The Bronx We Knew

The Hair Salon

Two doors down from Vinnie’s, Paul’s hair salon functioned as another social gathering place. Brilliantly lit and reeking of perm solution and hair spray, Paul’s vibrated at a frenetic frequency created by the endlessly ringing telephone, the droning of the hair dryers, and the sloshing and spraying at the shampoo sinks. Then there was the routine shouting, necessary to be heard over the din or when an argument was going on.

Mr. Paul, a tall, slim, older gentleman with thick, silver-gray hair and moustache, wore dark-rimmed glasses and perfectly pressed pinstriped shirts. His trousers were similarly pressed, with a razor-sharp crease down the front. Mr. Paul found favor particularly with older women. Young children liked him, too.

Maria, petite and slender with Mediterranean-toned skin, moved briskly and efficiently, her espresso-colored, shoulder-length hair swinging luxuriously with every turn of her head. She had no time for small talk, but when she did speak her words flowed melodiously with a subtle accent of Italy. With total concentration Maria focused on the task at hand, whether it was trimming, rolling, teasing, waxing, or tweezing. Teen and preteen girls particularly liked Maria, and many from the other generations requested her as well.

Mr. Victor, Paul’s son, completed the staff. Fiftyish, portly, and shorter than his father, with thinning hair and a serious demeanor, Mr. Victor captured the “dad” image that eluded his father. Like Maria, smiles rarely crossed his face, but his manner was courtly and pleasant. His clients included children, the matronly, and the elderly.

Paul’s catered to females of all generations. In the 1960s, women of near-middle age and older had their hair “done” once a week, filling the styling stations that faced the wall of mirrors, then moving to the bank of hooded hair dryers at the opposite wall. Younger women, teens, and children came for haircuts, then those of preteen age and older went home to manage the styling themselves. Everyone possessed the necessary equipment, available inexpensively at Woolworth’s: curlers in a range of sizes, bobbie pins to secure them, hairclips for creating pin curls, a portable bonnet-style hair dryer, a teasing comb, and the indispensable can of hair spray. By the 1970s, teens and younger women had replaced all their hair paraphernalia with one single essential item—the blow dryer—as they shifted from weekly wash and sets to daily shampooing and blow drying.

But back in the 1960s, if these younger girls and women were preparing for a special event like a wedding, the prom, a bat mitzvah, or the eighth-grade graduation dance, then they too would get their hair “done.” This meant enduring the laborious wash, set, and sweltering stint under the dryer, followed by the unraveling of the curlers, the comb-out, the teasing, the anchoring of the up-do (if that was the style chosen), the clouds of hairspray, the mandatory presentation of a hand mirror with which to admire the back and sides of the head.

Middle-aged and older women frequently came for perms, although sometimes a mother would request one for her young daughter. Anyone coming for a perm planned ahead, knowing they would be sitting in Paul’s for up to five hours or more. Not only was the process itself a long one (washing, rolling, applying the eye-smarting perm solution, neutralizing, setting, drying…) but the stylist squeezed in other clients during stage transitions. The only stage that had to be attended to exactly on time was the rinsing or neutralizing of the perm solution before damage could be done. Aside from that, it was wait…wait…wait.

Most styles of the 1960s required a wash and set only, not a perm. In one popular style called the Artichoke, hair was cut very short in the back. Longer hair at the crown was set on large rollers. Wisps of hair at either side of the face were wound into pin curls at ear level. After drying, the hair was then teased (also known as backcombed) to a great height. Full or side bangs completed the look. This helmet-like creation, lacquered into preservation with billows of hair spray, lasted the entire week if the person under the helmet took precautions when sleeping or showering.

Similar lacquering attended other styles as well because of the teasing that created the bouffant (high on the head, full at the sides) look. For jaw-length hair, many older women favored the style similar to the one Queen Elizabeth has worn for years—off the forehead with softly curled ends. Height and fullness varied according to personal preference.

Younger women with longer hair wore it teased on top with the ends flipped up. Sometimes they opted for the French twist, where hair would be teased for height at the crown, then blended into the rest of the hair and rolled sideways into a long bun in the back. For the beehive, another ubiquitous style, hair at the crown was elevated to unnatural heights, often with the help of an insertable hair piece. An optional French twist could be fashioned from the hair left hanging down the back.

Most Eastchester Road stores were in-and-out places. You got what you went for and left. But like Vinnie’s candy store, Paul’s was a place you wanted to visit. Something good happened to you there, whether it was getting a cream soda or an attractive new hairstyle. You looked forward to sitting and staying, all the while absorbing the atmosphere, catching snippets of conversations, and taking in those fascinating stories of life that traveled through the neighborhood grapevine.

The Corner Drugstore

Soon after the Second World War, local truck farmers Tom and Louie Forte completed construction of an apartment building on the southeast corner of Mace Avenue and Eastchester Road. The residential entrance to the building faced Mace; the side that faced Eastchester Road offered retail space at ground level for six small stores, beginning with Mace Chemist Shop on the corner.

A. J. & R. F. DeFilippis, R.Ph. read the small letters printed on the plate glass window next to the recessed entryway, which cut across the corner of the building. In contrast to the high energy emanating from Vinnie’s, this shop exuded a hum of calm. Light traffic and soft lighting enhanced the aura of serenity.

It took only a few steps to span the distance from the entrance to the counter, or to any of the fully stocked shelving units lining the walls. Behind the counter, tall shelves overflowing with more health and beauty items shielded the rear of the store where the pharmacists filled prescriptions. Low shelves at the base of the counter held smaller personal care products. This cozy nook of a shop stocked all the essential drugstore merchandise, but each product at its most basic rather than in every variety available.

Mr. DeFilippis was the elder pharmacist. A sliver of a man with a pencil moustache and a gray lab coat worn over his shirt and tie, he was courteous but solemn, clipped and formal. His son Ronnie, robust and of average height, smiled easily and greeted customers by name.

As you stood at the counter waiting to pay for your purchase, you had no way of knowing which of the DeFilippis men would emerge from behind the shelves to help you. As a young girl, I sagged inwardly when confronted by the stern countenance of the elder gentleman. But seeing Ronnie approach, smile sliding across his face, brought forth a smile of my own. Ronnie, with eyes as blue as the wild chicory that squeezed through the cracks in the sidewalk, dense dark eyebrows and eyelashes, and thick black hair brushed back from his forehead, made the business transaction enjoyable.

The prices at this independent pharmacy were high, but the shop filled prescriptions and met other needs of a loyal customer base. Saving a few cents at one of the larger chain drugstores was not always the priority, especially if it meant a trip by bus. Eventually, one of those chain stores did open further down the street, advertising low prices and weekly specials. Nevertheless, Mace Chemist Shop continued to serve the community for many more years, closing for business on December 13, 1983.

Wild chicory photo by Mariclare Cole. (Photosbymariclare on Instagram.)

The Candy Store

Push open the door, and feel the fragrant cloud of coffee and newsprint surround you like a warm, familiar welcome. The grill sizzles and snaps, interrupting voices of every range and pitch that tumble together in crisscrossed conversations along the crowded lunch counter. With a couple of paces, you step across the black and dingy-white linoleum squares, hop onto the slick, blue vinyl top of a silver stool, and wait for Vinnie to notice you.

The sign over the doorway read Luncheonette, but back in the 1960s and ’70s everyone called it Vinnie’s or simply, “the candy store.” It was the second store from the southeast corner of Eastchester Road and Mace Avenue in the uppermost reaches of New York City, the northeast Bronx.

Stretch out your arm to your immediate right as you entered, and you could touch the tiered candy rack—fully stocked with all kinds of confections—without moving from the doorway. To the left of the entrance loomed the telephone booth, a sturdy box constructed of heavy dark wood with a folding door of thick glass. Back in the days of one phone per household, Vinnie’s telephone booth provided solitude and the strictest privacy—a priceless commodity.

On the other side of the phone booth, beneath the plate glass window, stacks of weeklies and dailies ensured that the store’s signature scent of ink and newsprint would never fade: the New York Daily News, the Bronx Press-Review, The New York Times, and smaller specialty papers. Late in the afternoon, as the stacks of morning editions diminished, bundles of the New York Post and the New York World-Telegram hit the pavement outside the door, and Vinnie added those to the newsstand.

Vinnie’s greeting-card section needed improvement, but you could ferret out a decent one if you were desperate enough. His magazine stand was lacking as well. You might find your favorite magazine one month—but not necessarily the next.

A rear corner of the store drew kids like a magnet. In that shadowy space near the school supplies you would find wonderful things: comic books, jump ropes, construction paper, poster paints, craft kits, jacks, yo-yos, Mouseketeer ears, Mexican jumping beans, and small pink rubber balls, each one stamped with the word Spalding, essential for playing catch, stoop ball, stick ball, king queen jack…

With salt- and pepper-colored hair that sprung like brush bristles from his scalp, Vinnie stood at average height in a stocky build. Wearing his ubiquitous white T-shirt with an apron tied around his middle, he grilled burgers, toasted muffins, made BLTs—but we kids paid little attention to the food menu. For us, Vinnie’s was mostly for treats, rarely for nourishment.

Vinnie’s was where the barber next door stopped for coffee and a toasted corn muffin (“with very little butter”) in mid-morning; it was where the cashier from the Associated Food Store bought cigarettes; where commuters heading for the Number 9 bus stop picked up their morning newspaper; where we kids found hot chocolate in January, class packs of Valentine cards in February, flipflops in July, notebooks in September, and cardboard witch masks in October. It was where, as eighth graders, we stopped for reinforcements—gum or a bag of M&Ms—on our way to take the three-hour high school entrance exam, and where we stopped for an egg cream (for consolation) on the way home.

Vinnie turned a pained expression on us kids when we’d bluster in, making it clear he was not delighted to see us. Yet, despite the perpetual scowl framed by fierce dark eyebrows, we weren’t afraid of him. As we grew out of childhood, and especially later as our teens turned into our 20s, his scowl softened a bit as he stopped perceiving us as potential trouble.

At some point we noticed that Vinnie had acquired a rotund, white-haired helper. Dressed like Vinnie in a white apron over a white T-shirt, the elder gentleman’s main purpose—it seemed to us—was to stand guard at the candy display. You couldn’t linger for long when you stopped to survey the vast, colorful array. A decision was coaxed out of you by luminous blue eyes, inches from your face, that didn’t blink until you had made your selection and handed over the money.

Vinnie turns his pained expression on you as you spin around on your stool. Sliding a dime, a nickel, and a penny toward him, you ask for a chocolate egg cream. Without a word, he nibbles the buttered roll he holds in one hand while his free hand reaches for a glass to place under the fountain. He pumps out a few squirts of chocolate syrup, adds a splash of milk. Shifting the glass to the seltzer dispenser, he fills it up, stirring constantly with a thin, long-handled spoon. You watch closely, impressed by his one-handed style. Slowly, a creamy white foam rises atop the mocha-colored drink.

With a final flourish he plunks in a straw, then sets the glass before you.

Eastchester Road & Mace Avenue

Eastchester Road and Mace Avenue—at these crossroads you could find so many of life’s necessities, from a box of Band-Aids to a pair of socks, from a meatball hero to infant wear, from an egg cream to a real estate agent to a head of lettuce to a haircut or a wash and set.

It was a frequent if not daily destination for anyone living nearby, many of whom came on foot. (In the 1960s most families in this neighborhood owned one car only—the one your father drove to work.) A typical round of errands could include going to the bank, getting your hair done, buying shoes, and picking up groceries, all in the space of a few steps. Eastchester and Mace is where commuters caught the Number 9 bus to Westchester Square (and later the Express Bus to Manhattan), where the boys played king, queen, jack against the wall of the deli on the southwest corner, where kids bought a piece of Bazooka at the candy store, where teenagers met up for pizza.

In the 1930s and ’40s, Tom and Louie Forte established truck farms on undeveloped land from Westervelt and Mace Avenues south toward Pelham Parkway. (Local kids recall carrying salt shakers in their pockets for their tomato-pinching forays.) Their fertile fields yielded such abundance that they opened their own vegetable store near the northeast corner of Eastchester Road and Mace Avenue, right between a real estate office and a vacant space that later became Frank’s butcher shop.

After World War II the Kruger family purchased the grocery store on the other side of the real estate office, next to the vacant corner lot. Eventually they purchased the vacant lot as well, expanding their store to the corner. As ownership changed over the years the store came to be known by different names: Associated, Pioneer, C-Town, Met Foods…

The Forte brothers made a significant impact on the shopping district at Eastchester Road and Mace Avenue. In 1941 they broke ground for an apartment building on the southeast corner of the intersection. But the enormous, fenced-off hole in the ground was to languish under four years’ worth of rain, snow, mud, and dust. For four years, patrons of the neighborhood bar or Pete’s drugstore, located just south of the excavation site, had to pass the gaping eyesore to reach their destinations. The U.S. entered World War II, and work on the building that would become 1500 Mace Avenue halted until the war ended in 1945.

The residential entrance to the three-story building faced Mace; the side that faced Eastchester Road offered retail space for six stores. The Forte brothers moved their vegetable store to their new building, expanding it into a general grocery store.

Other original merchants are unknown to me, but I can tell you about the ones that I came to know well in the 1960s and ’70s.

Next: Vinnie’s Candy Store

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.”

The Other Side of the Street

The builders hoped to save the enormous old tree on the eastern side of Westervelt Avenue, but soon realized it had to be cut down to make room for four new homes. Photo by A.F. DiSalvo, May 1948.

New homes built by Ben Caravella taking shape on the eastern side of Westervelt Avenue, June 1948. Houses visible in the background are on Kingsland Avenue. Photo by A.F. DiSalvo.

Looking Eastward

Before the homes across the street went up in the 1940s, this was the view from our bedroom windows. The Forte truck farm is in the foreground; the Hutchinson River Parkway drawbridge is at left; the towers of the New Haven Railroad trestle are toward the right. The trees in the background are part of Pelham Bay Park.

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.