the street. I’d anticipated it from the map I was following, but couldn’t quite fathom the scale of it.

Montefiore (or Monte, to its friends, neighbors and detractors) operates facilities throughout the northern neighborhoods of the Bronx. It’s associated with the (sort of nearby) Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and seems to have scooped up much of the surrounding real estate in Norwood. A private non-profit institution, it’s considered a top-tier New York hospital.

I’ve worked with Monte projects over the years, known people who’ve spent their careers there or attended Einstein Medical School. But somehow I’d never actually seen it. I was overwhelmed by its immensity and sprawl.

The main hospital, originally constructed in 1913 after operating in several other locations, sits commandingly on the south side of the street, while its ancillary buildings spread out from there in several directions: small, medium and large; brick, glass and wood; polished and needing TLC. The hospital is an anchor for the community; it’s the largest private employer in the Bronx, and its sheer enormity just makes it feel significant.

Around the corner from the hospital, the 3300 block of Bainbridge Avenue is lined on both sides by a series of small detached residential-looking red brick buildings that could be at home in Queens. Each houses a different office or practice associated with Montefiore: specialists, business offices, etc.

There are two exceptions: #3309 is the research library and administrative offices of the Bronx County Historical Society, and #3301 is the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center, which is deceptively marked by a sign near the front door that says Einstein Montefiore Center for Continuing Medical Education (it deceived me, for one). It is actually (or additionally) a center for Yiddish culture, with study groups and entertainment. Sadly, on October 31, 2023, antisemitic graffiti defaced the center’s façade. It was cleaned up by the day of my visit.

Bainbridgivke

The Center is associated with a novel experiment. In the 1960s, when many Jews - and white people generally, and certainly most Yiddish speakers - had left the area, three families set out to create a Yiddish-centered life for their families. Buying three adjacent houses on Bainbridge Avenue, the Schechters, the Gottesmans and the Fishmans spoke only Yiddish at home, educated their children in Yiddish in a school they created (though the children did have a few hours each day in public school), and developed Yiddish cultural resources, particularly for families.

Their little cultural island, which they named Bainbridgivke, was an experiment in language preservation in a secular context, since the only other persistent Yiddish language-speakers were orthodox Jewish communities.

Eventually they closed the school, but they purchased the building where it had operated – now the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center I had just been convinced was the Einstein Monte Continuing Med-Ed Center. Of the nine Bainbridgivke children, several became language preservationists and cultural activists in their own right.15

The Isaac Vs

The Historical Society’s primary location is across the street from its administrative offices, at the Valentine-Varian House, as I described above. The museum is only open on weekends, so I wasn’t able to visit. (Its website is a treasure trove of Bronx resources, though.)

The house itself, built in the Georgian style of its 18^th century origins and made of local stone, is the last extant farmhouse of those that once lined the Boston Post Road (now usually referred to as Boston Road, or Route 1) and the second-oldest house in the Bronx. The house belonged to Isaac Valentine. It was the site of Revolutionary War conflicts between the British and American troops; Washington used it as a strategic location.

In 1792, facing bankruptcy, Valentine sold it to Isaac Varian, whose family retained ownership until 1905. The house was moved here from its original location in 1965.

Williamsbridge Oval

The house sits tantalizingly at the edge of Norwood’s enchanting park, the Williamsbridge Oval. I say tantalizing because I thought I could easily enter the park from behind the museum. But after embarrassing myself by climbing over, around and under various chains, stone walls and fences, I gave up. (And yes, the guy idling in his car was watching me, probably wondering if he should call the cops.)

Finally I walked around the curve of the park and found an entrance - through a 30-foot-long dark tunnel which I have since learned is prosaically called the Bronx Oval Park Tunnel. No one was around and I didn’t know whether it was safe to walk through it. In my best imitation of a brave person, I walked – ran – through.

The park itself was prize enough for my courage. It’s a splendid neighborhood park with wonderful amenities. The park is, well, oval shaped, built on the site of the old Gun Hill Williamsbridge Reservoir. The reservoir was built in the 1880s, and served as part of the city’s water system. It was briefly a swimming hole, then lay vacant until WPA funding, and Robert Moses, in his take-no-prisoners approach to developing some really good and some really bad urban amenities, converted it to a park (a good amenity), which opened in 1937.

Today the center of the oval is a soccer field, surrounded by a four-lane 400-meter running track. I assume the pickleball courts on the east side are the newest additions. The imaginative playground and skatepark were busy when I was there, in spite of the cold. There’s also a WPA-built recreation center on the south side of the oval, which today includes fitness equipment, a game room and computer facilities.

Williamsbridge Oval has a couple of those Parks Departments signs with an encircled leaf. The Department introduced the icon in 1934, when the parks departments of all five boroughs were consolidated under Moses’s leadership. (No one is certain what kind of leaf it is, but it’s commonly thought to be that of a London plane tree. Or is it a maple?)

In 2011, the Parks Department undertook a rebranding campaign, with the aim of updating the department’s signage. At Williamsbridge, the pickleball courts had their own sign, with rules posted in English, Spanish and Bengali.

Maritime Miracle

I exited, tunnellessly and with some exhilaration, on the Perry Avenue side, where I headed south toward my next destination, the Mosholu Library. En route I passed the really-kind-of-fantastical St. Brendan and St. Ann Catholic Church. One or both of these saints conferred a tiny miracle on me: at the moment I approached the church, a teenager whizzed by on his skateboard, almost crashing into me. I stepped aside just in time to avoid him. When I looked up, I saw, with wonder, the church’s skatepark-like architecture. A coincidence? I think not.

St. Brendan’s congregation has been around since 1908, but this building was constructed in 1967. It’s supposed to resemble a ship, with a soaring prow, to commemorate St. Brendan the Navigator’s travels. But you can’t convince me its design isn’t based the halfpipe structure of a skate park. If I were Catholic I would have genuflected immediately in gratitude for this bit of holy life-saving. If I were a skateboarder, I’d try to reach the roof for the ultimate sacred experience. Since I am neither, I caught my breath and moved on.

Library and Library Park

The Mosholu branch of the library lives on a tiny block where 205^th Street angles to connect to 204th Street. (It’s weird - look it up.) The Mosholu branch is located next to the brand new Whalen Playground, dedicated in 2018. The park, or pocket park (it’s built into a small triangle), is named for a long-time Norwood resident, Henry Whalen. Its play equipment is whimsical and designed for a variety of ages and seasons. My favorite structure, which faces the library, was one decorated with images of full bookshelves.

The Mosholu Library serves Norwood and Bedford Park. It’s a modest one-story modernist building that opened in 1955, with one room for adults and another for children, and a meeting room in the basement. One wall was devoted to immigration matters - the New Americans Citizenship Corner. There you can find three shelves’ and a bulletin board’s worth of information on immigrants’ rights and resources, in English, Spanish and Chinese. (Many library branches prioritize these materials.)

The computers were mostly occupied, and teens doing homework (I think?) on their laptops lined one side of the adult room. Children raced around their side of the building, some holding books, some merely being silly, and I was just so happy they had this little slice of kid-lit heaven where they could spend the chilly afternoon. In 2021, the library opened an outdoor space for COVID-skittish library users to sit and read during the warm months. It was very popular when it opened, and I hope it continues.

My mother remembers her mother taking her to the library as a child (likely the Fordham branch). I like to think these visits inspired her lifelong love of books, but I suppose that having a parent take you to the library in the first place is the real spark.

Bainbridge, and Back

The sun was rapidly falling, and I knew it was time to go home. Before I got on the train, I paid a quick visit to the Norwood commercial hub known as Bainbridge.

Bainbridge is a lively commercial thoroughfare, with restaurants, banks, drugstores and markets. I passed a store that reflects the neighborhood’s small but growing Bangladeshi population,16 which advertised “Clothes, Shoes, Beauties and Accessories” (were the traditional women’s salwar kameez in in the window the referenced beauties? or the display of Nike sneakers?). In the entryway of a newly reopened FoodTown supermarket - which I walked around; nothing special by way of inventory or prices, IMO - I found an old framed map of the shopping area entitled “Bainbridge Avenue and 204^th Street,” which was too faded for me to discern whether anything from that bygone era remains. (Which bygone era? you might reasonably ask; there is no date.)17

Before heading down the subway stairs, I stole my final glances – and photographs – of the late afternoon sun-soaked neighborhood. Some images that will stay with me: an apartment building whose cornice was lined with orderly pigeons standing wing-to-wing, for their own chatty happy hour; an Ethiopian church bearing the flags of the U.S. and Ethiopia and signs in English and Amharic; the sun illuminating the rich russets and ochers of some Perry Avenue rowhouses; and finally, a Greek diner, Nicky’s, at the top of the stairs to the train, where a streetside mural depicted a Greek island beach scene, with “NORWOOD” painted in Greek-inflected English lettering.

Alas, I descended from Nicky’s tropical paradise into the universal non-descriptness of the subway platform before the D train took me home from its final stop. After my hours of exploration, getting home in less than 40 minutes felt like cheating, even if it was double the time of the Metro North route.

Once again I felt as if I’d returned from abroad, though I’d just been up the block to visit my mom’s place.

Music for Today

• It wasn’t so long ago that the Irish were prominent in Bainbridge/Norwood. In the ‘90s, Black47, a Celtic American band described by the New York Times as “a New Orleans marching band crashing an Irish pub,” got its start playing at the bars along Bainbridge Avenue. Its hybrid sound caught on, and soon they had gigs in the Village and were touring the U.S. The band’s name refers to the worst period of the Irish famine, in the summer of 1847. Its songs are populated by Irish immigrants and Irish partisans. They played their last gig in 2014. Here’s Funky Ceíli.

• Almost a quarter of the Bronx’s population is Dominican - more than 334,000 people. That’s almost half the city’s Dominican population, and it’s the greatest concentration of Dominicans of all the boroughs. Here’s some home-style Dominican merengue típico from the Bronx.

• The Lehman College and Community Chorus performs several times a year at the acclaimed Lehman College Performing Arts Center. In 2020, like choirs throughout the world, it summoned its most creative technological resources to “perform” from its members’ pandemic-constrained living rooms. The result? Beautiful. See/listen for yourself: Felix Mendelssohn’s He, Watching Over Israel.

Notes

• In which I explore Woodlawn Cemetery, final resting place of luminaries from the worlds of entertainment, literature, and politics, as well as those who were more modestly superstars only to their loved ones

• In which, on this day after St. Patrick’s Day, I join the après-paraders on Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn, the most Irish community in New York City

• In which I visit the wee collections of Irish literature at the local library

• In which I marvel at a local church for its physical and spiritual structure

• In which I recount some funny Woodlawn-related stories from long and not long ago

• Coda - 2025

• Music for today

I’d never been to Woodlawn before. I was so excited about it that I fit it in after my visit to Parkchester – the same day. My brain, not to mention my feet, hurt! It was a rookie mistake, but I was delighted to make the acquaintance (or, in the case of Parkchester, re-acquaintance) of two completely different, completely thrilling parts of the Bronx.

Woodlawn Heights, also known as Woodlawn, is New York City’s Little Ireland. It’s the only neighborhood in the city where Irish and Irish-American residents still represent a plurality of the population, with Irish greenhorns finding their Yankee sea legs there to this day.

Woodlawn was once called Washingtonville, after George, of course, who, during the Revolutionary War, stored ammunition in what is now Woodlawn Cemetery. The area was part of Westchester County until 1874, when Woodlawn and several other Bronx communities were annexed to the City of New York.

Like many parts of the outer boroughs, Woodlawn grew up around transit: first, the New York and Harlem Railroad (now Metro North’s Harlem line), then the Third Avenue El and finally – and most impactfully – the IRT, which arrived between 1914 and 1917. The arrival of the subway was the biggest driver of housing construction, and much of the residential and commercial development on the streets today comes from that era.

Woodlawn Cemetery: Permanent Home of Celebs and Commoners

Allan and I entered at the Webster Avenue entrance to the cemetery, where the information center offered maps that showed us how to find the celebs who are the reason so many people visit. (The information center also serves as a business office for those wishing to inter their loved ones, or purchase a plot for themselves.) We spent the next hour tracking down the stars – not easy in a cemetery of more than 300,000 gravestones and mausoleums, but the maps are organized by the line of work of the interred (“musicians,” “politicians,” etc.) There’s even an app for that, which is supposed to direct you to the graves of those distinguished individuals and, creatively, I thought, link to samples of their achievements. I tried it and found it not very helpful, but perhaps I gave up too easily.

Woodlawn Cemetery (originally Wood-Law) opened in 1863, mid-war, as a non-denominational graveyard. It’s really a miniature city, half the size of Central Park, with tony “neighborhoods” and more pedestrian areas. But everyone seems to get wonderful maintenance services: the cemetery is uniformly verdant and neat, and everywhere, I saw crews trimming trees, mowing lawns, sweeping walks. We were especially eager to see the graves of jazz and other musical greats, many of which are located in what’s known as “Jazz Corner” in the southwest section of the cemetery. Here’s a sample. It’s hard to choose.

• Duke Ellington, whose stone is a simple marker in the ground, alongside the same for his family members; a couple of stone crosses watch over the plot

• Miles Davis – that’s “Sir Miles Davis,” since the Prince of Darkness was knighted by the French culture minister. His gravestone is a handsome upright dark slab of granite with a musical staff trimming the ground and a trumpet standing to the right

• Max Roach, whose gravestone includes a splendid line from a poem written for him by Philadelphia poet Sonia Sanchez: “Your hands shimmering on the legs of rain”

• Irving Berlin, whose unadorned gravestone lies flat and notes only his name and years of birth and death (the latter 101 years after the former)

• Celia Cruz, whose mausoleum befits her status as Queen – of Salsa, of course

• Johnny Pacheco, whose tombstone, from just two years ago, says in Spanish “Here Lies Johnny Pacheco, Against His Will,” heh heh, and also says “Qué cante mi gente,” lyrics from one of his greatest hits, a hymn that promotes Latino unity through shared song

Why did they select Woodlawn for their immortality? I’m not sure who started it, but it’s contagious. Jazz legends have wished to be buried with their “jazz family.” And it turns out that so many mere mortals – or aspiring musicians – want to be buried near their jazz idols that Woodlawn is actually expanding Jazz Corner to accommodate them.

We found some literary VIPs too: we paid our respects to Herman Melville, placed a stone on top of E.L. Doctorow’s modest gravestone (which featured an engraved version of his signature, which, as far as I know, was not famous per se) and raised a (virtual) glass to Dorothy Parker.

Parker’s grave came to Woodlawn recently, and under unusual circumstances. In her will, she left her estate to the NAACP, but declined to specify where she wished to be buried. Her remains were interred in a garden outside the organization’s headquarters in Baltimore. When the NAACP moved to Washington, Parker’s family petitioned to have her remains exhumed and moved to her family’s plot at Woodlawn. And so the grand-dame of wit and whiskey1 came home. She was buried here in 2021, with guests tippling from flasks and admiring the cheeky epitaph she’d written for her own tombstone (her family selected this one from among the five she’d composed). Snark from the grave!

I was moved to see the grave of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), 19th-century suffragist and abolitionist. Her tower-shaped gravestone, standing erect on a pedestal, proclaims that this “Mother/Orator/Woman Suffrage Leader…called woman’s [sic] rights convention first in history at Seneca Falls, NY July 19, 1848; Demanded Votes for Women; Founder, National Woman Suffrage Association; President 1869-93.” I was a little peeved that the front of the gravestone bore the name of Elizabeth’s husband, Henry Brewster Stanton (“Philanthropist, Journalist, Lawyer, Senator”2); her name is a minor note on the bottom. It seemed ironic that you must turn 90 degrees to read her own bio.

It was humbling and not a little thrilling to think that our scavenger hunt took us to the very spots where the families of these legends had gathered to mourn their loved ones.

Woodlawn’s mausoleums range from small palaces with opulent obelisks to stout memorials surrounded by family members (sometimes identified as “mother,” “father,” and even, in one heartbreaking but certainly not isolated case, “Baby Girl”). Some of the grandest, built between 1880 and 1925, are modeled after European chapels. Great stoneworkers carved them. The families buried in them are a who’s who of Gilded Age extravagance: Gould, Woolworth, Juilliard, Strauss, Belmont, Vanderbilt. Some are modest neighborhoods of inconspicuous “apartment buildings” of coffins buried in one slot atop another.

Woodlawn is a living burial place (if that isn’t an oxymoron), and we saw fresh graves, plenty of fresh flowers, and the occasional mourners. Most of the dead at Woodlawn, of course, attract no paparazzi – they are simply laid to rest in their neighborhood cemetery. There’s even a memorial for the nameless fallen from the Revolutionary War.

The most moving image I will take with me was of a woman and a young girl, maybe 10 years old, who were sprucing up a small grave and placing flowers on and around it. Their boom-box was blaring gospel music, and the woman danced as she fussed with the gravestone. When we walked by them next, they were singing at the top of their lungs with Stevie Wonder: “Happy birthday, happy birthday to you” as they released heart-shaped mylar helium balloons into the sky, watching them ascend slowly until they disappeared. My heart ached for them as I wondered whose birthday they were marking – another child? The woman’s husband? Her mother?

Little Ireland

Departing the cemetery, we walked up the hill on 233^rd Street to Katonah Avenue, the heart of Little Ireland in Woodlawn (the only New York City community with that moniker).

Woodlawn, less frequently called Woodlawn Heights, has been home to Irish immigrants and their descendants since the middle of the 19^th century, when waves of Irish workers came to build Woodlawn Cemetery, the railroads and nearby Croton Aqueduct. Many have moved on, but others have stayed and are replenished by new generations of Emerald Isle newcomers. According to the U.S. Census – and this predates the current administration’s hostility to immigrants – Woodlawn’s Irish population is declining, falling to 45% from 60% in 2000.

The residential community of Woodlawn is a beak-shaped parcel bordered by Van Cortlandt Park to the west, Woodlawn Cemetery to the south, Bronx River Parkway to the east and Westchester County to the north. Not bad to have New York City’s third-largest park in your backyard. For the purposes of my visit, I considered the cemetery not as a border but as a subdivision of Woodlawn – a different kind of microneighborhood, a quiet one, to be sure, but a part nonetheless.

In the 1870s, as the cemetery was filling in, visitors would travel to Woodlawn to visit the graves of their loved ones. It was a small country village then. Its first grocery store opened in 1875, though rapid development was still 30 years away.

One historian comments on the businesses that grew up around the perimeter of the cemetery: “Near both entrances are situated monument makers, gardeners, florists and ‘hotels.’ Why is it that near cemetery entrances there are always located so many ‘hotels,’ whose chief function seems to be to dispense liquid refreshments? Are mourners and drivers of hearses such a thirsty lot? Or do visitors go to a cemetery as they would to a park or museum and make a picnic of their visit?”3

Holiday Hoopla

My visit took place serendipitously the day after St. Patrick’s Day, which fell on a Friday this year. We arrived moments after the annual parade had ended, but the after-party was in full swing. Katonah Avenue, also known as the “Emerald Mile,” was filled with kilted men (and a few women) and hundreds of green-shirted, green-jacketed, green-beer-wielding celebrants. Irish pubs line both sides of the streets here, as do markets promising “Irish products,” “Irish meats,” and in the case of one market, “Irish everything” (although all the items on its list of “everything” were crossed out except lotto tickets, cigarettes and coffee. “Irish a-few-things,” more accurately). Residences and businesses fly the Irish flag alongside the Stars and Stripes. Irish pride is on tap here 365 days a year.

A few blocks north is Yonkers, in Westchester County. McLean Avenue is Katonah Avenue’s twin (the New York Times called it “Dublin on the Thruway”), forming a consolidated two-county Irish enclave. McLean Avenue was the site of Yonkers’ own parade that day, and partygoers seemed to have marched along both routes.

Emerald Isle Immigration Center, an Irish social services and immigration office, lies on the main drag of Little Ireland. Here newcomers can get help finding jobs and housing and navigating both the U.S. and Irish visa systems. The Aisling Irish Community Center on McLean Avenue is Yonkers’s analog.

We entered Rambling House, perhaps the neighborhood’s most ballyhooed4 pub, because it promised live Irish music. The advertised start time of 4:30 was loosely defined, though; when we left at 6, there was no sign of the band. We enjoyed a shot of Jameson’s and some Irish cider recommended by the bartender. He told me it came from an orchard from which his father used to steal apples as a child. When he rang up our not inconsiderable tab, he quipped, “I like yer style!”

The bartender told me he’d grown up in Woodlawn, but he bore traces of a brogue. Had he come as a child? Spent summers visiting the grandparents? Or was it pure affect? I didn’t ask. He was moonlighting as a bartender; his primary work was in construction. He had just completed a project at Columbia University. He was delighted to learn that I lived near there.

He wanted us to know that Woodlawn was heavily Irish and Irish American (thanks, lad, I couldn’t tell). He’s correct: almost half of the area’s residents come from Ireland, whether they arrived last week5 or in the last century. The whole place bursts with Gaelic pride, especially on St. Patrick’s weekend. I was moved by their enthusiasm – even the people singing drunkenly in the street and the shamrock-bedecked houses.

We wandered through some of the side streets. Most of the homes were detached one-and two-families, modest and neat. A lovely seven-block-long street was called Martha Avenue. Who was Martha? Did she come over from Ireland by herself? By ship or by air? And what did she do to deserve a wee lane of her own?

Celtic Collection

Speaking of wee, the Woodlawn branch of the New York Public Library is a diminutive one-story space brimming with books. It might be the smallest branch in the Bronx, but it makes an outsized contribution to the community. Local artists’ works decorate the walls, including a tapestry in which a dozen predictable Bronx greatest hits are woven.6 The tiny children’s section is defined by bookshelves that separate it from the rest of the library. The “teen section” is a bookshelf of YA selections.

What the library lacks in size it makes up for with a special feature, likely the only branch with this bragging right: a year-round section devoted to Ireland. The red-headed (yep) librarian proudly showed it off, and also offered, unsolicited, that he was indeed Irish and that his family had moved to Woodlawn ten years ago. The books in the “Ireland” section were all non-fiction. He explained that the special Irish fiction selection greeting visitors on the day we visited was seasonal, and, I suppose, not unusual throughout the library system in March.

The librarian confirmed, anecdotally, that the estimate I’d read of 45% of Woodlawners having Irish ancestry was accurate. Of course that means that more than half of the locals are not Irish. The branch maintains a small collection of books in Spanish, though Woodlawn is one of a small number of Bronx neighborhoods without a Latino plurality or majority. English is the name of the game here.

I left with food and sightseeing recommendations from a few of the library’s friendly staff.

Holy Hilltop Houses

At 241st Street my eyes popped. I’d arrived at a church that looked like a Norman castle. Its stone walls and crenellated parapet were unlike anything I’d seen in the area, to say the least – or really anywhere in New York (especially with its anachronistic solar panels).

The building is currently occupied by the Jesus is Lord Global Ministry. JILGM, as adherents know it (yeah, but how do they say it? “jil-gum”? “jil-G-M”? “J-I-L-G-M”?), is a nearly 50-year-old evangelical church that began in the Philippines. Today the church claims to have almost 60 million members around the world, and yet I’d never heard of it! While it’s a megachurch in the Philippines, its engagement model here seems more intimate. They advertise “Life Groups,” small associations of people who provide “accountability and encouragement” to each other, and show up during times of need.

The doors were all locked, alas, so I couldn’t ask anyone about the church, or even how to pronounce the acronym.

The castle, I mean church, was built for a Methodist congregation that was established in 1875. The structure was built in 1913 (not 1066, as you might think) for St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. It was supposed to look like a country church, but I say, which country, and which century? The Methodist Church left the neighborhood in the first years of the present century, and JILGM arrived in 2004.

St. Barnabas Catholic Church, a block east on Martha Avenue, is more recognizable. Its 1911 Italianate structure houses services for a largely Irish and Irish-American congregation. Once a year, the church conducts mass in Gaelic, drawing representatives of the Irish consulate and Irish Catholics from throughout the city.

Woodlawn Wisdom, Yesterday and Today

I recently came across an online compilation of recollections by people who grew up in the Bronx. I found this memoir about Woodlawn especially poignant - and shocking to our modern parenting sensibilities.

The writer describes her move to to Woodlawn in 1950. The day they arrived, her mother insisted that she suffer through the hazing rituals the neighborhood kids had designed to torture young newcomers. She recalls, “I saw my mother’s Irish red head looking down” while the children threw rocks at her five-year-old self. That image was so evocative I wept when I first read it.

The little girl was so enraged by the injustice of it all that she reciprocated with her own stone-throwing - and suddenly the deal was sealed: she had passed the test that the other children, and more importantly her mother, had hoped she would. She and her tormentors immediately became besties, jumping rope and playing hopscotch later the same day. The woman now expresses gratitude to her mother for her harsh form of love. Whoa!

The writer also introduced me to a term I hadn’t heard before. Local teenage girls from the area, she said, were called BICs - Bronx Irish Catholics. I can think of worse.

2023: Not long ago after my visit, I met a red-bearded Irish bartender (no kidding) in Manhattan who told me that when he’d arrived from Ireland some years ago, he’d headed straight for Woodlawn, as his mates back home had directed. He got help finding a job there, and lived in the neighborhood for a while until he said he couldn’t stand it. “Too Irish!” he griped in his stubborn brogue. “I didn’t come to the U.S. to eat Irish breakfast every day!” Where did he move? I asked him. Woodside, he replied unironically. That made me cackle: Woodside, Queens, is the second-largest Irish community in the city after Woodlawn.

And this recent Reddit inquiry: “Hello thinking about moving to Woodlawn but we are not Irish…will we have problems?” You don’t hear that much in New York these days. (The responses were uniformly, duh, no.)

Homeward bound

Finally, after nearly ten miles of walking, it was time to go home. We hiked along (which is to say down and then steeply up) 233^rd Street to the #2 train. The train runs above ground for most of the Bronx portion. The ride home felt long, with stops every few blocks, but I took in all the low and mid-rise apartment buildings full of families full of complicated lives and dreams - a concentration of every community everywhere.

And then I was home, in another neighborhood likely unfamiliar to and with Woodlawn. What a pity.

Coda

Taphopile friend: I returned to Woodlawn two and a half years later to see what I’d missed the first time. (”Years” is not a typo - I’ve been at this for a while!) As I was studying the helpful map in the cemetery’s office, a woman named Deborah7 offered to assist me. She asked about my interests, then used her yellow highlighter to map a route for me, which was more helpful than the already helpful printed guide.

Deborah highlighted on the map the grave of Madam C.J. Walker, the first African American woman millionaire, whose beauty products are still on the market and about whom plays and television series have been written and museums established (in Atlanta and Indianapolis). Walker, born in 1867 as Sarah Breedlove, was the only member of her family born into freedom. Her parents died young, and she married at 14 to escape the abusive brother-in-law who was her next guardian. I won’t recount her life story here, but her rise from humble laundress to millionaire entrepreneur is astounding.

Deborah quipped that this kind of story might be endangered in today’s political climate. Oh don’t get me started, I commiserated. Don’t get me started! she howled, rolling her eyes and grabbing my arm in solidarity.

Deborah told me she’d lost her job of 25 years when Covid hit. She then found a job at Hunt’s Point Market, “a disaster,” she said, and after two miserable years there found this one. Does she like it? Loves it, she reported. People ask her all the time what it’s like to work among the dead. She thinks it’s beautiful, and I could see she was an evangelist for her position. There’s a word for cemetery enthusiasts: taphophiles (tapho meaning tomb, philia meaning love). I don’t know if Deborah would consider herself a taphophile, maybe just a Woodlawn-o-phile. She encouraged me to wander among the cemetery’s paths and over its grassy knolls.

She also told me her hobby was creating stained glass pieces, and showed me a mirror she’d made 25 years ago. It’s cracked, but she still loves it. She showed me the craftsmanship involved in fabricating the frame. I thought it was impressive. I shared that my daughter was beginning a stained glass class that very evening, which delighted her. Then she invited me to an arts festival this weekend in her home neighborhood of City Island (also in the Bronx, as far east as you can go). I wished I weren’t going to be out of town.

When she learned it was my birthday, Deborah reached for a small box. Inside were tiny toys she distributes to children, and to adults who visit on their birthdays. I chose a teensy pink heart-shaped bead with a swirl of colors. I will think of Deborah when I look at it.

Little Flower: Armed with my annotated map and pink swirly heart, I set out. I followed her perfect instructions to several graves, arriving soon enough at Fiorello LaGuardia’s. LaGuardia, the charismatic and diminutive Mayor of New York from 1933 to 1945, had, shall we say, an outsized impact on the city.

The “Little Flower,” as he was called (in part because that’s a translation of his Italian first name, in part because of his short stature, generously estimated at 5’2”), served several terms in Congress before winning the mayoralty. As mayor through the Depression and the Second World War, LaGuardia, a reform-minded Republican, restored legal governance systems, ending the decades of scandals and patronage of his Tammany Hall predecessors and closing down gangster dens. During and after the Depression, he expanded and modernized the city’s infrastructure, using WPA and other federal subsidies to create large-scale transformative public works projects. A 1999 book on American mayors quotes a panel of 69 scholars who cite LaGuardia as the country’s best big-city mayor of all time.

LaGuardia’s grave was surprisingly modest by Woodlawn standards: a small stone in the ground and an unassuming gravestone a few feet away describing him as “Statesman” and “Humanitarian.”

But then I wandered off-course and got lost. I couldn’t coordinate the routes on Deborah’s map with Google Maps. I began to worry about the time, because I had to catch a train for an out-of-town trip. Just when my concern was edging into alarm, a fairy godmother appeared in one of those multi-row golf carts used for tour groups. I asked her to direct me to Robert Moses’s grave, and in response, she offered me a ride there. She saved me close to a half-hour!

My chauffeur thoughtfully asked me why Moses interested me, and told me the cemetery hosts an annual Robert Moses tour. She pointed out some important mausoleums en route, the Woolworths’ and artist Joseph Stella’s among them. Finally we arrived at the Van Cortlandt Community Mausoleum, fittingly, she noted, steps away from Moses’s Major Deegan Expressway.

Moses’s burial place could not be more discordant with the grandiosity and arrogance of his career. Slipped in among hundreds of red marble slots in the modest mausoleum is an unadorned stone that says, simply, “Robert Moses 1888-1981 / Mary A. Moses 1916-1993.” I had to scan dozens of slots - I think they are called niches - to locate it, and if the driver hadn’t directed me to the specific bay, I don’t think I would have found it. It’s a truism that Moses’s legacy is everywhere in New York, and I assume that is how he wished to be remembered, not by resources wasted on glorifying his final resting place.

May the rumble of traffic on the Deegan periodically unsettle his soul.

Music for today

• Happy birthday!

• Duke Ellington, Sophisticated Lady

• The Woodlawn Conservancy commissioned jazz saxophonist and clarinetist Victor Goines to compose a piece of music to honor the cemetery and its inhabitants. Goines’s 13-movement The Woodlawn Suite is a beautiful hymn to those the cemetery holds in eternity. Goines was the head of the jazz program at Juilliard, a member of Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and President of Jazz St. Louis.

Here’s an excerpt, called Raise a Glass to Dorothy.

• Woodlawn has spawned a number of Irish bands. Check out Shilelagh Law, the McLean Avenue Band (from north of the border, technically) and Black47. But it’s the Narrowbacks who’ve won my heart: five local guys with pride of place and a fun musical sensibility. I love Streets of Woodlawn for its local streetscapes (especially the St. Patty’s Day scenes) as much as its catchy folk-punk sound.

Notes

• In which I kick this thing off! And in which I travel toward Parkchester with a little girl and her father

• In which I marvel at the neighborhood that bears the name of its famous housing complex; in which I explain my personal connection to the area; in which I recount a bit of its history, its charm, its current state and its shame

• In which I visit the local library branch, swept in by some local kids with magical powers

• In which I walk along Bangla Bazaar, making my way to Castle Hill, where I feast on a Bangladeshi lunch

• In which, I notice that Saturday is laundry day; in which I visit a Bangladeshi market; and in which I peer at P.S. 36 but can’t see its Tiffany chandelier

• Music for today

My first visit!

The way I began this project was overwhelming in its simplicity. After months of thinking and talking about traveling in my own city, I had only to follow three steps: select a neighborhood, read a bit about it, and board the subway. One, two, three. Really! You too can do this, and if you read these pieces, you may even get away with skipping the second step!

I chose the Parkchester neighborhood in the Bronx because I had a dim acquaintance with it from many years ago and had been eager to visit again. I remembered its whimsical post-Depression-era design, and its diverse residents living around expansive common space. It seemed like the perfect place to start: a little familiar, a little foreign, with the potential for a lot of fun. And so, on a crisp Saturday, I set out with a friend and a water bottle.

The #6 train runs underground until the approach of the Whitlock Avenue stop. When you emerge from the tunnel, the light is blinding but welcome. A little girl across from us jumped up on the seat in great excitement. “Papi!” she screamed to her father, in delighted Spanglish. “Mira las houses!” I knew just how she felt. I shared her thrill at being above ground, seeing the low-and mid-rise apartment buildings and local shops reflecting the midday sun. I smiled broadly in solidarity.

Opened in 1920, the Parkchester station was originally called Parkchester-East 177th Street. Some of the columns in the station still refer to East 177th Street, although the MTA long ago dropped it from the station name. (The streets in the area aren’t numbered, but in the scheme of things, 177th Street would more or less fit if they were.) The façade of the station itself is adorned with colorful geometric tiles. Inside, a pair of brilliant stained glass images, called A Day in Parkchester, brighten the stairwell. Installed in 2011, they are the work of William Low, an artist who grew up two stops away on the #6 line.

Parkchester the Complex, Parkchester the Neighborhood

Exiting the train at the Parkchester station, it didn’t take long to orient ourselves. I remembered the neighborhood from a take-out food business I had helped open more than 20 years ago under the auspices of the community development organization where I was working. We had opened the shop right on Metropolitan Avenue, the main commercial street, selling coffee, baked goods and prepared foods. We had misjudged the market: too few customers wanted our plump blueberry muffins on their way to work, nor our gooey lasagna on their way home. After a year or so, we cut our losses and closed.

Though I had not primarily been working on-site, my numerous visits introduced me to the planned community of Parkchester (from which the neighborhood takes its name): a sprawling city-within-a-city of over 129 acres, featuring 171 red brick buildings, seven to thirteen stories high, containing more than 12,000 apartments. The complex won my heart above all for the colorful terra cotta figurines and plaques – more than 1,100 of them, representing workers, families, Greek nymphs, accordionists (my favorites), fauna, and more. The small sculptures adorn entryways, perch on quoining, and decorate the complex’s mid-block brick walls. Some were created by prominent sculptors. They are utterly charming.

The self-sufficient residential community has its own downtown, with restaurants and ample shopping, including the very first Macy’s branch store in the nation. (It’s still quietly humming, from the look of it, and, until 2014, it was the only Macy’s in the Bronx.)1 Three-quarters of the development is dedicated to open park-like space, with large green spaces between buildings.

Parkchester’s borders compose a neat square. On the north is East Tremont Avenue, on the east, Castle Hill Avenue, to the south, Westchester Avenue, and White Plains Road marks its western boundary. Metropolitan Oval, the park at the center of the complex, features playful Moderne gargoyles spitting water in the central fountain - seasonally, that is, not on this chilly March day.

Parkchester was built between 1939 and 1942 by Metropolitan Life, in an early version of tax-advantaged insurance investments in middle-income housing. It was constructed on land formerly owned by the Archdiocese of New York, which operated an orphanage there called New York Catholic Protectory. “Parkchester” is a portmanteau of the names of two existing neighborhoods: Park Versailles (a piece of land owned by the Mapes family, so named to class it up for sale), and Westchester Heights (present-day Morris Park and Pelham Parkway).

The complex was massive in scale then and now; when it opened, it was the most valuable property in New York City after Rockefeller Center. The first tenants brought the largest delivery of refrigerators in history!

The rental apartments welcomed New Yorkers hungry for space and convenience, but only some New Yorkers: the developers included a covenant excluding people of color. That would not change until 1968, when the New York City Commission on Human Rights forced the developer to integrate.2

In the mid-70s, Met Life sold the complex to real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley, who converted about a quarter of the units to condos. A nonprofit purchased Helmsley’s remaining portion when he died; it restored them and sold them to a private developer, who owns them today.

The authors of the original racist covenant would be shocked by today’s Parkchester residents, who are roughly equally distributed among Black, Latino and Asian families, with a small (approximately 3%) number of white tenants.3

We walked through the complex, zigging into side streets, zagging around commercial blocks and resting in the Oval in front of the dormant but nonetheless charming fountains. Some of the terra cotta figures are showing their age, and local residents have been alarmed to observe maintenance workers literally removing some of them without explaining whether or how they’ll return them.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lived in Parkchester until she was five years old. Ocasio-Cortez now represents the community in Congress, which is meaningful for her personally and I suppose useful electorally.

Here are some images of the terra cotta figures. Spotting them on the buildings is a delightful game, and a couple of local people stopped me to appreciate my appreciation.

St. Raymond’s

The northeast corner of the Parkchester complex is dominated by St. Raymond’s Roman Catholic Church. St. Raymond’s Parish was established in 1842, when the area was still part of Westchester County. The church dates from 1898, replacing an overcrowded earlier incarnation at the same site. It’s a colossal, beautiful campus, composed of the church, a rectory, a K-8 school, an inviting green, and probably a few other buildings I didn’t see. Its congregation boomed when the Parkchester apartments opened.

The parish is named for St. Raymond, a 13th century Catalonian priest whose mother died in childbirth after giving birth by cesarian section. His Latin name, Raymond Nonnatus, means “not-born.” Talk about intergenerational trauma! Raymond was sanctified after devoting his life to freeing Christian slaves in Spain and North Africa, ultimately offering himself as a hostage in exchange. He was attacked and killed at age 36 en route to visiting the Pope.

In 1865, St. Raymond’s Parish opened the Catholic Protectory orphanage next to the church - on the land it ultimately sold in 1938 to Met Life for the establishment of the Parkchester Complex.

The church today conducts mass in English, Spanish and ASL.

New Neighbors

One group of tenants Met Life probably didn’t anticipate is the large number of Bangladeshi immigrants in Parkchester. While this isn’t the largest concentration of Bangladeshis in New York, it’s a significant one. Many are recent arrivals who tend, citywide, to be poorer, less educated and more limited in their English language skills than other immigrants (including other South Asian immigrants).4 Businesses catering to Bangladeshis – markets, restaurants, traditional clothing shops – are easy to find in the area, and signs in Bengali are posted on telephone poles and walls. Starling Avenue’s official secondary street name is Bangla Bazaar, and a small bazaar is in fact situated there, with food, a tutoring service and sari shops. Parkchester is home to more than a dozen halal restaurants and several mosques.

At 2700 East Tremont Avenue, the Bangladesh Academy of Fine Arts, founded by and with a special focus on women, offers cultural programming, including Bengali language instruction.

Dino-Library

The entrance to the Parkchester branch of the public library is through a brick archway with sun-spoke-themed ironwork. You pass through a recessed courtyard that features playful dinosaurs, certainly smaller than life sized, but impressively tall. The designers of the library entrance won the annual New York City Art Commission Award in 1984, just prior to the official opening of the branch.

When we arrived, two small boys were flinging paper airplanes at each other. One offered to open the door for us, beaming with pride that he was able to do so remotely - perhaps, he thought, futuristically - by pressing the auto-open button designed for mobility-impaired visitors. He grinned: presto magic! He also said, “You’re welcome.”

The library itself is light and airy. Its computers and reading tables were full; teens read casually on their phones and worked on homework in the space reserved for them, and children raced around the upstairs in their own section, with many of their mothers in varying types of Muslim face covering. The foreign language section of the library occupies the entire back wall of the adult collection, and includes books in Bengali, Chinese, and Spanish. Of the three, I can only read Spanish, and I noticed that virtually all of the books were translations of books written in English. That seemed unjust for a language with a rich literature of its own.

Biryani on a Pedestal

We returned to the complex and made our way southeast, crossing Starling Avenue/Bangla Bazaar. Eventually we arrived at the Castle Hill stop on the #6 line, the next stop east after Parkchester. (The line between Parkchester and Castle Hill is fuzzy, but I think we can comfortably call this Parkchester.) There we sought out a Bangladeshi restaurant recommended by several websites, called, after several iterations, Spice Up, which I took as a command to its chef and customers.

An eager staff welcomed us. I ogled the wallpaper, which portrayed scenes from Bangladesh: women in a village milling grain, men carrying bound stacks of hay on their heads, roosters prancing, and handsome boats sailing the river in the background.

As we were deciding which of the appealing dishes in the display case to order, a man came around to the front to show us a three-foot-high cauldron of freshly-prepared goat biryani, with gorgeous turmeric-stained hard-boiled eggs. “Just made,” he proclaimed. We nodded enthusiastically, adding to our order some juicy-looking chicken tikka and a pastry, which, unlike the deep-fried samosas next to it, was baked with an egg yolk wash. I didn’t understand the name, but its triangular flaky crust and the rich flavors of the spiced ground chicken within – were delicious. The biryani’s raisin-spice chicken combo was tender and flavorful. We were delighted. You will be too if you head over: Spice Up is at 2160 Westchester Avenue.

Detour: Castle Hill

I asked the owner of Spice Up to recommend a Bangladeshi market in the area. He directed us to the store’s own market, a few blocks down Castle Hill Avenue. We headed that way, learning that “a few blocks” meant a half a mile or so, across the Cross Bronx and Bruckner Expressways. I hadn’t counted on visiting Castle Hill, a different neighborhood; I didn’t realize how organically Parkchester and Castle Hill ran together. I didn’t dive deep, but I got a look around.

On Castle Hill Avenue, we saw more Bangladeshi residents - women and some men in traditional dress - but also Dominicans and West Indians. A Guyanese restaurant menu displaying vivid photographs of Caribbean food made us wonder whether we were crazy not to consider a second lunch. (We resisted, but stay tuned for my proper visit to Castle Hill; spoiler: this is where I ate lunch.)

Everyone, it seemed, was doing laundry today. The local laundromats were full of bored children and burdened moms folding clothes, and the sidewalks were dotted with women (yep, only women) pushing shopping carts full of clothing and detergent.

P.S. 36, “the Unionport School,” lies on the east side of the avenue. An elementary school built about 100 years ago, it boasts Tiffany chandeliers in the auditorium and stained glass windows. (The school didn’t open its doors to us on this Saturday – thanks to Inside Schools for this detail.)

The compact market was underwhelming, but I enjoyed the walk to and around it. The side streets were lined with one- and two-family detached houses, all neat and quiet. Not much pedestrian traffic, and it was too cold to expect people to sit out on their otherwise inviting front porches.

Castle Hill’s most famous daughter is diva Jennifer Lopez. Perhaps I was treading on her very own Block? The neighborhood has also cultivated the likes of actress Kerry Washington, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and former New York Mets first baseman Ed Kranepool, whom I worshiped as a kid and who must have had a hard time explaining to his Bronx neighbors why he played across the river in Queens for his entire career. Here’s hoping P.S. 36 will birth more such contributors.

I’ll return to Castle Hill for a proper visit, but I was grateful for the bonus peek today. Parkchester was as fanciful as I remembered, an appealing residential community that was even more diverse than I’d expected. I will return again and again.

Parting Thoughts

Today was my first proper neighborhood visit, so I’ve been reflecting on what I enjoyed and how I might improve the experience for my next visit. I loved the sense of wandering with parameters: I had virtually unlimited time to explore, but I had a plan (except for the surprise time in Castle Hill) that propelled me forward. Parkchester’s fanciful figures were as magical as I’d remembered, and the planned community’s design was as appealing as ever. The growth of the Bangladeshi community was an unanticipated pleasure.

One lesson from today is that I’ll need to determine whether to visit adjacent areas for their cultural affinity even if they’re not my target neighborhood. Neighborhood boundaries are porous and don’t conform to Google Maps borders! Finally, and perhaps most challengingly, I learned that connecting with local residents is not going to be easy. I’ll need to take deep breaths and power up my most extroverted persona to connect.

I’m out of my mind with excitement.

Music for today

Parkchester

Here’s a montage from a performance from Parkchester’s Bangladesh Academy of Fine Arts.

Castle Hill

Hometown girl: Jenny from the Block

Notes