The Bronx
The Bronx (/brɒŋks/) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,472,654 in the 2020 census.[1] If each borough were ranked as a city, the Bronx would rank as the ninth-most-populous in the U.S. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density.[4] It is the only borough of New York City not primarily on an island. With a population that is 54.8% Hispanic as of 2020, it is the only majority-Hispanic county in the Northeastern United States and the fourth-most-populous nationwide.[5]
The Bronx Bronx County, New York | |
|---|---|
Yankee Stadium (center), Bronx County Courthouse and the Grand Concourse (towards the top), and the site of Yankee Stadium's predecessor to the far right | |
Flag Seal | |
| Motto(s): Ne cede malis – "Yield Not to Evil" (lit. "Yield Not to Evil Things") | |
Map outlining the Bronx | |
Location of the Bronx in New York state | |
| Coordinates: 40°50′14″N 73°53′10″W / 40.83722°N 73.88611°WCoordinates: 40°50′14″N 73°53′10″W / 40.83722°N 73.88611°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| County | Bronx (coterminous) |
| City | New York City |
| Borough created | 1898 (County in 1914) |
| Named for | Jonas Bronck |
| Government | |
| • Type | Borough of New York City |
| • Borough President | Vanessa Gibson (D) – (Borough of the Bronx) |
| • District Attorney | Darcel Clark (D) – (Bronx County) |
| Area | |
| • Total | 57 sq mi (150 km2) |
| • Land | 42 sq mi (110 km2) |
| • Water | 15 sq mi (40 km2) 27% |
| Highest elevation | 280 ft (90 m) |
| Population (2020) | |
| • Total | 1,472,654[1] |
| • Density | 34,917.7/sq mi (13,481.8/km2) |
| • Demonym | Bronxite[2] |
| Time zone | UTC−05:00 (Eastern) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−04:00 (EDT) |
| ZIP Code prefix | 104 |
| Area codes | 718/347/929, 917 |
| GDP (2020) | US$36.9 billion[3] |
| Website | bronxboropres |
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.[6] Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914.[7] About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space,[8] including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center. The Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden is thousands of years old; it is New York City's largest remaining tract of the original forest that once covered the city.[9] These open spaces are primarily on land reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan.
The word "Bronx" originated with Faroese-born (or Swedish-born) Jonas Bronck, who established the first settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639.[10][11][12] European settlers displaced the native Lenape after 1643. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from European countries, particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe, and later from the Caribbean region, particularly Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic), and immigrants from West Africa, particularly from Ghana and Nigeria), African American migrants from the Southern United States, Panamanians, Hondurans, and South Asians.[13]
The Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, the 15th. There are, however, some upper-income, as well as middle-income neighborhoods such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club.[14][15][16] Parts of the Bronx saw a steep decline in population, livable housing, and quality of life starting from the mid-to-late 1960s, continuing throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, ultimately culminating in a wave of arson in the late 1970s. The South Bronx, in particular, experienced severe urban decay. The borough began experiencing new population growth starting in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day.[17]
Etymology and naming
Early names
The Bronx was called Rananchqua[18] by the native Siwanoy[19] band of Lenape (also known historically as the Delawares), while other Native Americans knew the Bronx as Keskeskeck.[20] It was divided by the Aquahung River (now known in English as the Bronx River).
The Bronx was named after Jonas Bronck (c. 1600–1643), a European settler whose precise origins are disputed. Documents indicate he was a Swedish-born immigrant from Komstad, Norra Ljunga parish, in Småland, Sweden, who arrived in New Netherland during the spring of 1639.[12][21][22][23][24][25] Bronck became the first recorded European settler in the present-day Bronx and built a farm named "Emmaus" close to what today is the corner of Willis Avenue and 132nd Street in Mott Haven.[26] He leased land from the Dutch West India Company on the neck of the mainland immediately north of the Dutch settlement of New Haarlem (on Manhattan Island), and bought additional tracts from the local tribes. He eventually accumulated 500 acres (200 ha) between the Harlem River and the Aquahung, which became known as Bronck's River or the Bronx [River]. Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as Bronck's Land.[21] The American poet William Bronk was a descendant of Pieter Bronck, either Jonas Bronck's son or his younger brother, but most probably a nephew or cousin, as there was an age difference of 16 years.[27] Much work on the Swedish claim has been undertaken by Brian G. Andersson, former Commissioner of New York City's Department of Records, who helped organize a 375th Anniversary celebration in Bronck's hometown in 2014.[28]
Use of definite article
The Bronx is referred to with the definite article as "the Bronx" or "The Bronx", both legally and colloquially.[29][30] The "County of the Bronx" also takes "the" immediately before "Bronx" in formal references, like the coextensive "Borough of the Bronx". The United States Postal Service uses "Bronx, NY" for mailing addresses.[31] The region was apparently named after the Bronx River and first appeared in the "Annexed District of The Bronx" created in 1874 out of part of Westchester County. It was continued in the "Borough of The Bronx", which included a larger annexation from Westchester County in 1898. The use of the definite article is attributed to the style of referring to rivers.[32][33] A time-worn story purportedly explaining the use of the definite article in the borough's name says it stems from the phrase "visiting the Broncks", referring to the settler's family.[34]
The capitalization of the borough's name is sometimes disputed. Generally, the definite article is lowercase in place names ("the Bronx") except in some official references. The definite article is capitalized ("The Bronx") at the beginning of a sentence or in any other situation when a normally lowercase word would be capitalized.[35] However, some people and groups refer to the borough with a capital letter at all times, such as Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan,[36] The Bronx County Historical Society, and the Bronx-based organization Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx, arguing the definite article is part of the proper name.[37][38] In particular, the Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx is leading efforts to make the city refer to the borough with an uppercase definite article in all uses, comparing the lowercase article in the Bronx's name to "not capitalizing the 's' in 'Staten Island'".[38]
History
European colonization of the Bronx began in 1639. The Bronx was originally part of Westchester County, but it was ceded to New York County in two major parts (West Bronx, 1874 and East Bronx, 1895) before it became Bronx County. Originally, the area was part of the Lenape's Lenapehoking territory inhabited by Siwanoy of the Wappinger Confederacy. Over time, European colonists converted the borough into farmlands.
Before 1914
The Bronx's development is directly connected to its strategic location between New England and New York (Manhattan). Control over the bridges across the Harlem River plagued the period of British colonial rule. The King's Bridge, built in 1693 where Broadway reached the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was a possession of Frederick Philipse, lord of Philipse Manor.[39] Local farmers on both sides of the creek resented the tolls, and in 1759, Jacobus Dyckman and Benjamin Palmer led them in building a free bridge across the Harlem River.[40] After the American Revolutionary War, the King's Bridge toll was abolished.[41][39]
The territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, one of the 12 original counties of the English Province of New York. The present Bronx County was contained in the town of Westchester and parts of the towns in Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham. In 1846, a new town was created by division of Westchester, called West Farms. The town of Morrisania was created, in turn, from West Farms in 1855. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge was established within the former borders of the town of Yonkers, roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, and Woodlawn Heights, and included Woodlawn Cemetery.
Among famous settlers in the Bronx during the 19th and early 20th centuries were author Willa Cather, tobacco merchant Pierre Lorillard, and inventor Jordan L. Mott, who established Mott Haven to house the workers at his iron works.[42]
The consolidation of the Bronx into New York City proceeded in two stages. In 1873, the state legislature annexed Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania to New York, effective in 1874; the three towns were soon abolished in the process.[43][44]
The whole territory east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895, three years before New York's consolidation with Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. This included the Town of Westchester (which had voted against consolidation in 1894) and parts of Eastchester and Pelham.[6][43][45][46][47] The nautical community of City Island voted to join the city in 1896.
On January 1, 1898, the consolidated City of New York was born, including the Bronx as one of the five distinct boroughs (at the same time, the Bronx's territory moved from Westchester County into New York County, which already included Manhattan and the rest of pre-1874 New York City).
On April 19, 1912, those parts of New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in previous decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, the 62nd and last county to be created by the state, effective in 1914.[43][48] Bronx County's courts opened for business on January 2, 1914 (the same day that John P. Mitchel started work as Mayor of New York City).[7] Marble Hill, Manhattan was now connected to the Bronx by filling in the former waterway, but it did not become part of the borough or county.[49]
After 1914
The history of the Bronx during the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom period during 1900–1929, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and post World War II years saw a slowing of growth leading into an eventual decline. The mid to late century were hard times, as the Bronx changed during 1950–1985 from a predominantly moderate-income to a predominantly lower-income area with high rates of violent crime and poverty in some areas. The Bronx has experienced an economic and developmental resurgence starting in the late 1980s that continues into today.[50]
New York City expands
The Bronx was a mostly rural area for many generations, with small farms supplying the city markets. In the late 19th century, however, it grew into a railroad suburb. Faster transportation enabled rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways and the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904.[50]
The South Bronx was a manufacturing center for many years and was noted as a center of piano manufacturing in the early part of the 20th century. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.[51]
At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.[6][52]
The Bronx underwent rapid urban growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants came to the Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, Polish, and other immigrants moved into the borough. As evidence of the change in population, by 1937, 592,185 Jews lived in the Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population),[53] while only 54,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2011. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.[54]
Change
Bootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx during Prohibition (1920–1933). Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey, and the oldest sections of the borough became poverty-stricken.[citation needed] Enright declared that speakeasies were home to "the vicious elements, bootleggers, gamblers and their friends in all walks of life" cooperating to "evade the law, escape punishment for their crimes, or to deter the police from doing their duty".[55][full citation needed]
Between 1930 and 1960, moderate and upper income Bronxites (predominantly non-Hispanic Whites) began to relocate from the borough's southwestern neighborhoods. This migration has left a mostly poor African American and Hispanic (largely Puerto Rican) population in the West Bronx. One significant factor that shifted the racial and economic demographics was the construction of Co-op City, built to house middle-class residents in family-sized apartments. The high-rise complex played a significant role in draining middle-class residents from older tenement buildings in the borough's southern and western fringes. Most predominantly non-Hispanic White communities today are in the eastern and northwestern sections of the borough.[56]
From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the quality of life changed for some Bronx residents. Historians and social scientists have suggested many factors, including the theory that Robert Moses' Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods and created instant slums, as put forward in Robert Caro's biography The Power Broker.[57] Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects, particularly in the South Bronx.[58] Yet another factor may have been a reduction in the real estate listings and property-related financial services offered in some areas of the Bronx, such as mortgage loans or insurance policies—a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting.[59][60][61] There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.[citation needed]
In the 1970s, parts of the Bronx were plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was predominantly in the poorest communities, such as the South Bronx. One explanation of this event was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money, as it was easier for them to get insurance money than to try to refurbish a dilapidated building or sell a building in a severely distressed area.[62] The Bronx became identified with a high rate of poverty and unemployment, which was mainly a persistent problem in the South Bronx.[63] There were cases where tenants set fire to the building they lived in so they could qualify for emergency relocations by city social service agencies to better residences, sometimes being relocated to other parts of the city.
Out of 289 census tracts in the Bronx borough, 7 tracts lost more than 97% of their buildings to arson and abandonment between 1970 and 1980; another 44 tracts had more than 50% of their buildings meet the same fate. By the early 1980s, the Bronx was considered the most blighted urban area in the country, particularly the South Bronx which experienced a loss of 60% of the population and 40% of housing units. However, starting in the 1990s, many of the burned-out and run-down tenements were replaced by new housing units.[63]
Revitalization
Since the late 1980s, significant development has occurred in the Bronx, first stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan"[64][65] and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons[66][67][68] began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx.[69] The IRT White Plains Road Line (2 and 5 trains) began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.[70][71][72][full citation needed][73]
In 1997, the Bronx was designated an All America City by the National Civic League, acknowledging its comeback from the decline of the mid-century.[74] In 2006, The New York Times reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings."[75] The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.[76]
In addition there came a revitalization of the existing housing market in areas such as Hunts Point, the Lower Concourse, and the neighborhoods surrounding the Third Avenue Bridge as people buy apartments and renovate them.[77] Several boutique and chain hotels opened in the 2010s in the South Bronx.[78]
New developments are underway. The Bronx General Post Office[79][80] on the corner of the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street is being converted into a market place, boutiques, restaurants and office space with a USPS concession.[81] The Kingsbridge Armory, often cited as the largest armory in the world, is scheduled for redevelopment as the Kingsbridge National Ice Center.[82]
Under consideration for future development is the construction of a platform over the New York City Subway's Concourse Yard adjacent to Lehman College. The construction would permit approximately 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2) of development and would cost US$350–500 million.[83]
Despite significant investment compared to the post war period, many exacerbated social problems remain including high rates of violent crime, substance abuse, overcrowding, and substandard housing conditions.[84][85][86][87] The Bronx has the highest rate of poverty in New York City, and the greater South Bronx is the poorest area.[88][89]
Geography
Location and physical features
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Bronx County has a total area of 57 square miles (150 km2), of which 42 square miles (110 km2) is land and 15 square miles (39 km2) (27%) is water.[90]
The Bronx is New York City's northernmost borough, New York State's southernmost mainland county and the only part of New York City that is almost entirely on the North American mainland.[91] Its bedrock is primarily Fordham gneiss, a high-grade heavily banded metamorphic rock containing significant amounts of pink feldspar.[92] Marble Hill – politically part of Manhattan but now physically attached to the Bronx – is so-called because of the formation of Inwood marble there as well as in Inwood, Manhattan and parts of the Bronx and Westchester County.
The Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle. There is also a short southern land boundary with Marble Hill in the Borough of Manhattan, over the filled-in former course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek; Marble Hill's postal ZIP code, telephonic area codes and fire service, however, are shared with the Bronx and not Manhattan.[49]
The Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City.[93] A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.
The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire city, is also part of the Bronx.
The Bronx's highest elevation at 280 feet (85 m) is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School.[94] The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once salt marsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throggs Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island. The Bronx's irregular shoreline extends for 75 square miles (194 km2).[95]
Parks and open space
| Sample of open spaces and parks in the Bronx | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acquired | Name | acres | sq. mi. | hectares | |
| 1863 | Woodlawn Cemetery | 400 | 0.6 | 162 | |
| 1888 | Pelham Bay Park | 2,772 | 4.3 | 1,122 | |
| Van Cortlandt Park | 1,146 | 1.8 | 464 | ||
| Bronx Park | 718 | 1.1 | 291 | ||
| Crotona Park | 128 | 0.2 | 52 | ||
| St. Mary's Park | 35 | 0.05 | 14 | ||
| 1890 | Jerome Park Reservoir | 94 | 0.15 | 38 | |
| 1897 | St. James Park | 11 | 0.02 | 4.6 | |
| 1899 | Macombs Dam Park † | 28 | 0.04 | 12 | |
| 1909 | Henry Hudson Park | 9 | 0.01 | 4 | |
| 1937 | Ferry Point Park | 414 | 0.65 | 168 | |
| Soundview Park | 196 | 0.31 | 79 | ||
| 1962 | Wave Hill | 21 | 0.03 | 8.5 | |
| Land area of the Bronx in 2000 | 26,897 | 42.0 | 10,885 | ||
| Water area | 9,855 | 15.4 | 3,988 | ||
| Total area[90] | 36,752 | 57.4 | 14,873 | ||
| † closed in 2007 to build a new park & Yankee Stadium[96] | |||||
| Main source: | |||||
Although Bronx County was the third most densely populated county in the United States as of 2006 (after Manhattan and Brooklyn),[4] 7,000 acres (28 km2) of the Bronx—about one fifth of the Bronx's area, and one quarter of its land area—is given over to parkland.[8][98] The vision of a system of major Bronx parks connected by park-like thoroughfares is usually attributed to John Mullaly.
Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, in what was then the town of Yonkers, at the time a rural area.
The borough's northern side includes the largest park in New York City—Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach—and the third-largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers.[99] Also in the northern Bronx, Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins—known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts—overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale. Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park; its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the county, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the United States.[100] In 1904 the Chestnut Blight pathogen (Cryphonectria parasitica) was found for the first time outside of Asia, here, at the Bronx Zoo.[101] Over the next 40 years it spread throughout eastern North America and killed back essentially every American Chestnut (Castanea dentata), causing ecological and economic devastation.[101]
Just south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by 2 miles (3 km) of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood; the reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack.[102] Further south is Crotona Park, home to a 3.3-acre (1.3 ha) lake, 28 species of trees, and a large swimming pool.[103] The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.[104]
Some of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.
In 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.[105]
Neighborhoods
The number, locations, and boundaries of the Bronx's neighborhoods (many of them sitting on the sites of 19th-century villages) have become unclear with time and successive waves of newcomers. In 2006, Manny Fernandez of The New York Times wrote,
According to a Department of City Planning map of the city's neighborhoods, the Bronx has 49. The map publisher Hagstrom identifies 69. The borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., says 61. The Mayor's Community Assistance Unit, in a listing of the borough's community boards, names 68.[106]
Notable Bronx neighborhoods include the South Bronx; Little Italy on Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section; and Riverdale.
Regions of the Bronx
Generally speaking, there are two major systems of dividing the Bronx into regions, which often conflict with one another. One is based on the Bronx River while the other strictly separate South Bronx from the rest of the borough. The older of the two systems is based on the Bronx River and is arguably a more accurate reflection of the area's history:
- West Bronx: all parts of the Bronx west of the Bronx River (as opposed to Jerome Avenue – this street is simply the "east-west" divider for designating numbered streets as "east" or "west." As the Bronx's numbered streets continue from Manhattan to south, on which the street numbering system is based, Jerome Avenue actually represents a longitudinal halfway point for Manhattan, not the Bronx.)[107]
- East Bronx: all parts of the Bronx east of the Bronx River (as opposed to Jerome Avenue)[107][108]
The Bronx River divides the borough nearly perfectly in half, putting the earlier-settled, more urban, and hillier sections in the western lobe and the newer, more suburbanesque coastal sections in the eastern lobe. It is an accurate reflection on the Bronx's history considering that the towns that existed in the area prior to annexation to the City of New York generally did not straddle the Bronx River. In addition, what is today the Bronx was annexed to New York City in two stages: areas west of the Bronx River were annexed in 1874 while areas to the east of the river were annexed in 1895.
Using this system, the Bronx can be further divided into the following regions:
- Northwest Bronx: the northern half of the West Bronx; the area north of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River
- Southwest Bronx: the southern half of the West Bronx; the area south of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River
- Northeast Bronx: the northern half of the East Bronx; the area north of Pelham Parkway and east of the Bronx River
- Southeast Bronx: the southern half of the East Bronx; the area south of Pelham Parkway and east of the Bronx River
A second system divides the borough first and foremost into the following sections:
- North Bronx: all areas not in the South Bronx (Southwest Bronx) – i.e. the Northwest Bronx, Northeast Bronx, and Southeast Bronx
- South Bronx: the Southwest Bronx – south of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River. This includes the areas traditionally considered part of the South Bronx.
As of 2012, listed are the Bronx neighborhoods organized and outlined:
East Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 9 [south central], 10 [east], 11 [east central] and 12 [north central])[109]
East of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.
Neighborhoods include: Clason's Point, Harding Park, Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester (Community District 9); Throggs Neck, Country Club, City Island, Pelham Bay, Edgewater Park, Co-op City (Community District 10); Westchester Square, Van Nest, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park (Community District 11); Williamsbridge, Eastchester, Baychester, Edenwald and Wakefield (Community District 12).
City Island and Hart Island
City Island is east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound and is known for its seafood restaurants and private waterfront homes.[110] City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge.
East of City Island is Hart Island, which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's potter's field for unclaimed bodies.[111]
West Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 1 to 8, progressing roughly from south to northwest)
The western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston.[112] It includes New York City's third-largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.
Northwestern Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 7 [between the Bronx and Harlem Rivers] and 8 [facing the Hudson River] – plus part of Board 12)
Neighborhoods include: Fordham-Bedford, Bedford Park, Norwood, Kingsbridge Heights (Community District 7), Kingsbridge, Riverdale (Community District 8), and Woodlawn Heights (Community District 12). (Marble Hill, Manhattan is now connected by land to the Bronx rather than Manhattan and is served by Bronx Community District 8.)
South Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 1 to 6 plus part of CD 7—progressing northwards, CDs 2, 3 and 6 border the Bronx River from its mouth to Bronx Park, while 1, 4, 5 and 7 face Manhattan across the Harlem River)
Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and is applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s, Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.
Neighborhoods include: The Hub (a retail district at Third Avenue and East 149th Street), Port Morris, Mott Haven (Community District 1), Melrose (Community District 1 & Community District 3), Morrisania, East Morrisania [also known as Crotona Park East] (Community District 3), Hunts Point, Longwood (Community District 2), Highbridge, Concourse (Community District 4), West Farms, Belmont, East Tremont (Community District 6), Tremont, Morris Heights (Community District 5), University Heights. (Community District 5 & Community District 7).
Adjacent counties
The Bronx adjoins:[113]
- Westchester County – north
- Nassau County, New York – southeast (across the East River)
- Queens County, New York (Queens) – south (across the East River)
- New York County, New York (Manhattan) – southwest
- Bergen County, New Jersey – west (across the Hudson River)
Climate
| Climate data for The Bronx | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °F (°C) | 39.7 (4.3) | 42.6 (5.9) | 50.3 (10.2) | 61.4 (16.3) | 72.3 (22.4) | 80.9 (27.2) | 86.1 (30.1) | 84.1 (28.9) | 77.1 (25.1) | 65.8 (18.8) | 54.1 (12.3) | 44.8 (7.1) | 63.3 (17.4) |
| Average low °F (°C) | 27.3 (−2.6) | 28.7 (−1.8) | 34.6 (1.4) | 44.4 (6.9) | 54.6 (12.6) | 64.3 (17.9) | 70.6 (21.4) | 69.1 (20.6) | 62.1 (16.7) | 50.7 (10.4) | 41.3 (5.2) | 33.1 (0.6) | 48.4 (9.1) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 3.74 (95) | 3.19 (81) | 4.37 (111) | 3.95 (100) | 4.06 (103) | 4.55 (116) | 4.37 (111) | 4.82 (122) | 4.55 (116) | 4.13 (105) | 3.45 (88) | 4.67 (119) | 49.85 (1,266) |
| Average snowfall inches (cm) | 8.4 (21) | 8.9 (23) | 4.3 (11) | 0.5 (1.3) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0.4 (1.0) | 4.1 (10) | 26.6 (68) |
| Source: NOAA[114] | |||||||||||||
Demographics
| Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1790 | 1,781 | — | |
| 1800 | 1,755 | −1.5% | |
| 1810 | 2,267 | 29.2% | |
| 1820 | 2,782 | 22.7% | |
| 1830 | 3,023 | 8.7% | |
| 1840 | 5,346 | 76.8% | |
| 1850 | 8,032 | 50.2% | |
| 1860 | 23,593 | 193.7% | |
| 1870 | 37,393 | 58.5% | |
| 1880 | 51,980 | 39.0% | |
| 1890 | 88,908 | 71.0% | |
| 1900 | 200,507 | 125.5% | |
| 1910 | 430,980 | 114.9% | |
| 1920 | 732,016 | 69.8% | |
| 1930 | 1,265,258 | 72.8% | |
| 1940 | 1,394,711 | 10.2% | |
| 1950 | 1,451,277 | 4.1% | |
| 1960 | 1,424,815 | −1.8% | |
| 1970 | 1,471,701 | 3.3% | |
| 1980 | 1,168,972 | −20.6% | |
| 1990 | 1,203,789 | 3.0% | |
| 2000 | 1,332,650 | 10.7% | |
| 2010 | 1,385,108 | 3.9% | |
| 2020 | 1,472,654 | 6.3% | |
| Sources: 1790–1990;[115] | |||
| Jurisdiction | Population | Land area | Density of population | GDP † | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Borough | County | Census (2020) | square miles | square km | people/ sq. mile | people/ sq. km | billions (2012 US$) 2 | |
Bronx | 1,472,654 | 42.2 | 109.3 | 34,920 | 13,482 | '$' 38.725 | ||
Kings | 2,736,074 | 69.4 | 179.7 | 39,438 | 15,227 | $ 92.230 | ||
New York | 1,694,263 | 22.7 | 58.8 | 74,781 | 28,872 | $ 651.619 | ||
Queens | 2,405,464 | 108.7 | 281.5 | 22,125 | 8,542 | $ 88.578 | ||
Richmond | 495,747 | 57.5 | 148.9 | 8,618 | 3,327 | $ 14.806 | ||
| 8,804,190 | 302.6 | 783.8 | 29,095 | 11,234 | $ 885.958 | |||
| 20,215,751 | 47,126.4 | 122,056.8 | 429 | 166 | $ 1,514.779 | |||
| † GDP = Gross Domestic Product Sources:[116][117][118][119] and see individual borough articles. | ||||||||
Race, ethnicity, language, and immigration
| Race | 2021[120] | 2020[121] | 2010[122] | 1990[123] | 1970[123] | 1950[123] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 14.3% | 14.1% | 27.9% | 35.7% | 73.4% | 93.1% |
| —Non-Hispanic | 9.0% | 8.9% | 10.9% | 22.6% | N/A | N/A |
| Black or African American | 33.8% | 33.1% | 36.5% | 37.3% | 24.3% | 6.7% |
| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) | 56.4% | 54.8% | 53.5% | 43.5% | 27.7%[124] | N/A |
| Asian | 4.7% | 4.7% | 3.6% | 3% | 0.5% | 0.1% |
| Two or more races | 3.8% | 13.0% | 5.3% | N/A | N/A | N/A |
2018 estimates
The borough's most populous racial group, white, declined from 99.3% in 1920 to 14.9% in 2018.[123]
The Bronx has 532,487 housing units, with a median value of $371,800, and with an owner-occupancy rate of 19.7%, the lowest of the five boroughs. There are 495,356 households, with 2.85 persons per household. 59.3% of residents speak a language besides English at home, the highest rate of the five boroughs.
In the Bronx, the population is 7.2% under 5, 17.6% 6–18, 62.4% 19–64, and 12.8% over 65. 52.9% of the population is female. 35.3% of residents are foreign born.
The per capita income is $19,721, while the median household income is $36,593, both being the lowest of the five boroughs. 27.9% of residents live below the poverty line, the highest of the five boroughs.
2010 census
According to the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race); 30.1% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 10.9% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 3.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 1.2% of two or more races (non-Hispanic), and 0.6% from some other race (non-Hispanic).
As of 2010, 46.29% (584,463) of Bronx residents aged five and older spoke Spanish at home, while 44.02% (555,767) spoke English, 2.48% (31,361) African languages, 0.91% (11,455) French, 0.90% (11,355) Italian, 0.87% (10,946) various Indic languages, 0.70% (8,836) other Indo-European languages, and Chinese was spoken at home by 0.50% (6,610) of the population over the age of five. In total, 55.98% (706,783) of the Bronx's population age five and older spoke a language at home other than English.[125] A Garifuna-speaking community from Honduras and Guatemala also makes the Bronx its home.[126]
2021 census
According to the 2021 Census, 56.4% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin; 44.3% White; 43.8% Black or African American; 9.0% non-Hispanic Black or African American; 4.7% Asian; 3.8% of two or more races; 3.1% American Indian and Alaskan Native, and .4% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders.[120]
2009 community survey
This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021) |
According to the 2009 American Community Survey, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-fifth (22.9%) of the Bronx's population. However, non-Hispanic whites formed under one-eighth (12.1%) of the population, down from 34.4% in 1980.[127] Out of all five boroughs, the Bronx has the lowest number and percentage of white residents. 320,640 whites called the Bronx home, of which 168,570 were non-Hispanic whites. The majority of the non-Hispanic European American population is of Italian and Irish descent. People of Italian descent numbered over 55,000 individuals and made up 3.9% of the population. People of Irish descent numbered over 43,500 individuals and made up 3.1% of the population. German Americans and Polish Americans made up 1.4% and 0.8% of the population respectively.
The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a Hispanic majority,[128] many of whom are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.[129] At the 2009 American Community Survey, Black Americans made the second largest group in the Bronx after Hispanics and Latinos. Black people of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-third (35.4%) of the Bronx's population. Black people of non-Hispanic origin made up 30.8% of the population. Over 495,200 Black people resided in the borough, of which 430,600 were non-Hispanic Black people. Over 61,000 people identified themselves as "Sub-Saharan African" in the survey, making up 4.4% of the population.[citation needed]
Native Americans are a very small minority in the borough. Only some 5,560 individuals (out of the borough's 1.4 million people) are Native American, which is equal to just 0.4% of the population. In addition, roughly 2,500 people are Native Americans of non-Hispanic origin.[citation needed] In 2009, Hispanic and Latino Americans represented 52.0% of the Bronx's population. Puerto Ricans represented 23.2% of the borough's population. Over 72,500 Mexicans lived in the Bronx, and they formed 5.2% of the population. Cubans numbered over 9,640 members and formed 0.7% of the population. In addition, over 319,000 people were of various Hispanic and Latino groups, such as Dominican, Salvadoran, and so on. These groups collectively represented 22.9% of the population. At the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race). Asian Americans are a small but sizable minority in the borough. Roughly 49,600 Asians make up 3.6% of the population. Roughly 13,600 Indians call the Bronx home, along with 9,800 Chinese, 6,540 Filipinos, 2,260 Vietnamese, 2,010 Koreans, and 1,100 Japanese.[citation needed]
Multiracial Americans are also a sizable minority in the Bronx. People of multiracial heritage number over 41,800 individuals and represent 3.0% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and African American heritage number over 6,850 members and form 0.5% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Native American heritage number over 2,450 members and form 0.2% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage number over 880 members and form 0.1% of the population. People of mixed African American and Native American heritage number over 1,220 members and form 0.1% of the population.[citation needed]
Older estimates
The Census of 1930 counted only 1.0% (12,930) of the Bronx's population as Negro (while making no distinct counts of Hispanic or Spanish-surname residents).[130]
| Foreign or overseas birthplaces of Bronx residents, 1930 and 2000 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 United States Census[130] | 2000 United States Census[131] | ||||
| Total population of the Bronx | 1,265,258 | Total population of the Bronx | 1,332,650 | ||
| All born abroad or overseas‡ | 524,410 | 39.4% | |||
| Puerto Rico | 126,649 | 9.5% | |||
| Foreign-born Whites | 477,342 | 37.7% | All foreign-born | 385,827 | 29.0% |
| White persons born in Russia | 135,210 | 10.7% | Dominican Republic | 124,032 | 9.3% |
| White persons born in Italy | 67,732 | 5.4% | Jamaica | 51,120 | 3.8% |
| White persons born in Poland | 55,969 | 4.4% | Mexico | 20,962 | 1.6% |
| White persons born in Germany | 43,349 | 3.4% | Guyana | 14,868 | 1.1% |
| White persons born in the Irish Free State † | 34,538 | 2.7% | Ecuador | 14,800 | 1.1% |
| Other foreign birthplaces of Whites | 140,544 | 11.1% | Other foreign birthplaces | 160,045 | 12.0% |
| † now the Republic of Ireland | ‡ beyond the 50 states & District of Columbia | ||||
Population and housing
As of the 2010 Census, there were 1,385,108 people living in the Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000. As of the United States Census[132] of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 31,709.3 inhabitants per square mile (12,243.0 inhabitants/km2). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 11,674.8 per square mile (4,507.7/km2).[132] Census estimates place total population of Bronx county at 1,392,002 as of 2012.[133]
There were 463,212 households, out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.[132]
The age distribution of the population in the Bronx were as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.0 males.[132]
Individual and household income
This article needs to be updated. (April 2017) |
The 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median family income was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over. More than half of the neighborhoods in the Bronx are high poverty or extreme poverty areas.[134][135]
From 2015 Census data, the median income for a household was (in 2015 dollars) $34,299. Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2015 dollars): $18,456 with persons in poverty at 30.3%. Per the 2016 Census data, the median income for a household was $35,302. Per capita income was cited at $18,896.[136][137]
Culture and institutions
Author Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life (1846 to 1849) in the Bronx at Poe Cottage, now at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. A small wooden farmhouse built around 1812, the cottage once commanded unobstructed vistas over the rolling Bronx hills to the shores of Long Island.[140] Poe moved there to get away from the Manhattan city air and crowding in hope that the then rural area would be beneficial for his wife's tuberculosis. It was in the Bronx that Poe wrote one of his most famous works, "Annabel Lee".[141]
More than a century later, the Bronx would evolve from a hot bed of Latin jazz to an incubator of hip hop as documented in the award-winning documentary, produced by City Lore and broadcast on PBS in 2006, "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale."[142] Hip hop first emerged in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. The New York Times has identified 1520 Sedgwick Avenue "an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway and hard along the Major Deegan Expressway" as a starting point, where DJ Kool Herc presided over parties in the community room.[143][144] The 2016 Netflix series The Get Down is based on the development of hip hop in 1977 in the South Bronx.[145] Ten years earlier, the Bronx Opera had been founded.
Founding of hip-hop
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a D.J. and M.C. at a party in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx adjacent to the Cross Bronx Expressway.[146] While it was not the actual "Birthplace of Hip Hop" – the genre developed slowly in several places in the 1970s – it was verified to be the place where one of the pivotal and formative events occurred.[146] Specifically:
[Cool Herc] extended an instrumental beat (mixing or scratching) to let people dance longer (B-boying) and began MC'ing (rapping) during the extended breakdancing. ... [This] helped lay the foundation for a cultural revolution.
Beginning with the advent of beat match DJing, in which Bronx disc jockeys including Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc extended the breaks of funk records, a major new musical genre emerged that sought to isolate the percussion breaks of hit funk, disco and soul songs. As hip hop's popularity grew, performers began speaking ("rapping") in sync with the beats, and became known as MCs or emcees. The Herculoids, made up of Herc, Coke La Rock, and Clark Kent,[a] were the earliest to gain major fame. The Bronx is referred to in hip-hop slang as "The Boogie Down Bronx", or just "The Boogie Down". This was hip-hop pioneer KRS-One's inspiration for his group BDP, or Boogie Down Productions, which included DJ Scott La Rock. Newer hip hop artists from the Bronx include Big Pun, Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, Camp Lo, Swizz Beatz, Drag-On, Fat Joe, Terror Squad, Cory Gunz, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, French Montana, Cardi B, and Ice Spice among others.[147]
Hush Hip Hop Tours, a tour company founded in 2002 by local licensed sightseeing tour guide Debra Harris,[148] has established a sightseeing tour of the Bronx showcasing the locations that helped shape hip hop culture, and features some of the pioneers of hip hop as tour guides. The Bronx's recognition as an important center of African-American culture has led Fordham University to establish the Bronx African-American History Project (BAAHP).[149]
Sports
The Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees, nicknamed "the Bronx Bombers", of Major League Baseball.[150] The original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 on 161st Street and River Avenue, a year that saw the Yankees bring home the first of their 27 World Series Championships. With the famous façade, the short right field porch and Monument Park, Yankee Stadium has been home to many of baseball's greatest players including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.[151]
The original stadium was the scene of Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech in 1939, Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Roger Maris' record breaking 61st home run in 1961, and Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs to clinch Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. The Stadium was the former home of the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1956 to 1973.
The original Yankee Stadium closed in 2008 to make way for a new Yankee Stadium in which the team started play in 2009. It is north-northeast of the 1923 Yankee Stadium, on the former site of Macombs Dam Park. The current Yankee Stadium is also the home of New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who began play in 2015.
Off-Off-Broadway
The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Some artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge on the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002. However, rising prices directly correlate to a housing shortage across the city and the entire metro area.
Arts
The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, founded in 1998 by Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez, provides dance, theatre and art workshops, festivals and performances focusing on contemporary and modern art in relation to race, gender and sexuality. It is home to the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre, a contemporary dance company, and the Bronx Dance Coalition. The academy was formerly in the American Bank Note Company Building before relocating to a venue on the grounds of St. Peter's Episcopal Church.[152]
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent an expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica that would double the museum's size to 33,000 square feet (3,100 m2).[153]
The Bronx has also become home to a peculiar poetic tribute in the form of the "Heinrich Heine Memorial", better known as the Lorelei Fountain. After Heine's German birthplace of Düsseldorf had rejected, allegedly for anti-Semitic motives, a centennial monument to the radical German-Jewish poet (1797–1856), his incensed German-American admirers, including Carl Schurz, started a movement to place one instead in Midtown Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. However, this intention was thwarted by a combination of ethnic antagonism, aesthetic controversy and political struggles over the institutional control of public art.[154] In 1899, the memorial by Ernst Gustav Herter was placed in Joyce Kilmer Park, near the Yankee Stadium. In 1999, it was moved to 161st Street and the Concourse.
Maritime heritage
The peninsular borough's maritime heritage is acknowledged in several ways. The City Island Historical Society and Nautical Museum occupies a former public school designed by the New York City school system's turn-of-the-last-century master architect C. B. J. Snyder. The state's Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (on the southeastern shore) houses the Maritime Industry Museum.[155] In addition, the Harlem River is reemerging as "Scullers' Row"[156] due in large part to the efforts of the Bronx River Restoration Project,[157] a joint public-private endeavor of the city's parks department. Canoeing and kayaking on the borough's namesake river have been promoted by the Bronx River Alliance. The river is also straddled by the New York Botanical Gardens, its neighbor, the Bronx Zoo, and a little further south, on the west shore, Bronx River Art Center.[158]
Community celebrations
"Bronx Week", traditionally held in May, began as a one-day celebration. Begun by Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan and supported by then borough president Robert Abrams, the original one-day program was based on the "Bronx Borough Day" festival which took place in the 1920s. The following year, at the height of the decade's civil unrest, the festival was extended to a one-week event. In the 1980s the key event, the "Bronx Ball", was launched. The week includes the Bronx Week Parade as well as inductions into the "Bronx Walk of Fame."[159]
Various Bronx neighborhoods conduct their own community celebrations. The Arthur Avenue "Little Italy" neighborhood conducts an annual Autumn Ferragosto Festival that celebrates Italian culture.[160] Hunts Point hosts an annual "Fish Parade and Summer Festival" at the start of summer.[161] Edgewater Park hosts an annual "Ragamuffin" children's walk in November.[162] There are several events to honor the borough's veterans.[163] Albanian Independence Day is also observed.[164]
There are also parades to celebrate Dominican, Italian, and Irish heritage.[165][166][167]
Press and broadcasting
The Bronx is home to several local newspapers and radio and television studios.
Newspapers
The Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Bronx Daily, The Bronx News,[168] Parkchester News, City News, The Norwood News, The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Review, The Bronx Times Reporter, Inner City Press[169] (which now has more of a focus on national issues) and Co-op City Times. Four non-profit news outlets, Norwood News, Mount Hope Monitor, Mott Haven Herald and The Hunts Point Express serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of The Riverdale Press, Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)
The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, The Bronx Home News, which started publishing on January 20, 1907, and merged into the New York Post in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.
Radio and television
One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, a National Public Radio-affiliated 50,000-watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna was relocated to the top an apartment building owned by Montefiore Medical Center, which expanded the reach of the station's signal.[170]
The City of New York has an official television station run by NYC Media and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12 The Bronx, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in the Bronx, and the first in New York beyond Manhattan, to have its own cable television provider. The local public-access television station BronxNet originates from Herbert H. Lehman College, the borough's only four year CUNY school, and provides government-access television (GATV) public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents.[171]
Economy
Shopping malls and markets in the Bronx include:
Shopping districts
Prominent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza in Co-op City, The Hub, the Riverdale/Kingsbridge shopping center, and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard, and Broadway. The Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.
The Bronx has three primary shopping centers: The Hub, Gateway Center and Southern Boulevard. The Hub–Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.), in The Hub, is the retail heart of the South Bronx, where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues.[172] It is primarily inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven.[173] The Hub has been called "the Broadway of the Bronx", being likened to the real Broadway in Manhattan and the northwestern Bronx.[174] It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial "bow-tie" created by the geometry of the street.[175] The Hub is part of Bronx Community Board 1.
The Bronx Terminal Market, in the West Bronx, formerly known as Gateway Center, is a shopping center that encompasses less than one million square feet of retail space, built on a 17 acres (7 ha) site that formerly held a wholesale fruit and vegetable market also named Bronx Terminal Market as well as the former Bronx House of Detention, south of Yankee Stadium. The $500 million shopping center, which was completed in 2009, saw the construction of new buildings and two smaller buildings, one new and the other a renovation of an existing building that was part of the original market. The two main buildings are linked by a six-level garage for 2,600 cars. The center's design has earned it a LEED "Silver" designation.[176]
Government and politics
Local government
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" mayor–council system has governed the Bronx. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in the Bronx.
| Borough Presidents of the Bronx | ||
|---|---|---|
| Name | Party | Term † |
| Louis F. Haffen | Democratic | 1898 – Aug. 1909 |
| John F. Murray | Democratic | Aug. 1909–1910 |
| Cyrus C. Miller | Democratic | 1910–1914 |
| Douglas Mathewson | Republican- Fusion | 1914–1918 |
| Henry Bruckner | Democratic | 1918–1934 |
| James J. Lyons | Democratic | 1934–1962 |
| Joseph F. Periconi | Republican- Liberal | 1962–1966 |
| Herman Badillo | Democratic | 1966–1970 |
| Robert Abrams | Democratic | 1970–1979 |
| Stanley Simon | Democratic | 1979 – April 1987 |
| Fernando Ferrer | Democratic | April 1987 – 2002 |
| Adolfo Carrión, Jr. | Democratic | 2002 – March 2009 |
| Rubén Díaz, Jr. | Democratic | May 2009 – 2021 |
| Vanessa Gibson | Democratic | 2022 – |
| † Terms begin and end in January where the month is not specified. | ||
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.[177]
Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations.
Until March 1, 2009, the Borough President of the Bronx was Adolfo Carrión Jr., elected as a Democrat in 2001 and 2005 before retiring early to direct the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy. His successor, Democratic New York State Assembly member Rubén Díaz, Jr. — after winning a special election on April 21, 2009, by a vote of 86.3% (29,420) on the "Bronx Unity" line to 13.3% (4,646) for the Republican district leader Anthony Ribustello on the "People First" line,[178][179] — became Borough President on May 1, 2009. In 2021, Rubén Díaz's Democratic successor, Vanessa Gibson was elected (to begin serving in 2022) with 79.9% of the vote against 13.4% for Janell King (Republican) and 6.5% for Sammy Ravelo (Conservative).
All of the Bronx's currently elected public officials have first won the nomination of the Democratic Party (in addition to any other endorsements). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and annexation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.[180]
Since its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own criminal court system[7] and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Darcel D. Clark has been the Bronx County District Attorney since 2016. Her predecessor was Robert T. Johnson, the District Attorney from 1989 to 2015. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.[181]
The Bronx also has twelve Community Boards, appointed bodies that advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions.
Politics
U.S. Presidential elections
| Year | Republican | Democratic | Third party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | |
| 2020 | 67,740 | 15.88% | 355,374 | 83.29% | 3,579 | 0.84% |
| 2016 | 37,797 | 9.46% | 353,646 | 88.52% | 8,079 | 2.02% |
| 2012 | 29,967 | 8.08% | 339,211 | 91.45% | 1,760 | 0.47% |
| 2008 | 41,683 | 10.93% | 338,261 | 88.71% | 1,378 | 0.36% |
| 2004 | 56,701 | 16.53% | 283,994 | 82.80% | 2,284 | 0.67% |
| 2000 | 36,245 | 11.77% | 265,801 | 86.28% | 6,017 | 1.95% |
| 1996 | 30,435 | 10.52% | 248,276 | 85.80% | 10,639 | 3.68% |
| 1992 | 63,310 | 20.73% | 225,038 | 73.67% | 17,112 | 5.60% |
| 1988 | 76,043 | 25.51% | 218,245 | 73.22% | 3,793 | 1.27% |
| 1984 | 109,308 | 32.76% | 223,112 | 66.86% | 1,263 | 0.38% |
| 1980 | 86,843 | 30.70% | 181,090 | 64.02% | 14,914 | 5.27% |
| 1976 | 96,842 | 28.70% | 238,786 | 70.77% | 1,763 | 0.52% |
| 1972 | 196,754 | 44.60% | 243,345 | 55.16% | 1,075 | 0.24% |
| 1968 | 142,314 | 32.02% | 277,385 | 62.40% | 24,818 | 5.58% |
| 1964 | 135,780 | 25.16% | 403,014 | 74.69% | 800 | 0.15% |
| 1960 | 182,393 | 31.76% | 389,818 | 67.88% | 2,071 | 0.36% |
| 1956 | 257,382 | 42.81% | 343,823 | 57.19% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1952 | 241,898 | 37.34% | 392,477 | 60.59% | 13,420 | 2.07% |
| 1948 | 173,044 | 27.80% | 337,129 | 54.17% | 112,182 | 18.03% |
| 1944 | 211,158 | 31.75% | 450,525 | 67.74% | 3,352 | 0.50% |
| 1940 | 198,293 | 31.77% | 418,931 | 67.11% | 6,980 | 1.12% |
| 1936 | 93,151 | 17.61% | 419,625 | 79.35% | 16,042 | 3.03% |
| 1932 | 76,587 | 19.15% | 281,330 | 70.35% | 42,002 | 10.50% |
| 1928 | 98,636 | 28.68% | 232,766 | 67.67% | 12,545 | 3.65% |
| 1924 | 79,583 | 36.73% | 72,840 | 33.62% | 64,234 | 29.65% |
| 1920 | 106,050 | 56.61% | 45,741 | 24.42% | 35,538 | 18.97% |
| 1916 | 40,938 | 42.55% | 47,870 | 49.76% | 7,396 | 7.69% |
After becoming a separate county in 1914, the Bronx has supported only two Republican presidential candidates. It voted heavily for the winning Republican Warren G. Harding in 1920, but much more narrowly on a split vote for his victorious Republican successor Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (Coolidge 79,562; John W. Davis, Dem., 72,834; Robert La Follette, 62,202 equally divided between the Progressive and Socialist lines).
Since then, the Bronx has always supported the Democratic Party's nominee for president, starting with a vote of 2–1 for the unsuccessful Al Smith in 1928, followed by four 2–1 votes for the successful Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Both had been Governors of New York, but Republican former Gov. Thomas E. Dewey won only 28% of the Bronx's vote in 1948 against 55% for Pres. Harry Truman, the winning Democrat, and 17% for Henry A. Wallace of the Progressives. It was only 32 years earlier, by contrast, that another Republican former Governor who narrowly lost the Presidency, Charles Evans Hughes, had won 42.6% of the Bronx's 1916 vote against Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's 49.8% and Socialist candidate Allan Benson's 7.3%.)[184]
Elections for Mayor of New York
The Bronx has often shown striking differences from other boroughs in elections for Mayor. The only Republican to carry the Bronx since 1914 was Fiorello La Guardia in 1933, 1937, and 1941 (and in the latter two elections, only because his 30% to 32% vote on the American Labor Party line was added to 22% to 23% as a Republican).[185] The Bronx was thus the only borough not carried by the successful Republican re-election campaigns of Mayors Rudolph Giuliani in 1997 and Michael Bloomberg in 2005. The anti-war Socialist campaign of Morris Hillquit in the 1917 mayoral election won over 31% of the Bronx's vote, putting him second and well ahead of the 20% won by the incumbent pro-war Fusion Mayor John P. Mitchel, who came in second (ahead of Hillquit) everywhere else and outpolled Hillquit citywide by 23.2% to 21.7%.[186]
- Republican and Democratic columns for presidential elections also include their candidates' votes on other lines, such as the New York State Right to Life Party and the Working Families Party.
- For details of votes and parties in a particular election, click the year or see New York City mayoral elections.
Education
Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions, many of which draw students who live beyond the Bronx. The New York City Department of Education manages the borough's public noncharter schools.[187] In 2000, public schools enrolled nearly 280,000 of the Bronx's residents over 3 years old (out of 333,100 enrolled in all pre-college schools).[188] There are also several public charter schools. Private schools range from élite independent schools to religiously affiliated schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.
A small portion of land between Pelham and Pelham Bay Park, with 35 houses, is a part of the Bronx, but is cut off from the rest of the borough due to the county boundaries; the New York City government pays for the residents' children to go to Pelham Union Free School District schools, including Pelham Memorial High School, since that is more cost effective than sending school buses to take the students to New York City schools. This arrangement has been in place since 1948.[189]
Educational attainment
In 2000, according to the United States Census, out of the nearly 800,000 people in the Bronx who were then at least 25 years old, 62.3% had graduated from high school and 14.6% held a bachelor's or higher college degree. These percentages were lower than those for New York's other boroughs, which ranged from 68.8% (Brooklyn) to 82.6% (Staten Island) for high school graduates over 24, and from 21.8% (Brooklyn) to 49.4% (Manhattan) for college graduates. (The respective state and national percentages were [NY] 79.1% & 27.4% and [US] 80.4% & 24.4%.)[190]
High schools
In the 2000 Census, 79,240 of the nearly 95,000 Bronx residents enrolled in high school attended public schools.[188]
Many public high schools are in the borough including the elite Bronx High School of Science, Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, DeWitt Clinton High School, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2, Bronx International High School, the School for Excellence, the Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, Wings Academy for young adults, The Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, Validus Preparatory Academy, The Eagle Academy For Young Men, Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School, Bronx Academy of Letters, Herbert H. Lehman High School and High School of American Studies. The Bronx is also home to three of New York City's most prestigious private, secular schools: Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School.
High schools linked to the Catholic Church include: Saint Raymond's Academy for Girls, All Hallows High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Monsignor Scanlan High School, St. Raymond High School for Boys, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, The Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School, Preston High School, St. Catharine Academy, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and St. Barnabas High School.
The SAR Academy and SAR High School are Modern Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva coeducational day schools in Riverdale, with roots in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
In the 1990s, New York City began closing the large, public high schools in the Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Among the reasons cited for the changes were poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include John F. Kennedy, James Monroe, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Morris, Walton, and South Bronx High Schools.
Colleges and universities
In 2000, 49,442 (57.5%) of the 86,014 Bronx residents seeking college, graduate or professional degrees attended public institutions.[188]
Several colleges and universities are in the Bronx.
Fordham University was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Diocese of New York as the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeast. It is now officially an independent institution, but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The 85-acre (340,000 m2) Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill, is the main campus of the university, and is among the largest within the city (other Fordham campuses are in Manhattan and Westchester County).[100]
Three campuses of the City University of New York are in the Bronx: Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University)[191] and Herbert H. Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College), which offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Its campus is also home to the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school.
Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale which offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. It also offers graduate programs in education and engineering.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of the Montefiore Medical Center, is in Morris Park.
The coeducational and non-sectarian Mercy College—with its main campus in Dobbs Ferry—has a Bronx campus near Westchester Square.
The State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)—at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx—is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum. (Directly across Long Island Sound is Kings Point, Long Island, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and the American Merchant Marine Museum.) As of 2017, graduates from the university earned an average annual salary of $144,000, the highest of any university graduates in the United States.[192]
In addition, the private, proprietary Monroe College, focused on preparation for business and the professions, started in the Bronx in 1933 and now has a campus in New Rochelle (Westchester County) as well the Bronx's Fordham neighborhood.[193]
Transportation
Roads and streets
Surface streets
The Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.
The East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a misalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.
Three major north–south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north–south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.
Most east–west streets are prefixed with either East or West, to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line).[194]
The historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east–west in some places, and sometimes northeast–southwest.
Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths.
As of the 2000 Census, approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.[195]
Highways
Several major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include:
- the Bronx River Parkway
- the Bruckner Expressway (I-278/I-95)
- the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95/I-295)
- the New England Thruway (I-95)
- the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY-9A)
- the Hutchinson River Parkway
- the Major Deegan Expressway (I-87)
Bridges and tunnels
Thirteen bridges and three tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan, and three bridges connect the Bronx to Queens. These are, from west to east:
To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).
To both Manhattan and Queens: the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, formerly known as the Triborough Bridge.
To Queens: the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.
Mass transit
The Bronx is served by seven New York City Subway services along six physical lines, with 70 stations in the Bronx:[196]
- IND Concourse Line (B and D trains)
- IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line (1 train)
- IRT Dyre Avenue Line (5 train)
- IRT Jerome Avenue Line (4 train)
- IRT Pelham Line (6 and <6> trains)
- IRT White Plains Road Line (2 and 5 trains)
There are also many MTA Regional Bus Operations bus routes in the Bronx. This includes local and express routes as well as Bee-Line Bus System routes.[197]
Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, some trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Plaza. As part of Penn Station Access, the 2018 MTA budget funded construction of four new stops along the New Haven Line to serve Hunts Point, Parkchester, Morris Park, and Co-op City.[198]
In 2018, NYC Ferry's Soundview line opened, connecting the Soundview landing in Clason Point Park to three East River locations in Manhattan. On December 28, 2021; the Throgs Neck Ferry landing at Ferry Point Park in Throgs Neck was opened providing an additional stop on the Soundview line.[199] The ferry is operated by Hornblower Cruises.[200]
In popular culture
Film and television
Mid-20th century
Mid-20th century movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely settled, working-class, urban culture. From This Day Forward (1946), set in Highbridge, occasionally delved into Bronx life. The most notable examinations of working class Bronx life were Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning Marty[201] and his 1956 film The Catered Affair. Other films that portrayed life in the Bronx are: the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale, Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, which focused on an Italian-American Bronx community in the 1970s, 1994's I Like It Like That which takes place in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and Doughboys, the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.
The Bronx's gritty urban life had worked its way into the movies even earlier, with depictions of the "Bronx cheer", a loud flatulent-like sound of disapproval, allegedly first made by New York Yankees fans. The sound can be heard, for example, on the Spike Jones and His City Slickers recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face" (from the 1942 Disney animated film of the same name), repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"[202][203]
Symbolism
Starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the observation that "The Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both an editorial in The New York Times and a BBC documentary film.[204] The line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell is wrongly remembered to have said something like, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City often point to Cosell's remark as an acknowledgement of both the city and the borough's decline.[205] A feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagán called Bronx Burning chronicled what led up to the many arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s in the borough.[206][207]
Bronx gang life was depicted in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors, the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way out of the borough and get back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. A Bronx Tale (1993) depicts gang activities in the Belmont "Little Italy" section of the Bronx. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (a play off the name Gun Hill Road). This theme lends itself to the title of The Bronx Is Burning, an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series. The TV series emphasizes the team's boisterous nature, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson, as well as the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the city's serious financial woes and near bankruptcy, the arson for insurance payments, and the election of Ed Koch as mayor.
The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx is another film that used the Bronx's gritty image for its storyline. The movie's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx which was nicknamed "Fort Apache". Also from 1981 is the horror film Wolfen making use of the rubble of the Bronx as a home for werewolf type creatures. Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is another film also set in the Bronx released in 2005. The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000, an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!" Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in Queens, substituting as the Bronx. Rumble in the Bronx, filmed in Vancouver, was a 1995 Jackie Chan kung-fu film, another which popularized the Bronx to international audiences. Last Bronx, a 1996 Sega game played on the bad reputation of the Bronx to lend its name to an alternate version of post-Japanese bubble Tokyo, where crime and gang warfare is rampant.
Literature
Books
The Bronx has been featured significantly in fiction literature. All of the characters in Herman Wouk's City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder (1948) live in the Bronx, and about half of the action is set there. Kate Simon's Bronx Primitive: Portraits of a Childhood (1982) is directly autobiographical, a warm account of a Polish-Jewish girl in an immigrant family growing up before World War II, and living near Arthur Avenue and Tremont Avenue.[208] In Jacob M. Appel's short story, "The Grand Concourse" (2007),[209] a woman who grew up in the iconic Lewis Morris Building returns to the Morrisania neighborhood with her adult daughter. Similarly, in Avery Corman's book The Old Neighborhood (1980),[210] an upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse), and learns that even though the folks are poor, Hispanic and African-American, they are good people.
By contrast, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)[211] portrays a wealthy, white protagonist, Sherman McCoy, getting lost off the Bruckner Expressway in the South Bronx and having an altercation with locals. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Courthouse. However, times change, and in 2007, The New York Times reported that "the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman's accident are now dotted with townhouses and apartments." In the same article, the Reverend Al Sharpton (whose fictional analogue in the novel is "Reverend Bacon") asserts that "twenty years later, the cynicism of The Bonfire of the Vanities is as out of style as Tom Wolfe's wardrobe."[212]
Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997) is also set in the Bronx and offers a perspective on the area from the 1950s onward.[213]
Poetry
In poetry, the Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets:
The Bronx?
No Thonx
Ogden Nash, The New Yorker, 1931
Nash repented 33 years after his calumny, penning in 1964 the following prose poem to the Dean of Bronx Community College:[214]
I can't seem to escape
the sins of my smart-alec youth;
Here are my amends.
I wrote those lines, "The Bronx?
No thonx";
I shudder to confess them.
Now I'm an older, wiser man
I cry, "The Bronx?
God bless them!"[75]
In 2016, W. R. Rodriguez published Bronx Trilogy—consisting of the shoe shine parlor poems et al, concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx, and from the banks of brook avenue. The trilogy celebrates Bronx people, places, and events. DeWitt Clinton High School, St. Mary's Park, and Brook Avenue are a few of the schools, parks, and streets Rodriguez uses as subjects for his poems.[215]
Nash's couplet "The Bronx? No Thonx" and his subsequent blessing are mentioned in Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough, edited by Llyod Ultan and Barbara Unger and published in 2000. The book, which includes the work of Yiddish poets, offers a selection from Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, as his Aunt Elanor and his mother, Naomi, lived near Woodlawn Cemetery. Also featured is Ruth Lisa Schecther's poem, "Bronx", which is described as a celebration of the borough's landmarks. There is a selection of works from poets such as Sandra María Esteves, Milton Kessler, Joan Murray, W. R. Rodriguez, Myra Shapiro, Gayl Teller, and Terence Wynch.[216]
"Bronx Migrations" by Michelle M. Tokarczyk is a collection that spans five decades of Tokarczyk's life in the Bronx, from her exodus in 1962 to her return in search of her childhood tenement.[217][218]
Bronx Memoir Project
Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1 is a published anthology by the Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past.[219] The Bronx Memoir Project was created as an ongoing collaboration between the Bronx Council on the Arts and other cultural institutions, including the Bronx Documentary Center, the Bronx Library Center, the (Edgar Allan) Poe Park Visitor Center, Mindbuilders, and other institutions and funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.[220][221] The goal was to develop and refine memoir fragments written by people of all walks of life that share a common bond residing within the Bronx.[220]
Songs
- "Jenny from the Block" (2002) by[222]Jennifer Lopez,[223] from the album This is me...Then is specifically about the South Bronx, where Lopez grew up.[224]
- In Marc Ferris's 5-page, 15-column list of "Songs and Compositions Inspired by New York City" in The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995),[225] only a handful refer to the Bronx; most refer to New York City proper, especially Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ferris's extensive but selective 1995 list mentions only four songs referring specifically to the Bronx: "On the Banks of the Bronx" (1919), by William LeBaron & Victor Jacobi; "Bronx Express" (1922), by Henry Creamer, Ossip Dymow & Turner Layton; "The Tremont Avenue Cruisewear Fashion Show" (1973), by Jerry Livingston & Mark David; and "I Love the New York Yankees" (1987), by Paula Lindstrom.
Theater
Clifford Odets's play Awake and Sing is set in 1933 in the Bronx. The play, first produced at the Belasco Theater in 1935, concerns a poor family living in small quarters, the struggles of the controlling parents and the aspirations of their children.[226]
René Marqués The Oxcart (1959), concerns a rural Puerto Rican family who immigrate to the Bronx for a better life.[227]
A Bronx Tale is an autobiographical one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri. It is a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx. It premiered in Los Angeles in the 1980s and then played on Off-Broadway. After a film version involving Palminteri and Robert DeNiro, Palminteri performed his one-man show on Broadway and on tour in 2007.[228]
See also
References
Notes
- ^ Not Clark Kent (producer).
Citations
- ^ a b "2020 Census Demographic Data Map Viewer". US Census Bureau. Retrieved August 12, 2021.
- ^ Moynihan, Colin. "F.Y.I.", The New York Times, September 19, 1999. Accessed December 17, 2019. "There are well-known names for inhabitants of four boroughs: Manhattanites, Brooklynites, Bronxites and Staten Islanders. But what are residents of Queens called?"
- ^ Local Area Gross Domestic Product, 2020, Bureau of Economic Analysis, released December 12, 2019. Accessed December 17, 2019.
- ^ a b New York State Department of Health, Population, Land Area, and Population Density by County, New York State – 2010, retrieved on August 8, 2015.
- ^ "P2: HISPANIC OR LATINO, AND NOT HISPANIC OR LATINO BY RACE". 2020 Census. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
- ^ a b c Lloyd Ultann, "History of the Bronx River", June 19, 2019, at the Wayback Machine Paper presented to the Bronx River Alliance, November 5, 2002 (notes taken by Maarten de Kadt, November 16, 2002), retrieved on August 29, 2008. This 2+1⁄2 hour talk covers much of the early history of the Bronx as a whole, in addition to the Bronx River.
- ^ a b c On the start of business for Bronx County: Bronx County In Motion. New Officials All Find Work to Do on Their First Day. The New York Times, January 3, 1914 (PDF retrieved on June 26, 2008):
- "Despite the fact that the new Bronx County Court House is not completed there was no delay yesterday in getting the court machinery in motion. All the new county officials were on hand and the County Clerk, the District Attorney, the Surrogate, and the County Judge soon had things in working order. The seal to be used by the new county was selected by County Judge Louis D. Gibbs. It is circular. In the center is a seated figure of Justice. To her right is an American shield and over the figure is written 'Populi Suprema.' ..."
- "Surrogate George M. S. Schulz, with his office force, was busy at the stroke of 9 o'clock. Two wills were filed in the early morning, but owing to the absence of a safe they were recorded and then returned to the attorneys for safe keeping. ..."
- "There was a rush of business to the new County Clerk's office. Between seventy-five and a hundred men applied for first naturalization papers. Two certificates of incorporation were issued, and seventeen judgments, seven lis pendens, three mechanics' liens and one suit for negligence were filed."
- "Sheriff O'Brien announced several additional appointments."
- ^ a b Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is blooming! by Beth J. Harpaz, Travel Editor of The Associated Press (AP), June 30, 2008, retrieved on July 11, 2008 May 1, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Conde, Ed García (July 31, 2017). "12 Bronx Facts You Probably Didn't Know". Welcome2TheBronx™. Retrieved September 28, 2020.
- ^ Wylie, Jonathon (1987). The Faroe Islands: Interpretations of History. University of Kentucky Press. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-8131-1578-8.
Jónas Bronck (or Brunck) was the son of Morten Jespersen Bronck ... Jónas seems to have gone to school in Roskilde in 1619, but found his way to Holland where he joined an expedition to Amsterdam.
- ^ * . Bronx Notables. Bronx Historical Society. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2012.
- van Laer, A. J. F. (October 1916). "Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630–1674". The American Historical Review. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. 22 (1): 164–166. doi:10.1086/ahr/22.1.164. JSTOR 1836219. ... Jonas Bronck was a Dane ...
- Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (Michael L.) (1999). Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898. Vol. 1. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 30–37. ISBN 0-19-511634-8.
... many of these colonists, perhaps as many as half of them, represented the same broad mixture of nationalities as New Amsterdam itself. Among them were Swedes, Germans, French, Belgians, Africans, and Danes (such as a certain Jonas Bronck)...
- ^ a b Van Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold (1909). History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. 1. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 161. OCLC 649654938.
- ^ Braver (1998)
- ^ "datatables". www.frac.org. Retrieved October 23, 2018.
- ^ The Almanac of American Politics 2008, edited by Michael Barone with Richard E. Cohen and Grant Ujifusa, National Journal Group, Washington, D.C., 2008 ISBN 978-0-89234-117-7 (paperback) or ISBN 978-0-89234-116-0 (hardback), chapter on New York state
- ^ U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003, Section 31, Table 1384. Congressional District Profiles – 108th Congress: 2000
- ^ See the "Historical Populations" table in History above and its sources.
- ^ "Bronx History: What's in a Name?". New York Public Library. Retrieved March 15, 2008.
The Native Americans called the land Rananchqua, but the Dutch and English began to refer to it as Broncksland.
- ^ "Harding Park". New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Retrieved March 15, 2008.
- ^ Ellis, Edward Robb (1966). The Epic of New York City. Old Town Books. p. 55. ISBN 0-7867-1436-0.
- ^ a b Hansen, Harry (1950). North of Manhattan. Hastings House. OCLC 542679., excerpted at The Bronx ... Its History & Perspective
- ^ van Laer, A. J. F. (1916). "Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630–1674". The American Historical Review. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. 22 (1): 164–166. doi:10.2307/1836219. JSTOR 1836219.
... Jonas Bronck was a Swede ...
- ^ Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (Michael L.) (1999). Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898. Vol. 1. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 30–37. ISBN 0-19-511634-8.
…many of these colonists, perhaps as many as half of them, represented the same broad mixture of nationalities as New Amsterdam itself. Among them were Swedes, Germans, French, Belgians, Africans, and Danes (such as a certain Jonas Bronck)...
- ^ "The first Bronxite". The Advocate. Bronx County Bar Association. 24: 59. 1977.
It is widely accepted that Bronck came from Sweden, but claims have also been made by the Frisian Islands on the North Sea coast and by a small town in Germany.
- ^ Karl Ritter, "Swedish town celebrates link to the Bronx" Associated Press, August 21, 2014. which also refers to a claim by the Faeroe Islands.
- ^ "The Bronx Mall – Cultural Mosaic – The Bronx... Its History & Perspective". Bronxmall.com. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
- ^ "Excerpts from an Interview with William Bronk by Mark Katzman". uiuc.edu.
- ^ Roberts, Sam (August 19, 2014). "A Bronck in the Bronx Gives a Swedish Town a Reason to Cheer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 1, 2022.
- ^ See, for example, New York City Administrative Code §2–202 September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ See, for example, references on the New York City website May 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "ZIP Code Lookup". United States Postal Service.
Note that the database also does not use punctuation, and other articles (such as the) to improve automated scanning of addresses.
- ^ Clarke, Erin "What's in a Name: How 'The' Bronx Got the 'The'", NY1, June 7, 2015, Retrieved on February 6, 2016.
- ^ Steven Hess, "From The Hague to the Bronx: Definite Articles in Place Names", Journal of the North Central Name Society, Fall 1987.
- ^ Rev. David J. Born (who asserts it was a Jakob Bronck and his family who settled there), letter to William F. Buckley Jr. in , National Review, January 28, 2002, retrieved on July 3, 2008.
- ^ "3. Capitalization Rules" (PDF). gpo.gov. United States Government Publishing Office. p. 29. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
- ^ "Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan Marks 15 Years in Office". The Office of The Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ "Why The Bronx?". The New York Times. May 9, 1993. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 27, 2016.
- ^ a b Slattery, Denis. "Bronx residents call on media and city agencies to capitalize 'The Bronx'". nydailynews.com. New York Daily News. Retrieved July 27, 2016.
- ^ a b (PDF). New York City Department of Environmental Protection. June 30, 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 11, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
- ^ "Dyckman House – History". fordham.edu.
- ^ Stephen Jenkins (1912). The Story of the Bronx from the Purchase Made by the Dutch from the Indians in 1639 to the Present Day. G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 177–208. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
- ^ For Jordan L. Mott:
- John Thomas Scharf (1886). History of Westchester County: New York, Including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which Have Been Annexed to New York City. L. E. Preston & Company. pp. 830–832.
- Troxell Freedley, Edwin; Young, Edward (1868). A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860...: Comprising Annals of the Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures and Useful Arts, with a Notice of the Important Inventions, Tariffs, and the Results of Each Decennial Census. E. Young. pp. 576–578.
- ^ a b c Thorne, Kathryn Ford (1993). Long, John H. (ed.). New York Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Simon & Schuster. pp. 33, 118–133. ISBN 0-13-051962-6.
- ^ New York. Laws of New York. 1873, 96th Session, Chapter 613, Section 1. p. 928.
- ^ Articles on "consolidation" (by David C. Hammack) and the "Bronx" (by David C. Hermalyn and Lloyd Ultan) in The Encyclopedia of New York City, Yale 1995
- ^ New York. Laws of New York. 1895, 118th Session, Chapter 934, Section 1. p. 1948.
- ^ Peck, Richard. "In the Bronx, the Gentry Live On; The Gentry Live On", The New York Times, December 2, 1973. Accessed July 17, 2008. "But the Harlem riverfront was industrializing, and in 1874 the city annexed the area west of the Bronx River: Morrisania, West Farms and Kingsbridge. A second annexation in 1894 gathered in Westchester and portions of Eastchester and Pelham." However, 1894 must refer to the referendum, since the enabling act was not passed or signed until 1895.
- ^ New York. Laws of New York. 1912, 135th Session, Chapter 548, Section 1. p. 1352.
- ^ a b Steinhauer, Jennifer. "F.Y.I.", The New York Times, October 10, 1993. Accessed August 23, 2021. "Marble Hill's Exile Q. Why is there a small piece of Manhattan in the Bronx?. ... A. Marble Hill was originally attached to the northern part of Manhattan, but was severed in 1895 when the city deepened and straightened the waterway that connected the Hudson River to what was known as Spuyten Duyvil Creek (Dutch for 'in Spite of the Devil', thought to be a reference to the trouble it took to cross it). ... Around 1914, Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled in and the area became physically a part of the Bronx, but it remained politically part of Manhattan."
- ^ a b Olmsted (1989); Olmsted (1998)
- ^ "Piano Workers May Strike" (PDF). The New York Times. August 29, 1919. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
- ^ Christopher Gray, "Streetscapes: The New York Coliseum; From Auditorium To Bus Garage to...", The New York Times, Real Estate section, March 22, 1992, retrieved on July 2, 2008
- ^ The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1943, page 494, citing the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Statistical Bureau of the Synagogue Council of America
- ^ Seymour J. Perlin, "Remembrance of Synagogues Past: The Lost Civilization of the Jewish South Bronx" (retrieved on August 10, 2008), citing population estimates in "The Jewish Community Study of New York: 2002", UJA [United Jewish Appeal] Federation of New York, June 2004, and his own survey of synagogue sites.
- ^ "Prohibition".
- ^ "The Bronx". chsserver01.org. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
- ^ Caro, Robert (1974). The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-48076-3. OCLC 834874.
- ^ . American Realities. Archived from the original on August 12, 2014. Retrieved December 23, 2014.
- ^ Roderick Wallace (October 1988). "A synergism of plagues: 'planned shrinkage', contagious housing destruction, and AIDS in the Bronx". Environmental Research, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 1–33. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
- ^ Roderick Wallace (1990). "Urban desertification, public health and public order: 'planned shrinkage', violent death, substance abuse and AIDS in the Bronx", Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 37, No. 7 (1990) pp. 801–813. Retrieved July 18, 2022. "Empirical and theoretical analyses strongly imply present sharply rising levels of violent death, intensification of deviant behaviors implicated in the spread of AIDS, and the pattern of the AIDS outbreak itself, have been gravely affected, and even strongly determined, by the outcomes of a program of 'planned shrinkage' directed against African-American and Hispanic communities, and implemented through systematic and continuing denial of municipal services—particularly fire extinguishment resources—essential for maintaining urban levels of population density and ensuring community stability."
- ^ Issues such as redlining, hospital quality, and what looked like the planned shrinkage of garbage collection were alleged as the motivations which sparked the Puerto Rican activists known as the Young Lords. The Young Lords coalesced with similar groups who claimed to be fighting for neighborhood empowerment, such as the Black Panthers, to protest urban renewal and arson for profit with sit-ins, marches, and violence. See pages 6–9 of the guide to "¡Palante Siempre Palante! The Young Lords" March 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, a "point of view" documentary on PBS.
- ^ . Time. October 31, 1977. Archived from the original on June 15, 2008. Retrieved March 14, 2008.
- ^ a b Gonzalez (2004)
- ^ "Perspectives: The 10-Year Housing Plan; Issues for the 90's: Management and Costs", The New York Times, January 7, 1990
- ^ "Neighborhood Change and the City of New York's Ten-Year Housing Plan. Housing Policy Debate, Volume 10, Issue 4. Fannie Mae Foundation 1999.
- ^ NOS QUEDAMOS/WE STAY "Melrose Commons, Bronx, New York" August 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Sustainable Communities Network Case Studies. Sustainability in Action, 1997, retrieved on July 6, 2008
- ^ David Gonzalez, "Yolanda Garcia, 53, Dies; A Bronx Community Force", The New York Times, February 19, 2005, retrieved on July 6, 2008
- ^ Meera Subramanian, "Homes and Gardens in the South Bronx", August 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Portfolio, November 8, 2005, New York University Department of Journalism, retrieved on July 6, 2008
- ^ Powell, Michael (July 27, 2011). "How the South Bronx's Ruins Became Fertile Ground". City Room. The New York Times. Retrieved November 1, 2015.
- ^ "Wealthy are drowning in new bank branches, says study" July 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, New York Daily News, September 10, 2007
- ^ "Superintendent Neiman Addresses the Ninth Annual Bronx Bankers Breakfast", June 15, 2007 January 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Among the remarks of Richard H. Neiman, New York State's Superintendent of Banks, were these: "The Bronx was an economically stable community until the mid-1960s when the entire South Bronx struggled with major construction, real estate issues, red-lining, and block busting. This included a thoroughfare that divided communities, the deterioration of property as a result of rent control, and decrease in the value of real estate. Due to strong community leadership, advances in policing, social services, and changing economic migration patterns to New York City, the Bronx is undergoing a resurgence, with new housing developments and thriving business. From 2000 to 2006, there was a 2.2% increase in population, and home ownership rates increased by 19.6%. Still, bank branches were absent in places such as Community districts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 12."
- ^ "New bank targets Latinos in South Bronx" December 11, 2007
- ^ On June 30, 2005, there were 129 federally insured banking offices in the Bronx, for a ratio of 1.0 offices for every 10,000 inhabitants. By contrast the national financial center of Manhattan had 555 for a ratio of 3.5/10,000, Staten Island a ratio of 1.9, Queens 1.7 and Brooklyn 1.1. In New York State as a whole the ratio was 2.6 and in the United States, 3.5 (a single office can serve more people in a more densely populated area). U.S. Census Bureau, , City and County Data Book, 2007. For 1997 and 2007, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, "Summary of Deposits; summary tables", December 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Deposits of all FDIC-Insured Institutions Operating in New York: State Totals by County – all retrieved on July 15–16, 2008.
- ^ Smalls, F. Romall (July 20, 1997). "The Bronx Is Named an 'All-America' City". The New York Times. Retrieved November 1, 2015.
- ^ a b Williams, Timothy (June 27, 2006). "Celebrities Now Give Thonx for Their Roots in the Bronx". The New York Times. Retrieved March 14, 2008.
- ^ Topousis, Tom (July 23, 2007). . New York Post. Archived from the original on January 11, 2009. Retrieved March 15, 2008.
- ^ Kaysen, Rhonda (September 17, 2015). "The South Bronx Beckons". The New York Times.
- ^ Slattery, Denis (September 15, 2014). "The Bronx is booming with boutique and luxury hotels". Daily News. New York City.
- ^ "NYC Post Offices to observe Presidents' Day". June 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. United States Postal Service. February 11, 2009. Retrieved on May 5, 2009.
- ^ ""Post Office Location – BRONX GPO". United States Postal Service. Retrieved on May 5, 2009.
- ^ Anthony, Madeline (March 18–24, 2016). "Bronx GPO conversion to retail space in motion". Bronx Times Reporter. p. 28.
- ^ "Residents fear gentrification around Ice Center". News 12: The Bronx. February 17, 2016.
- ^ Wirsing, Robert (February 12, 2016). "Concourse Yard revisited as 'new' development site". Bronx Times Reporter.
- ^ Cruz, David (June 17, 2021). "The Bronx Has The Highest Crime Rate In NYC. What Do Locals Want The Next Mayor To Do About It?". The Gothamist. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ^ "Epi Data Brief: Unintentional Drug Poisoning (Overdose) Deaths in New York City in 2020" (PDF). New York City Health. November 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ^ Venugopal, Arun (January 19, 2022). "Fatal Fire In The Bronx: Tragedy Rooted In The Past". The Gothamist. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ^ Seiden, Aidan (January 25, 2022). "Report finds the Bronx was the coldest borough with several heat complaints this winter | amNewYork". Amny.com. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
- ^ Sisk, Richard (September 29, 2010). "South Bronx is poorest district in nation, U.S. Census Bureau finds: 38% live below poverty line". New York Daily News. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
- ^ "The Poorest Congressional District in America? Right Here, in New York City". The Village Voice. September 30, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2022.
- ^ a b . United States Census Bureau. August 22, 2012. Archived from the original on May 19, 2014. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
- ^ . National Association of Counties. Archived from the original on May 31, 2011. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
- ^ The fact that the immediate layer of bedrock in the Bronx is Fordham gneiss, while that of Manhattan is schist has led to the expression: "The Bronx is gneiss (nice) but Manhattan is schist." Eldredge, Niles and Horenstein, Sidney (2014). Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 42, n1. ISBN 978-0-520-27015-2.
- ^ Berger, Joseph (July 19, 2010). "Reclaimed Jewel Whose Attraction Can Be Perilous". The New York Times. Retrieved July 21, 2010.
- ^ Bronx High Point and Ascent of Bronx Point on June 24, 2008 at Peakbaggers.com, retrieved on July 22, 2008
- ^ Waterfront Development Initiative September 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Bronx Borough President's office, March 19, 2004, retrieved on July 29, 2008
- ^ Last Section Of Macombs Dam Park Closes To The Public For Redevelopment On-site construction begins on Garage A and the New Macombs Dam Park, Press Release, November 1, 2007, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation retrieved on July 19, 2008
- ^ "Future Of New Wards; New-York's Possession in Westchester County Rapidly Developing; Trolley and Steam Road Systems Vast Areas Being Brought Close to the Heart of the City – Miles of New Streets and Sewers. Botanical and Zoological Gardens. Advantages That Will Soon Relieve Crowded Sections of the City of Thousands of Their Inhabitants." The New York Times, Wednesday, May 17, 1896, page 15. Accessed August 23, 2021. This is a very useful glimpse into the state of the Bronx (and the hopes of Manhattan's pro-Consolidation forces) as parks, housing and transit were all being rapidly developed.
- ^ What Is New York's Greenest Borough? Probably Not the One You Think. by David Gonzales of The New York Times, December 5, 2022
- ^ "Van Cortlandt Park : NYC Parks". Nycgovparks.org. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
- ^ a b In September 2008, Fordham University and its neighbor, the Wildlife Conservation Society, a global research organization which operates the Bronx Zoo, will begin a joint program leading to a Master of Science degree in adolescent science education (biology grades 7–12).
- ^ a b Van der Plank, J. E. (1965). "Dynamics of Epidemics of Plant Disease". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 147 (3654): 120–124. Bibcode:1965Sci...147..120V. doi:10.1126/science.147.3654.120. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17790685. S2CID 220109549.
- ^ Jerome Park (New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, retrieved on July 12, 2008).
- ^ Crotona Park New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, retrieved on July 20, 2008
- ^ Article on the Bronx by Gary Hermalyn and Lloyd Ultan in The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995 – see Further reading for bibliographic details)
- ^ Bronx Parks for the 21st Century June 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, retrieved on July 20, 2008. This links to both an interactive map and a downloadable (1.7 MB PDF) map showing nearly every public park and green space in the Bronx.
- ^ As Maps and Memories Fade, So Do Some Bronx Boundary Lines by Manny Fernandez, The New York Times, September 16, 2006, retrieved on August 3, 2008
- ^ a b "Unlock the Grid, Then Ditch the Maps and Apps". February 24, 2012. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
- ^ . Archived from the original on December 27, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
- ^ Most correlations with Community Board jurisdictions in this section come from Bronx Community Boards at the Bronx Mall web-site, and New York: a City of Neighborhoods September 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, New York City Department of City Planning, both retrieved on August 5, 2008
- ^ Fischler, Marcelle Sussman (September 13, 2015). "City Island, a Quainter Side of the Bronx". The New York Times. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
- ^ Walshe, Sadhbh (June 3, 2015). "'Like a prison for the dead': welcome to Hart Island, home to New York City's pauper graves". The Guardian. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
- ^ Fieldston Property Owners' Association, Inc. By-Laws July 21, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, by the FPOA, September 17, 2006
- ^ Areas touching Bronx County, MapIt. Accessed August 1, 2016.
- ^ "NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals Quick Access". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved August 12, 2021.
- ^ (1) Population 1790–1960: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1966, page 452, citing estimates of the Department of Health, City of New York.
(2) Population 1790–1990: Article on "population" by Nathan Kantrowitz in The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson (Yale University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-300-05536-6), citing the United States Census Bureau
N.B., Estimates in (1) and (2) before 1920 re-allocate the Census population from the counties whose land is now partly occupied by Bronx County.
(3) Population 1920–1990: Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990, Compiled and edited by Richard L. Forstall, Population Division, US Bureau of the Census, United States Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. 20233, March 27, 1995, retrieved July 4, 2008. - ^ "A Story Map: 2020 Census Demographic Data Map Viewer". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved August 12, 2021.
- ^ QuickFacts New York city, New York; Bronx County (Bronx Borough), New York; Kings County (Brooklyn Borough), New York; New York County (Manhattan Borough), New York; Queens County (Queens Borough), New York; Richmond County (Staten Island Borough), New York, United States Census Bureau. Accessed June 11, 2018.
- ^ "NYC Population: Current and Projected Populations". NYC.gov. Retrieved June 10, 2017.
- ^ "GDP by County, Metro, and Other Areas" (PDF). www.bea.gov. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
- ^ a b "U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Bronx County, New York". www.census.gov. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
- ^ "2020: DEC Redistricting Data (PL 94-171)". www.census.gov. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
- ^ Bureau, U. S. Census. "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
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- ^ From 15% sample
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- ^ "U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts". United States Census Bureau. 2019. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
- ^ "National Origin in Bronx County, New York (County)". Statistical Atlas. 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
- ^ a b Historical Census Browser August 15, 2007, at the Wayback Machine University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, retrieved on August 7, 2008, querying 1930 Census for New York State. "The data and terminology presented in the Historical Census Browser are drawn directly from historical volumes of the U.S. Census of Population and Housing."
- ^ Quick Tables QT-P15 and QT-P22, U.S. Census Bureau, retrieved on August 10, 2008 Archived February 12, 2020, at archive.today
- ^ a b c d "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved January 31, 2008.
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- ^ Stamp, Jimmy (January 28, 2014). "When Edgar Allan Poe Needed to Get Away, He Went to the Bronx". Smithsonian Magazine.
- ^ The Bronx at IMDb
- ^ David Gonzalez, "Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?", The New York Times, May 21, 2007, retrieved on July 1, 2008
- ^ Jennifer Lee, "Tenants Might Buy the Birthplace of Hip-Hop", The New York Times, January 15, 2008, retrieved on July 1, 2008
- ^ "The Get Down review – an insanely extravagant love letter to 70s New York" by Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, August 15, 2016
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- ^ Kugelberg, Johan, ed. (2007). Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop. New York: Rizzoli New York. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-7893-1540-3.
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- ^ Christopher Gray, "Sturm und Drang Over a Memorial to Heinrich Heine", The New York Times, May 27, 2007, retrieved on July 3, 2008.. See also Public Art in the Bronx: Joyce Kilmer Park March 6, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, from Lehman College Gray, Christopher (May 27, 2007). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 6, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2007.
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- ^ Its website showcases very short selections (less than 20 seconds and over 2 MB each in uncompressed AIFF format) from Bronx Music Vol.1, an out-of-press compact disc of the old and new sounds and artists of the Bronx. August 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
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- ^ (The Republican line exceeded the ALP's in every other borough)
- ^ To see a comparison of borough votes for Mayor, see New York City mayoral elections#How the boroughs voted
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- ^ O'Connor, John J. "TV: CBS on C.I.A., and BBC's Bronx is Burning", The New York Times, June 13, 1975. Accessed March 10, 2023. "This Sunday at 9 P.M., WNEW/Channel 5 will offer an hour‐long documentary called The Bronx is Burning. Documenting the daily routines of Engine. Company 82 in the South Bronx, the program captures some of the peculiar ingredients that constitute 'perhaps the toughest square mile in the city.'""
- ^ Mahler, Jonathan (2005). Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-312-42430-2.
- ^ Conde, Ed Garcia. "Bronx Burning: A Documentary By Edwin Pagán", Welcome2TheBronx, May 6, 2014. Accessed March 10, 2023. "Edwin Pagán, a "New York-based filmmaker, Photographer, cinematographer, screenwriter and cultural activist," will begin filming Bronx Burning this June and is seeking individuals who lived those terrible years of our borough and have any personal, unique, or little known stories they'd like to share."
- ^ . E-News Update. Bronx Council on the Arts. January 2006. Archived from the original on June 26, 2006. Retrieved December 27, 2006.
- ^ Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood. New York: Harper Colophon, 1983.
- ^ The Threepenny Review, Volume 109, Spring 2007
- ^ Avery Corman, The Old Neighborhood, Simon & Schuster, 1980; ISBN 0-671-41475-5
- ^ Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1987 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-374-11535-7, Picador Books 2008 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-312-42757-3
- ^ Anne Barnard, Twenty Years After 'Bonfire,' A City No Longer in Flames, The New York Times, December 10, 2007, retrieved on July 1, 2008
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko (September 16, 1997). "'Underworld': Of America as a Splendid Junk Heap". The New York Times.
- ^ "Contrite Poet Gives A Cheer for Bronx On Golden Jubilee". The New York Times. May 27, 1964.
- ^ "From the Banks of Brook Avenue by W.R. Rodriguez". Kirkusreviews.com. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
- ^ Ultan, Lloyd; Unger, Barbara (2006). Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough. Rivergate Regionals Collection. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3862-4. Retrieved August 2, 2017.
- ^ Tokarczyk, M.M. (2016). Bronx Migrations. Cherry Castle Publishing. ISBN 978-0-692-73765-1. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
- ^ Daniels, Jim (December 2016). "Tokarczyk, Michelle M. (2016) Bronx Migrations, Cherry Castle Publishing, Columbia, Md" (PDF). Journal of Working-Class Studies. 1 (1). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.
- ^ "A trio of Bronx tomes tell the tales of the borough". NY Daily News. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
- ^ a b "Writing to Heal in the Bronx". The Huffington Post. June 2, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
- ^ "Bronx Council on the Arts Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant for The Bronx Memoir Project – Bronx, NY". www.americantowns.com. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
- ^ This Is Me... Then (liner notes). Jennifer Lopez. Epic Records. 2003.
- ^ Cartlidge, Cherese (2012). Jennifer Lopez. Lucent Books. p. 13. ISBN 978-1420507553. Jennifer Lynn Lopez's parents, David and Guadalupe, were both born in Ponce, the second-largest city in Puerto Rico.
- ^ "Jennifer Lopez: Actress, Reality Television Star, Dancer, Singer (1969–)"
- ^ The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson (Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, New Haven, Connecticut, 1995 ISBN 0-300-05536-6), pages 1091–1095
- ^ "Clifford Odets | American dramatist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
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Further reading
General
- Baver, Sherrie L (1988). "Development of New York's Puerto Rican Community". Bronx County Historical Society Journal. 25 (1): 1–9.
- Briggs, Xavier de Souza, Anita Miller and John Shapiro. 1996. "CCRP in the South Bronx." Planners' Casebook, Winter.
- Corman, Avery. "My Old Neighborhood Remembered, A Memoir." Barricade Books (2014)
- Chronopoulos, Themis. "Paddy Chayefsky's 'Marty' and Its Significance to the Social History of Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, in the 1950s." The Bronx County Historical Society Journal XLIV (Spring/Fall 2007): 50–59.
- Chronopoulos, Themis. "Urban Decline and the Withdrawal of New York University from University Heights, The Bronx." The Bronx County Historical Society Journal XLVI (Spring/Fall 2009): 4–24.
- de Kadt, Maarten. The Bronx River: An Environmental and Social History. The History Press (2011)
- DiBrino, Nicholas. The History of the Morris Park Racecourse and the Morris Family (1977)
- Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, (1995) ISBN 0-300-05536-6), has entries, maps, illustrations, statistics and bibliographic references on almost all of the significant topics in this article, from the entire borough to individual neighborhoods, people, events and artistic works.
- McNamara, John History In Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (1993) ISBN 0-941980-16-2
- McNamara, John McNamara's Old Bronx (1989) ISBN 0-941980-25-1
- Twomey, Bill and Casey, Thomas Images of America Series: Northwest Bronx (2011)
- Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. Throggs Neck Memories (1993)
- Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. Images of America Series: Throggs Neck-Pelham Bay (1998)
- Twomey, Bill and Moussot, Peter. Throggs Neck (1983), pictorial
- Twomey, Bill. Images of America Series: East Bronx (1999)
- Twomey, Bill. Images of America Series: South Bronx (2002)
- Twomey, Bill. The Bronx in Bits and Pieces (2007)
Bronx history
- Barrows, Edward, and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1999)
- Baver, Sherrie L (1988). "Development of New York's Puerto Rican Community". Bronx County Historical Society Journal. 25 (1): 1–9.
- Federal Writers' Project. New York City Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond (1939) online edition
- Fitzpatrick Benedict. The Bronx and Its People; A History 1609–1927 (The Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1927. 3 volumes), Narrative history plus many biographies of prominent citizens
- Gonzalez, Evelyn. The Bronx. (Columbia University Press, 2004. 263 ISBN 0-231-12114-8), scholarly history focused on the slums of the South Bronx online edition
- Goodman, Sam. "The Golden Ghetto: The Grand Concourse in the Twentieth Century", Bronx County Historical Society Journal 2004 41(1): 4–18 and 2005 42(2): 80–99
- Greene, Anthony C., "The Black Bronx: A Look at the Foundation of the Bronx's Black Communities until 1900", Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 44 (Spring–Fall 2007), 1–18.
- Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, (1995) ISBN 0-300-05536-6), has entries, maps, illustrations, statistics and bibliographic references on almost all of the significant topics in this article, from the entire borough to individual neighborhoods, people, events and artistic works.
- Jonnes, Jull. South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (2002) online edition
- Melancholy in the Bronx, but Not Because of the Stadium by David Gonzales, The New York Times, published and retrieved on September 19, 2008
- Olmsted, Robert A (1989). "A History of Transportation in the Bronx". Bronx County Historical Society Journal. 26 (2): 68–91.
- Olmsted, Robert A (1998). "Transportation Made the Bronx". Bronx County Historical Society Journal. 35 (2): 166–180.
- Purnell, Brian (2009). "Desegregating the Jim Crow North: Racial Discrimination in the Postwar Bronx and the Fight to Integrate the Castle Hill Beach Club (1953–1973)". Afro-Americans in New York Life and History. 33: 47–78.
- Purnell, Brian; LaBennett, Oneka (2009). "The Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP) and Approaches to Scholarship about/for Black Communities". Afro-Americans in New York Life and History. 33: 7–23.