A Neighborhood Forms

Jonas Bronck lived in the northern hinterlands of the Dutch territory of New Netherlands for only four short years, but in that time he made enough of an impact that his name became permanently attached to the region.

Jonas, a Scandinavian sea captain, was the first non-native to settle and farm part of this vast expanse of wilderness. Arriving in 1639, Jonas cleared land and built a farmstead consisting of a main house for his family, housing for his indentured servants, a tobacco plantation, and a barn to store the abundant crop. He died in 1643.

In school we were told that “The” became part of our borough’s name because the area had been widely known as “the territory of the Broncks’ homestead.” More officially it was called Broncksland or Broncks Land until 1697, with the first recorded usage of the spelling Bronx.

Long before the Dutch purchased the land from the Siwanoy people, the area east of the Bronx River and the Bronck homestead had been known for its rich, fertile soil. A number of farms prospered in the area, but the rest of the land remained undeveloped.

In 1912 the New York, Westchester & Boston Railroad (NYW&B, or “the Westchester”) began operation, giving residents of Manhattan and the south Bronx a new way to commute to their jobs in Westchester County. Speeding northward on its approach to the Westchester County border, the train gave commuters glimpses of a sparsely populated, rural landscape. The “rustic charm of the northeast Bronx”—as the real estate developers called it—appealed to those ready to move from the crowded streets further south.

The late 1920s brought streetlights to Eastchester Road, a major thoroughfare. As yet there were no paved streets or sidewalks, but there were enough houses in 1925 that residents joined together to form the Eastchester Home Owners Association. One of their first objectives was to get sewer lines installed. The population increased still more when the Eastchester Road bus began running in 1927. Another surge followed in 1933 with the Gun Hill Road bus route that connected Manhattan commuters with the Eighth Avenue subway station.

In the area bordered by Pelham Parkway to the south, Gun Hill Road to the north and east, and Eastchester Road to the west, the 2500 block of Westervelt Avenue marked the eastern limit of the borough’s full blocks in the 1930s and early 1940s.  A row of 30 two-story, red-brick attached houses, built around 1930 and selling for about $4,000 each, lined the western side of the street. From the sidewalk, the approach to each home was via a walkway that ran alongside a small front lawn enclosed by a privet hedge. The walkway led to a stoop consisting of five steps and a landing just big enough to hold the milkbox and perhaps a small lawn chair.

The front door opened to a foyer with a coat closet. Passing through a French door brought you into the living room with its fireplace, staircase to the second floor, and a double-wide doorway to the dining room. The homes featured living room and dining room walls of a mellow, amber-varnished stucco, and except for the kitchen floor (which was linoleum) and the bathroom floor (which was tile), hardwood floors throughout. A small kitchen off the dining room completed the first floor. Styled in the latest design of the 1930s, it featured a double porcelain sink in a Youngstown metal cabinet; a four-burner gas stove with oven and broiler; white, subway-tiled walls; and a breakfast nook with built-in shelves and a window overlooking the backyard, the driveway, the alley, and the back of the row homes on Mickle Avenue.

Three bedrooms and a bath comprised the second floor. The bathroom featured white subway tiles on the lower half of the walls, a floor of one-inch hexagonal tiles, a wide pedestal sink, a cast iron bathtub, and a separate shower stall. Inside the closet of the large front bedroom a steel ladder led to the trapdoor to the roof, a fire escape as well as a portal to
“tar beach.”

The walk-out basement opened to a fenced-in backyard.  Almost every backyard had a clothesline of some sort. A driveway adjacent to the backyard connected the back alley to the garage.

Newcomers to the neighborhood maneuvered their cars along dirt roads that could be dusty or muddy depending on the season. They swerved around the cows from nearby dairy farms that drank from the creek on Allerton Avenue, the first cross street to the north, which was little more than a clearing in the woods. 

Mace Avenue, the first cross street to the south, ended at Kingsland Avenue, a half-developed block of two or three houses east of Westervelt and south of Mace. Behind Westervelt (to the west) was Mickle Avenue with a similar row of attached brick homes, then Woodhull Avenue, followed by Eastchester Road, the shopping district. 

From our upstairs bedroom windows, we looked eastward over farmland and marshland that sloped downward to Gun Hill Road at the bottom. In the distance we could see the city dump, a vast expanse of marshlands, the towers of the New Haven Railroad trestle, the Hutchinson River Parkway, and the Hutchinson River. Not quite visible was Eastchester Bay and the Long Island Sound just beyond. 

A walk to the south end of Gun Hill Road, to the paths that ran under the Hutchinson River Parkway, led to Eastchester Bay and its creeks and inlets. For $2 a day you could rent a rowboat from Stark’s Dock. Those who attached their own outboard motors and had a couple of hours to spare could easily cruise to Orchard Beach or to City Island, or spend the day picking blue claw crabs off the pilings of the City Island docks.

Despite expectations that the NYW&B would turn the northeast Bronx into a bustling metropolis, the line declared bankruptcy during the Great Depression.  Around 1940 the City of New York purchased the tracks that ran north of the E. 180th Street Station to the city limits at Dyre Avenue and joined those stations to the Lexington Avenue subway line.  Until 1957, a two-car train shuttled passengers between Dyre Avenue and E. 180th Street, stopping at Baychester Avenue, Gun Hill Road, Pelham Parkway, and Morris Park Avenue along the way. At E. 180th Street, riders transferred to the main line into Manhattan. The little train had a covered platform at each end through which passengers entered and exited. Local residents called it the “Dinky” after the Toonerville Trolley, a dilapidated feature of a favorite comic strip of the day called Toonerville Folks. Even as late as the 1980s—more than 20 years after it became a 10-car direct line into Manhattan as the Number 5 Lexington Avenue Express—long-time residents still referred to it as the Dinky.

                During the 1930s, truck and dairy farms, cows and chickens were common sights. Tom and Louie Forte cultivated several truck farms, one of which covered about an acre of land directly opposite our house.  (One of the original residents recalls youthful behavior: “We carried salt shakers with us during the summer so we could pick Tommy’s tomatoes and eat them on the run.”) Others overspread the area south of Mace Avenue to Waring Avenue, the next cross street. The Fortes grew enough produce to stock their vegetable store on Eastchester Road until home construction expanded in the 1940s, obliterating all but a few family farms.

                Over the course of the 1940s, homes were built on the eastern side of Westervelt Avenue, the road was macadamized, streetlights installed, and more homebuyers came to this region of eastward expansion.  Further east, more streets were paved and houses were built all the way to Gun Hill Road, which, by its southeast to northwest trajectory, formed the northern and eastern boundaries of the newly established neighborhood.  The southeast end of Gun Hill Road ran parallel to the New England Thruway (I-95), which was under construction in the late 1950s. Terminating at the Hutchinson River Parkway, it developed rapidly with gas stations, ice cream shops, and other off-the-highway conveniences.

                Now the panorama from our bedroom windows was constrained. All that was left of our farm and marshland view were the towers of the New Haven Railroad trestle and the drawbridge of the Hutchinson River Parkway, visible through the narrow spaces between the houses. But just behind the drawbridge, the rising sun, whose beams pierced our window shades each morning, still gilded the unseen meadows, creeks, and salt marshes all the way to the edge of the continent.

© Barbara Cole 2020. All Rights Reserved.