bronx history – Page 2 – The Bronx We Knew

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.

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.

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.)

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.