Early Years – The Bronx We Knew

Westervelt Avenue Homes

The street was named for Jacob Westervelt, a mayor of New York City during the 1800s. His name reflects the enduring Dutch heritage in the city once known as New Amsterdam. Photo by A.F. DiSalvo, ca.1944.

A row of two-story attached houses, built of brick around 1930, lined the western side of the 2500 block of Westervelt Avenue. The row began at the corner of Mace Avenue but stopped six to eight house lots short of the corner of Allerton Avenue.

Although these row houses were not Craftsman homes in the strict sense of the word, certain features suggest that the builders had been influenced by Gustav Stickley and his American Craftsman style. Stickley, a furniture designer and homebuilder, observed the style of the Arts and Crafts movement popular in England during the late 1800s. His design aesthetic was an outgrowth of that movement.

The American Craftsman style enjoyed peak popularity from about the 1890s through the 1920s, setting trends in homebuilding and decorating. With an emphasis on simplicity, Craftsman homes offered a welcome change from the ornate Victorian era of the recent past. Placing great value on quality craftsmanship in both the exterior and interior details of a house, Craftsman builders chose natural building materials, including brick, tile, wood, iron, copper, and bronze. Characteristic details included stained woodwork, plaster walls, built-ins, and handcrafted metalwork.

Craftsman Details in the Westervelt Homes

The front doors were built from hardwood and varied in design. Ours was varnished to a burnt sienna shade, and featured a small, two-over-two, off-centered window. A knocker of forged iron, with strap hinges, mortise lockset, and mail slot crafted from brass, complemented the warmth of the wood they rested against. The interior side of the door was finished in a dark brown varnish that matched the woodwork in the rest of the house. The doorknob on this side was of faceted glass, larger and heavier than the more delicate glass doorknobs on the interior doors.

The foyer with its coat closet could be closed off by the French door that opened to the living room. With a brick surround and wooden mantel, the fireplace on the south wall served as the focal point of the living room. The staircase to the second floor dominated the opposite wall with its square-capped newel post with recessed panels set on a plinth base. Squared-off balusters complemented the newel post. On the living room’s west wall, a double-wide doorway opened to the dining room.

The walls were made of plaster, but in the living room, dining room, stairwell, and upstairs hallway the plaster was heavily textured, reminiscent of an impasto painting, and finished in a golden-amber varnish.

All the windows were the double-hung type, with six divided panes of glass in the upper sash over a single pane below. In the dining room, two side-by-side windows allowed afternoon sunlight to pour in while the living room’s three side-by-side windows flooded the rooms with morning light.

A common woodwork style unified the rooms: The wide trim on doorways and windows, the crown and baseboard moldings, the mantel, and the staircase components were stained with a dark finish in the foyer, living room, dining room, and upstairs hallway. In the kitchen and bedrooms, the woodwork was painted white. The recessed-panel, solid wood doors to the bedrooms and closets—also finished in a dark stain—all had faceted glass doorknobs.

The hardwood floors throughout the house were honey-colored, their pale expanse offset by a thin band of dark wood that ran along the perimeters of the rooms. Quarter-round molding along the baseboards anchored the flooring and made the rooms look complete.

The small kitchen off the dining room featured the latest in linoleum flooring. A wainscot of white subway tiles edged with black bullnose trim ran along the walls. The breakfast nook included two benches built to fit on either side of a table, and built-in shelving and drawers on one wall.

Three bedrooms and a bath comprised the second floor, with the bathroom and master bedroom at the back, or west side, of the house and the other two bedrooms at the front. In the bathroom, the wall treatment matched the kitchen’s with its wainscot of white subway tiles with black bullnose trim. White, one-inch hexagonal tiles, grouted in black, covered the floor. The small window featured a starburst-textured design on its lower sash for privacy. The wide pedestal sink, crafted from porcelain, had chrome faucets with porcelain handles. Above it, a porcelain soap dish and toothbrush holder were tiled into the wall. The cast-iron bathtub spanned the far wall under the window. Its chrome and porcelain fixtures matched those of the sink, but sized for a tub. A porcelain soap dish with washcloth bar was recessed into the tile under the window. A separate shower stall stood just to the right of the doorway.

The smallest bedroom with its unique feature—a cedar-paneled clothes closet—was situated directly opposite the bathroom at the end of the hallway. The master bedroom and another large bedroom flanked the hallway linen closet. In those bedrooms the clothes closets had been built side to side, creating a noise buffer between the two rooms. The closet in the large front bedroom had a unique feature too—a steel ladder to a trapdoor, providing access to the roof.

The steam heating systems in these homes were originally powered by coal, but eventually individual homeowners converted their furnaces to gas or oil. Radiators, a necessary fixture in every room, were typically covered with store-bought or custom-built cabinets.

References:

Crochet, Treena. 2005. Bungalow Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Arts and Crafts Home. Newtown, CT: The Taunton Press, Inc.

McNamara, John. 1991. History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names, 3rd edition. Bronx, NY: The Bronx County Historical Society.

Freedomland U.S.A.

Before there was a Co-Op City, there was an amusement park, Freedomland U.S.A. Before Freedomland—more than 300 years before—there was Vreedelandt, or Land of Freedom, so named by the Dutch West India Company, which purchased the land from the Siwanoy people in 1639.

Once the early settlers cleared parcels of the wilderness to reveal level ground and rich soil, they began to establish farms. Generation after generation, family farms were continued and others were created, and the area became known for its farming.

The upper end of the Co-Op City apartment complex stands where Nathan Johnston grew cucumbers and built a pickle factory in the 1800s. Toward the end of that century Nathan’s son William inherited the farm, and soon after a blight killed off the cucumbers. William turned to strawberry farming. He did well until 1918, when the quality of his strawberries began to deteriorate. An attack of worms in 1929 finished off the crop, ending William’s farming career.

William then sold the property to an aircraft company, which proposed building an airport. When that plan was scrapped, the next proposal was for a racetrack. That plan failed, too.

In the late 1950s, near the place where the Hutchinson River emptied into Eastchester Bay, William Zeckendorf filled in about 200 acres of wetlands on the west side of the river. Taking in the former Johnston farmland as well, Zeckendorf built an education amusement park, fully expecting it to compete with Disneyland. Freedomland U.S. A. opened on June 19, 1960.

Laid out in the shape of the United States, the park featured live scenes from American history. Beginning with a stroll through the streets of old New York, complete with horses and buggies and people in period costumes, patrons walked through different regions of the simulated country. They watched reenactments of events such as the Great Chicago Fire and gunfights in the Old Southwest, and visited San Francisco in 1906, the year of the earthquake.

To think that an amusement park in the Northeast could compete with Disneyland in California is to ignore the climate factor; unlike Disneyland, Freedomland could only be open for five months of the year.

Another downside was the number of visitors to the park during its first year; it fell far below the five million its promoters had projected. Suspecting that the educational/historical theme did not appeal to the masses, they ramped up the entertainment aspect with features like roller coasters and pop-star concerts. Things did not improve. And then the World’s Fair in nearby Queens opened in April of 1964, delivering the fatal blow to Freedomland U.S.A. It closed for good on September 15, 1964.

Because I was very young, I only vaguely remember my one and only visit to Freedomland. I remember the Old Southwest and the show girl in the flouncy red dress who pushed open the saloon doors and danced out, singing. I remember the startling (and loud) gunfight that followed. But what I remember most clearly about Freedomland are the fireworks that I watched from my bedroom window. I can’t remember if they were a nightly event or held only on weekends, but I had an unobstructed view of the display that spangled the northeastern sky with light and color.

In just a few years, that part of the sky would lose forever its wide-open aspect. It would be partly obscured by the buildings of Co-Op City.

My eighth-grade classroom windows overlooked the rising structures of Co-Op City. Our teacher, Sister Mary Ellen, would often gaze out at them and repeat a dire warning: “Those apartment buildings are standing on marshland. They won’t last 20 years. You’ll see.”

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.

The back of the homes on Mickle Avenue, the driveways, backyards, and the access road. And my brother Arthur shoveling the driveway in the early 1960s.

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.