The Bronx We Knew

Holy Rosary Church

In February of 1925, when Father James Winters showed up in this far corner of New York City to establish a parish, he became a pastor without a church. In words attributed to him, he arrived “with a valise and no place to hang my hat.” But a local family gave him a place to hang his hat—and to unpack that valise—when they offered him a spare room.

For four months, “church” was the basement of another local home, until a prefabricated wooden structure could be hammered into place on Eastchester Road near its intersection with Gun Hill Road. By the end of that summer a Tudor-style rectory had been erected beside the church, providing a home for Father Winters and other priests who would be assigned to the growing parish.

The church, known colloquially as the “temporary church,” might not have been considered an awe-inspiring edifice from the outside—or by outsiders. A quaint country church, it fit the bucolic character of its surroundings: The area had no streetlights or sidewalks, the unpaved roads were either dusty or muddy depending on the weather, and cows from nearby dairy farms wandered at will.

But stepping inside the church brought an awareness of candlelight, the warmth of polished wood offset by white plaster walls, the musky scent of incense, and the flickering of the sanctuary flame beside the tabernacle. Overhead, a timber roof truss filled the vaulted ceiling with its geometric pattern of beams. Four confessional boxes, two on each of the side walls, were of dark sturdy wood, like the pews. Instead of doors, red velvet curtains draped the three-compartment booths. The kneelers in the pews were covered in red as well. Red votives filled the candlestands on either side of the confessionals, casting a red-hued glow. Life-size statues of saints hovered in shadowy corners. Some stood beside the confessionals, while the traditional statues of the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph resided in side-altar alcoves flanking the main altar. An enormous crucifix towered over the communion rail near St. Joseph’s altar.

Firmly planted in the minds of the early parishioners was the notion that this temporary structure met the immediate needs of the brand-new parish, but would be replaced in due course. By 1931 the parish had grown considerably, yet building a permanent church was still a dream out of reach. Fundraisers such as dinner-dances and bazaars could do only so much to reduce the debts incurred by building a church, a rectory, and a small school. Extending the church to accommodate thirty more pews was all the parish could afford.

Then the Depression took hold and the financial burden grew, lasting through the 1940s into the early 1950s. More pressing than a new church was the need for a new school, and that became the next project on the list. The temporary church soldiered on to the next decade.

On the evening of March 2, 1965—the day before Ash Wednesday—fire trucks with sirens screaming startled a couple of fifth graders leaving Vinnie’s candy store on Eastchester Road, several blocks south of the church. The trucks raced north toward Gun Hill Road; after a frenetic minute or two the din subsided. With vague wonderings about what, exactly, could be on fire, the kids made their way home to dinner and homework.

By morning the shocking news had spread: Those fire trucks had been racing to Holy Rosary Church. Flames had destroyed part of one confessional, but damage was minimal. After cordoning-off the space, fire officials approved the 40-year-old building for continued use. Many speculated that a votive from the candlestand had ignited the curtain of the confessional booth, but how that happened—or if indeed that happened—remained a mystery. As far as we knew, the cause of the fire was undetermined.

In October of that year, with long-standing debts paid off, the parish council launched the New Church Building Fund Campaign. Committee members paid evening visits to every home in the parish, hoping to secure enough pledges to get the latest building project started.

Late in the afternoon of February 25, 1966—two days after Ash Wednesday—a couple of sixth graders were working the pistachio nut machine outside Vinnie’s candy store. As a torrent of red-shelled nuts poured out, again they were startled by the screams of fire trucks racing north on Eastchester Road. It reminded them of a similar occurrence, one year ago almost to the day. Momentarily disturbed by the memory, they reflected on these uncharacteristic dramas on Eastchester Road, where nothing ever happened.

The next day, a stunned community learned the location of the fire—Holy Rosary Church. To the sorrow of the parish, the devastation was complete. Again, the public was told the cause was undetermined.

The shell and steeple remained, but the interior had been gutted. Black singe marks sullied the white exterior around the blackened windows that stared like horrified eyes. The eventual boarding up of the windows was akin to the closing of those eyes, but for many months the church remained standing, as lifeless as a corpse.

The auditorium of the new school building had long been used for extra Sunday services to alleviate the overcrowding in the church; now the auditorium, along with the large cafeteria one floor below, served as church space. Holy Rosary School had now become Holy Rosary Church as well.

About a year later, construction began on the new church. The steel frame went up. And then construction stopped. For months nothing happened. The view of the steel structure from our seventh-grade windows never changed. By March of 1968 things started picking up again. Our eighth-grade teacher, Sister Dorothy, remarked that the church would likely be completed by the end of that summer. It was not to be. More delays beset the project.

Once the steel framework was in place, it became clear that this building would bear no resemblance to the impressive structure, with its tall steeple and bell tower rising over the entryway, depicted on the Building Campaign poster. Those who belonged to the parish’s inner circle might have known or been consulted about the change in plans. Others speculated that the new construction timeline, truncated by the second fire, caused a financing problem that forced the project to be scaled back.

Finally, in September of 1969, Monsignor Brady, our pastor, opened the doors of the new church and invited us to have a look around. To say that the congregants were taken aback is one way to describe the reaction to this church that was so different from what we had been accustomed to.

“Cold” was a word that frequently came up. And, “It echoes like a cafeteria in here.”

The interior walls were of brick, like the outside walls. The floor-to-ceiling Resurrection mural behind the altar was of cast aluminum, shiny and metallic, as were the altar itself, the panels of the Stations of the Cross, the tabernacle table, and other wall panels. The layout conformed to changes that resulted from Vatican Two, with a central location for the altar and the placement of the tabernacle something for individual parishes to work out. No altar rail separated the sanctuary from the pews, no lifelike statues filled the empty corners. (“Where are the statues?” “What do you mean, there aren’t going to be any statues?”) No curtains shielded the confessionals; instead, sturdy doors enclosed each booth. In every aspect, it conformed to what was then known as a modern church.

In time, disappointed parishioners adjusted to the new atmosphere, eventually developing true affection for the place. After all, our little pocket of New York City had long ago evolved from rural to citified. Now, so had our church.

Reference:

Crehan, Rev. Peter M. “Recollections,” in Holy Rosary Parish, Bronx, New York. South Hackensack, N.J.: Custombook, Inc., Ecclesiastical Color Publishers, 1970.

Holy Rosary School Part 4

The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary trace their roots back to their founding in Ireland in the late 1700s by a woman whose name every Holy Rosary School student would come to know: Nano Nagle. In the late 1800s a subset of the congregation arrived in New York City to teach the children of Irish immigrants. Establishing a motherhouse upstate in Newburgh, New York, they expanded their presence in the boroughs and beyond.

Many of the young women who joined the Order were natives of the upstate cities and towns. We students could detect their regional accents and when we spoke, they heard “accents” as well. It was not unusual for one of us to become the target of an impromptu speech drill, such as when someone said “trow” instead of “throw,” or “tree” instead of “three,” or when a careless reader said “wuz” (as in, “The Declaration of Independence wuz signed on…”) instead of “waaaas.”

We quickly picked up on their many sayings and quotes, regional or otherwise. They ranged from the classic (Honesty is the best policy); to the visually appealing (I don’t care if every other class is standing on their heads whistling Dixie, you will be on your best behavior at the assembly and You’re slower than molasses flowing downhill in January); to the demeaning (Do you even have a brain cell working? and You’re nothing but a willy-nilly wishbone fishbone jellyfish).

The Order’s association with Holy Rosary began in 1925. In February of that year, Father James Winters had been assigned to this remote region of the northeast Bronx to minister to the growing Catholic population here. By April, a group of neighborhood women had organized a Sunday school program, and that September two Presentation Sisters joined them, traveling over every Sunday from Our Lady of Solace in the Morris Park section.

Expansion of the transit lines around this time brought about a spike in housing construction and an influx of families of Irish, German, and Italian descent. These families, many of them Catholic, wanted more than just a Sunday-school faith experience for their children. With the church and rectory completed over the summer of 1925, the building of a school became the next urgent project.

But it would be more than a year before the Archdiocese of New York granted permission. In January of 1927 work began on a prefabricated structure situated behind the hastily built, “temporary,” prefabricated church. Holy Rosary School opened on September 12, 1927, with four classrooms—kindergarten, first, second, and third grades—and four Presentation Sisters.

As the neighborhood continued to grow, so did the school. Classrooms were added, and in September of 1930 more Presentation Sisters arrived. Holy Rosary School was now complete with eight grades. At its first graduation ceremony on June 27, 1932, the Archdiocese awarded diplomas to 33 eighth-grade students.

Transportation lines continued to expand into the northeast Bronx and the population continued to surge. Holy Rosary had just graduated its first class, yet already the school was inadequate. Besides the lack of space, wear and tear took its toll on a building with a limited life expectancy. Expansion was out of the question—much less construction of a whole new building—for the parish still had debts and these were the years of the Great Depression.

And so the decade of the 1930s passed, as well as the war and post-war years of the 1940s and early 1950s. The old school held up until debts were at last paid off and permission granted, in 1954, to construct a new building across Eastchester Road at its intersection with Arnow Avenue. Soon an impressive structure of orange brick began to rise above the neighborhood.

In the spring of 1956, the eighth graders picked up their desks and carried them across the street to the new building, moving themselves in and becoming the first class to graduate from the new school. The new Holy Rosary School was dedicated that June with the blessing of Cardinal Francis Spellman.

The main structure of this formidable building stood five stories high and as long as the length of two classrooms, with stairwells at either end. Sixteen classrooms and a kindergarten room, along with administration offices, comprised three stories, with the top two floors set aside for the Sisters’ living quarters. A gymnasium-auditorium with a full cafeteria one level below it comprised the wing of the building. The cafeteria level continued along the length of the main structure, a low-ceiling maze of small offices, storage areas, janitor’s rooms, boiler room, and maintenance areas. Off the cafeteria, just below the gym and accessible to it by a back staircase, an extensive locker room complete with a long bank of showers remained locked away. We students of the 1960s never used these spotless facilities for our simple gym classes; they were reserved for the student athletes who participated in the prestigious Catholic Girls High School Basketball and Cheerleading Tournaments, an annual event sponsored by Holy Rosary School.

Holy Rosary School, once a prefabricated country school with four classrooms, was now a neighborhood landmark.

Reference:

Crehan, Rev. Peter M. Holy Rosary Parish, Bronx, New York. South Hackensack, N.J.: Custombook, Inc., Ecclesiastical Color Publishers, 1970.

Holy Rosary School Part 3

We were not entirely oblivious to the fact that changes had begun to take place in the “upper sanctum.” There, we later learned, the thought creeping forward in some minds was: Imagine not being a nun.

During that pivotal summer of 1967, while we wondered whether Sister Mary Pauline or Sister Mary Judith would be our eighth-grade homeroom teacher (there were two classes for each grade) both Sisters left Holy Rosary. Presumably, they had been transferred to other schools served by their order, the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When school started that September, we found that our seventh-grade homeroom teacher, Sister Mary Laboure, had moved up a grade to fill one of those vacant spots. For unexplained reasons, she would now be known as Sister Mary. Sister Mary Eymard, who had taught seventh grade for generations, remained a seventh-grade homeroom teacher but would now be called Sister Mary Ellen. Sister Joan, new to the school, filled the other seventh-grade vacancy, and Sister Dorothy arrived to become our eighth-grade teacher.

Because of her obvious youth—apparent even to us 13-year-olds—and because of the simpler habit she wore, some thought Sister Dorothy was a novice; that is, a nun who was not yet fully professed. But that was not the case. Sister Dorothy wore what would later be known as a modified habit. This included the same ankle-length black dress the others wore—complete with the belt from which hung a set of keys and yards and yards of rosary beads—but with a small white collar in place of the rigid breastplate. Instead of white wrappings that enclosed the forehead and most of the head, Sister Dorothy wore a simple white headband to hold the waist-length black veil that did not shroud the shoulders but fell in gentle folds down her back. The headband could barely contain her cloud of wavy golden hair that kept inching its way out.

Sister Mary Louise wearing the traditional habit in 1965.

One Sunday in May, Sister Dorothy arrived at the 9:00 Mass dressed in a business suit of royal blue and a short black veil that grazed her shoulders. Boys as well as girls crowded around her to gawk. Never did any of us expect to see a nun outfitted this way. It was as inexplicable as the name change at the beginning of the school year. The other nuns soon followed her lead, and on graduation day, June 22, all were dressed in business-suit habits—some black, others in various shades of blue—and short black veils.

To us the changes we observed in our Sisters that school year of 1967-1968 were monumental. But they were only the first steps of what was to come. By the following year, when we as high school freshmen returned for a visit to our favorite teacher, we learned that several of the nuns had left the order entirely. The few that continued to hang on to their religious vocation eventually discarded the habit altogether.

Something was going on behind the scenes. But what that was, we did not know.

Sister Mary in the business suit habit (without the jacket), June 22, 1968.

Holy Rosary School Part 2

When the dismissal bell rang at 3:00 on the appointed day and the rest of the class stumbled in their haste to flee the building, Lisa, Michele, Julie, and I remained smugly behind, excited at the prospect of following Sister Dorothy up that final flight of stairs.

We took the staircase at the opposite end of the building from the frightening crucifix; on this shadowy landing a less frightening statue of the Blessed Mother stood beside the locked convent door. Jangling through her key ring, Sister Dorothy found the one that opened the secret portal. Cautiously and suddenly timid, we followed her into the convent.

The brightly lit kitchen and the bracing scent of pine cleaner welcomed us, dispelling the gloom of the landing. We glanced around. A long, sturdy table of pale, polished wood, with a large bowl of apples, oranges, and pears in the center, dominated the room. Light from ceiling fixtures spilled across the buffed floor and dissolved down a hallway of closed doors—the nuns’ bedrooms. With deep disappointment we learned we would not get to see them, but we understood. A long school day had just ended, and we imagined the sisters savoring some solitary moments in their sacred space.

Whatever else we saw of the living quarters, nothing made more of an impact than the sight that gripped us as we stepped onto the rooftop patio—their backyard in the sky.

Looking eastward over rooftops and roadways into the distance, we were captivated by the sight of the Hutchinson River and a network of creeks and inlets, peaceful and still, reflecting the blue-violet of the dusky sky. Low stratus clouds floated over the scene, drifting patches of deeper violet. Sage green marsh grasses turning autumn gold arched sideways, their muddy banks exposed by low tide.

Overarching this natural splendor stood a structural masterpiece: the Hutchinson River Parkway bridge. A section of the drawbridge was visible from my bedroom window, but from here at the top of the school we looked down on the breath-catching sight of its full expanse—seven spans, support columns, the control tower, and the yellow warning gates in their upright resting position. Beyond the bridge and the trees of Pelham Bay Park lay Eastchester Bay, Orchard Beach, and the open waters of Long Island Sound—but these were lost in the purple dusk and the distance.

Just south of the drawbridge, the towers of the New Haven Railroad trestle rose above the flat landscape like black steel filigree against the sky. On the New England Thruway and the Hutchinson River Parkway, two ribbons crossing each other and slicing through the marshes, cars caught shards of setting sunlight and shot them into our squinting eyes. All was hushed; the speeding cars made no sound as they slipped along the highways.

Although 205 acres of those marshlands had been filled in a decade earlier for a short-lived amusement park called Freedomland, a good part of the land once occupied by the Siwanoy people was still the habitat of wildlife, birds, and sea creatures. But we knew that construction of a sprawling apartment complex called Co-Op City had recently begun. More of the coastal waterways were being filled in, and the development would not stop with Co-Op City. The marshlands would eventually disappear under a shopping mall.

Later it occurred to me that the splendor we had been privileged to discover that afternoon was what the early residents of Westervelt Avenue had seen from their front doors every day, until the houses on the eastern side of the street were built. For me, seeing this vision from what, at the time, could have been the highest point in the northeast Bronx, was to discover a new facet of my borough’s character, another side to its asphalt personality.

And so our tour ended. What had started out as a quest to uncover the mysteries of convent life ended with another discovery. My friends and I walked home, descending Allerton Avenue in the twilight. We faced east, just as we had from much higher up, and though we looked for the beauty of the landscape, our street-level view ended where the New England Thruway met the horizon. Headlights and streetlights became silver sparks in the violet dusk, creating a different kind of beauty enhanced by the rising round moon hovering above.

Despite the strangeness of the walk home at this late hour, subdued without the usual crowd of other school kids, our spirits were high. We had spent the late afternoon in the private company of the teacher we loved. We had seen that mysterious place at the top of the school, something no other kid in the class had done. Now we could picture where the sisters graded our test papers, where they ate their meals, where they stepped outside for fresh air and sunshine.

I think each of us must have had the same fleeting thought as we headed home that afternoon: Imagine being a nun.

Holy Rosary School, Part 1

By third grade my friends and I were old enough to walk to school by ourselves. We headed for Allerton Avenue and turned left, climbing the gentle incline to Woodhull Avenue. There we turned right, crossing Allerton. In the distance, looming above the houses at the end of Woodhull and tucked between the side streets of Arnow Avenue and Schorr Place, stood a five-story, orange brick building—Holy Rosary School.

Holy Rosary School, 1500 Arnow Avenue, Bronx. This is the back of the school with the schoolyard in the foreground. This side faced Schorr Place and Woodhull Avenue. The front of the school faced Arnow Avenue and looked out onto Gun Hill and Eastchester Roads. That’s the clothesline on the roof.

Most of the kids on Westervelt attended Holy Rosary. The nearest public school, P.S. 97, was way down Mace Avenue on the other side of Eastchester Road, not within easy walking distance for elementary-school kids.

Once the school came into view, I instinctively sought out my classroom windows. Then my gaze rose higher, to the two floors at the top. These floors comprised the convent. The rooftop patio was easy to spot by the clothesline in plain sight, frequently festooned with the sisters’ long white underwear gliding ghostlike on the breeze. What about their habits and veils, I’d wonder? Did they send them out to be dry-cleaned? And what was it like on those mysterious floors, where none but the veiled were allowed?

It didn’t seem likely or even possible that one day some of us students would actually set foot in the upper sanctum which was so close and yet so far removed from our daily lives. At times, one could accidentally—and frighteningly—get too close to the convent. It didn’t happen often, but it happened to almost everyone. As you mindlessly assaulted flight after flight of the broad staircase on the auditorium side of the school, or the narrow staircase on the opposite side of the school, you’d miscalculate.

Although such miscalculations were rare, disorientation resulted from momentarily forgetting which floor you started on. If you were a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader, you would be used to running up three flights of stairs, and you could do it accurately without thinking. But if you’d been sent to a third, fourth, or fifth grade classroom on the second floor, and your mind is elsewhere during your return trip, you might find your gallop slowing. Something’s not right, you think, as your feet grow heavy. It’s the light—the light is diminishing here on this staircase. Why? As you turn in confusion toward the landing above you, your heart leaps with fright at the sight of the large-as-life crucifix at the top. It materializes out of the shadows and sends you bounding toward the landing you just passed so lightheartedly a moment ago, back to the safety of the third floor.

That was the closest any of us ever got to the convent until the autumn of our eighth-grade year—November of 1967.

A small group of us often stayed after school to spend time with Sister Dorothy, our young teacher who was new to Holy Rosary that year. While the other sisters still wore the traditional habit, Sister Dorothy wore a modified headpiece that struggled to control her thick, wavy blonde hair. No wimple enclosed her neck; instead, her long black dress was trimmed with a simple white collar. That her name did not include Mary was another novelty. But on the first day of school that year we had to learn new names for all of the sisters; inexplicably they had reverted from the names given to them at profession to their baptismal names. Sister Mary Pauline became Sister Josephine, for example, and Sister Mary Judith was now Sister Florence. We couldn’t have known back then that these small changes foreshadowed monumental (and for us, unimaginable) changes for sisters everywhere. For now, the sight of a nun’s hair and neck was enough to get used to.

After years of having nuns for teachers, we were acutely aware of Sister Dorothy’s authority over us. But, perhaps as a fortunate combination of our increasing maturity and her cheerful youthfulness, she approached her students less as a drill sergeant and more as a mentor or counselor. With us she was upbeat and kind. While many of these Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary were intelligent women as well as good and fair-minded teachers, others had been more difficult. Corporal punishment was a thing of the past, but heavy-handed threats and humiliating and hurtful words too often were not.

So, at dismissal time, Lisa, Michele, Julie, and I were in no hurry to leave our beloved teacher. With wit and an abundant supply of patience, Sister Dorothy answered our endless questions and advised us when the inevitable adolescent difficulties arose. We liked to think she looked forward to our after-school sessions as much as we did.

During one such gathering the topic of our obsession with the convent came up, and our curiosity about those living quarters finally found a person willing to satisfy it. Sister Dorothy set a date to give us a tour.

Maps

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.

Associated Food Store

As the northeast Bronx continued to develop, the small shops near the northeast corner of Mace Avenue and Eastchester Road gave way to a supermarket originally established by the Kruger family. Taken over by a succession of chains over the years, its various names included Pioneer, C-Town, Met Food, and Associated.

Most of the neighborhood kids were handed a short shopping list and sent there pretty much every day after school, sometimes twice a day during summer vacation. As a result, we all developed an intimate familiarity with every crevice of the store’s cramped, narrow aisles. We came to know the workers pretty well, too.

The deli department, managed and run solely by Louie, occupied the area to the immediate right of the entrance.

Soft and round, with a soft round head, ruddy cheeks, and warm brown hair that wrapped the back of his head—ear to ear—like a fur collar, Louie was middle-aged and spoke with the accent of many of our Jewish neighbors. Affable and ever smiling, always eager to be of service, he made you feel as if he’d been waiting all day just for you. He welcomed all who approached his deli counter with a hearty greeting: “What can I get for you today?” Then he’d scuttle away to fill the order.

With characteristic enthusiasm, Louie answered a curious kid who had inquired about an orange slab displayed on a platter inside the refrigerated deli case. He explained that it was called lox and that it tasted great with cream cheese on a bagel.

“Would you like to taste it, darling?”

She certainly did not, and declined politely.

Taken aback, he persisted. “You should always try something new. Here, have a little taste.”

With that, Louie lopped off a slice the size and shape of a cat’s tongue, and held it out.

The child took the cold, slippery piece and held it tentatively. “What, I should eat it for you? Taste it already.” Louie’s face lit up with the anticipation of seeing a joyful reaction to a delicious first treat. As she put it into her mouth, Louie’s expression of delight instantly changed to one of concern.

“You don’t like it. That’s all right, darling. It’s a taste you grow into. Here,” he said, handing her a piece of deli wrap. “Spit it out.”

Louie was so genial, and so much like a friend, that this same child soon broached him with another question that had been dancing around in her mind forever.

“What are those?” she finally asked, pointing to a stack of small rectangular blocks on his countertop. With their brown and white wrappers, they looked like candy bars. But why the depiction of a mysterious man in a turban and moustache on the label? And what did HALVAH mean?

“You don’t know what halvah is?” Louie seemed disappointed. “It’s like candy. You want a taste?”

She was astonished to think he would open up the merchandise just for her. “No…no thank you, Louie. I don’t want to try it.” She tried to sound firm, but a meek refusal was all her shyness would allow.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Louie said, gleefully unwrapping a bar and slicing through the chocolate coating to reveal the off-white insides of the confection. With a beaming smile he handed her the piece, explaining that it was made of ground sesame seeds sweetened with honey. Then he watched closely for her reaction.

His expression changed in an instant.

“You don’t like it.”

She didn’t want to hurt Louie’s feelings again. But there was no use pretending. “It’s…okay.” she gasped out. “Not bad.” She didn’t like it and he knew it.

Back in the days of Louie, there was also Richie, who stocked the shelves. From the vantage point of two ten-year-old girls, Richie was 20ish and tall, with dark longish hair, dark eyebrows, and a quiet demeanor. His head was always down, his attention always on his task, his hair falling across his eyes as if to hide from the world—or to shield the world from what those eyes might reveal.

With great discretion the girls observed Richie from afar, learning first-hand what those clichés of song and story meant about someone who was “tall, dark, and handsome,” and “the strong, silent type.” One day when the girls worked up the nerve to ask Louie about him, Louie’s smiling face turn somber. Whatever sad story Louie related is lost now, but it touched them and made them look at Richie with new eyes.

On their frequent trips to Associated the girls walked up Mace Avenue, passing the side of the store where an overhead door was often open to accept deliveries. At those times they would have to wind their way between the truck ramps and the off-loaded crates. Sometimes Richie would be out there in his gray smock, helping to unload. But most often the girls would find him near the dairy case stacking quarts of milk or Dannon’s yogurt—plain, strawberry, and dutch apple. Seeing reliable Richie was uplifting, despite his sad silence. There was a feeling of security in finding him always there, until the day he wasn’t.

In this neighborhood of mostly first- and second-generation German, Irish, and Italian immigrants, the homemakers of the neighborhood—always the women back then—did the big shopping once a week. Most of them didn’t drive. The rare woman who did drive did not have access to the family car on weekdays because her husband drove it to work. (Later, as more women and the teenagers of the family started driving, two-car households became more common.) The no-car women either towed their brown bags of groceries home in wheeled, upright carts or they requested delivery at checkout. For home delivery, items were boxed, not bagged. Within minutes of getting home, the groceries would arrive. Sometimes the groceries made it to their front doors before they did.

When we were old enough to get working papers, many of us applied to Associated for a summer or after-school job. By that time the classmates we had gone from kindergarten through grade 8 with had scattered to the various high schools around the Bronx. The store then became a place for meeting up with old friends as well as for making new ones.

Villa Maria Pizzeria

Eastchester Road at its intersection with Mace Avenue is a commercial district, with small businesses on both sides of street. You could walk the eastern side of Eastchester Road with your eyes closed and know which shop you were passing by the one trait that characterized each from the other: its smell. Continuing on this olfactory tour, we come to Villa Maria, Sal’s next-door neighbor to the south.

The sign above the restaurant looked something like this.

The atmosphere surrounding Villa Maria captivated you as the aroma of baking bread mingled with the rich scent of melting mozzarella until you could almost taste those elastic strings that stretched like fili telefonici (telephone wires) with every piping hot bite. It called out to you, luring you in for a hot slice.

Most of us could scrape together enough babysitting or allowance money to buy a fifty-cent slice, served on a sheet of deli wrap, and a Coke to go with it, so we came here to mark occasions great and small.

An ordinary Saturday turned special when a group of us decided to meet at Villa Maria for lunch. When school dismissed early during exam week, we headed to the pizzeria for lunch. When someone had their braces removed, we celebrated at the pizzeria with lunch. After a shopping trip to Westchester Square, we left the Number 9 bus at the corner and headed straight to the pizzeria for lunch. When we were older, we met at the pizzeria to rehash all we had discovered about high school after a morning of freshman orientation.

On summer nights when the group hanging out on the front stoop inevitably started to think about food, our thoughts turned to Villa Maria. Even as late as 10:30 p.m., we could order a pizza and have it delivered for free. Still wearing his flour-dusted apron, the baker and proprietor himself would struggle out of his compact car with the large, flat box. As he lumbered toward us, we would be rummaging through our pockets for bills and change to pay the man and offer a decent tip.

The boys of the neighborhood found Villa Maria to be a convenient and inexpensive place to take a girl for something resembling a date. In New York City you had to be 18 to get a driver’s license; 17 if you completed the driver’s education course. Going on dates by bus was an option, but not always financially possible. Taking a walk to Villa Maria was often the solution, and never a disappointing choice.

The southward walk along Eastchester Road ends here for now. Next, we turn north, cross Mace Avenue, and arrive at our supermarket, Associated Food Store.

Sal’s House of Good Foods

Further south on Eastchester Road, about midway between Mace Avenue and Williamsbridge Road, there was no escaping the odiferous air surrounding Mrs. Weinberg’s Kosher Chopped Liver factory. But the stores on Eastchester Road near Mace Avenue also influenced the air quality (for better or for worse) in that immediate vicinity.

First you would pass Mace Chemist Shop at the corner, then Vinnie’s candy store, which emitted the scent of fresh coffee. Walk a few more paces toward Paul’s hair salon, and delight in the fragrance of hair spray and shampoo as the door swept open, or choke on the acrid stench of perm solution. Passing the last two stores that occupied the ground floor of the apartment building led to another strip of small businesses: the liquor store and then another odorous establishment, Sal’s House of Good Foods.

Sal’s opened door startled the whole outdoors. It exhaled a breath ripe with the aroma of provolone and other pungent cheeses and salumi that hung over the counter, suspended from ropes. Below the countertop, the glass-front refrigerated case held the colorful display of black and green olives, roasted red peppers, marinated mushrooms, red and green pepper strips, artichoke hearts, giardiniera, potato and macaroni salads, cheese cubes, mozzarella balls, ready-made antipasto, and a vast array of other store specialties ready for dispensing into cardboard containers. Premium mustards and other gourmet condiments huddled on the countertop beside loaves of Italian bread and boxes of hard Kaiser rolls, club rolls, and hero rolls.

Despite the prevailing opinion that Sal’s prices were too high, people preferred to buy their cold cuts here rather than at the supermarket. Sunday evenings were especially busy as customers picked up enough sliced meats and cheeses for a week’s worth of brown bag sandwiches. We did too, but not only for the week’s lunches. Besides the cold cuts, we also bought hard rolls and a variety of cold salads for our much-anticipated Sunday night supper. (On Sundays we ate dinner in the afternoon.)

Depending on how many people were helping behind the counter, customers could be served two or three at a time. Each person inevitably had a long list.

“I’ll take half a pound of hard salami…”

“What else?”

“Half a pound of mortadella, a pound of sliced provolone, half a dozen hard rolls. Give me the ones with the sesame seeds.”

“I only have poppy seed left.”

“Okay, poppy seed. And I need…”

It all took time. Everyone knew it, and no one waiting on the long line grumbled. Patiently they stood by, ears alert for the words that meant things were finally moving along: “Who’s next?”

The olfactory tour of the stores continued with Villa Maria, the pizzeria, right next door to Sal’s.