Matthew Choon
17 May 2015
IDC 3001H
Professor Aries
The Grand Concourse: Prosperity, Decline, and Resurgence
Along the 4.5 miles of the Bronx’s most renowned street, the Grand Concourse
contains one of the city’s greatest accounts of economic fluctuation. Completed 106
years ago, it is neither the Bronx’s longest nor busiest street, but has been compared
with places such as Ocean Drive in Miami Beach due to its luxurious demonstration of
architecture. The Grand Concourse was designed by a man named Louis Aloys Risse,
and was conceived in 1890 as a way of connecting the northern Bronx to Manhattan
(Rosenblum, Constance). The Concourse’s opening in 1909 marked the beginning of
the Bronx’s most prestigious address - a “Park Avenue” for the middle class. Some of
the names inscribed on these buildings were: the Majestic Court, the Grand-View, and
the Royal Terrace, depicting an upscale place to live. Most of these names were given
when the Concourse became a center to one of the largest collections of Art Deco
buildings in the world. Despite its splendor during the early ages of the boulevard, the
Concourse underwent a long period of decline, in which both its successes and failures
are reflected on the vandalism, abandonment, and deteriorating mosaics that still
continue to line the boulevard. Therefore, I am studying why a neighborhood so
promising would become so vulnerable to change and what ultimately led to its decline.
The crime-ridden reputation of the Bronx is an indignity to what was once considered
the “wonder borough”. But the names remain inscribed on the buildings, leaving many
people, including myself, a sense of aspiration.
To understand why the borough saw such a decline, we must understand the
underlying purpose of New York City’s creation. Land became prosperous as natural
assets and resources made people money, which created wealth for the city. The notion
that the city’s growth and purpose was to create wealth roots back to the very beginning
of the Bronx County. During the 1920s, new wealth encouraged families to leave
congested Manhattan tenements and move to the Bronx where it was more spacious.
Within ten years, around 536,000 people came to the Bronx for the first time, a number
comparable to the three largest cities in Connecticut, on top of the existing 200,000 that
were already living there. This development extended even to the least accessible parts
of the borough. Most of the buildings lining the Grand Concourse were built within the
ten years during the height of the City Beautiful movement, which was the idea that a
neighborhood’s architecture influences the community’s prosperity (Verhovek, Sam
Howe). By this time, there were 22 banking institutions, and the Bronx County was one
of the fastest growing boroughs in the city. This is when it became known as the
“wonder borough”. Advocates of the City Beautiful movement believed that grand urban
design could increase the quality of life as well as attract more people to come. So
much money was being poured into the borough that it was considered phenomenal for
that time period. Most of the buildings that were built during this era are still standing grand, luxurious, and elaborate. Everything was state of the art in this era, including the
extravagant lobbies meant to attract potential tenants, handcrafted murals, large
windows, and many other qualities that older Manhattan apartments lacked. When
Governor Alfred E. Smith cut the ribbon on the new Concourse Hotel, he claimed that
the Grand Concourse and the Bronx represented the “most striking example of urban
growth”.
By 1925, the Bronx County became one of the most desirable places to be.
Increased transit options including the Grand Concourse as well as extensions of the
International Rapid Transit Company, allowed families to travel from Manhattan to the
Bronx in less time. The IRT, a government sponsored project run by a private sector,
realized that for New York to reach its potential, people should not have to spend more
time in the train because of the distance. New York City then had an express train
running parallel to a local one, which afforded people to live further away from the
business district. Developers rushed to build apartments along the street, almost all
around five or six stories high. Any stories higher would have required expensive
fireproof construction. The Bronx would soon boom quickly as Manhattan began to have
too many cramped and crowded areas. This transportation system and new wealth
enabled many Jewish and Italian families to leave Manhattan and move to the Bronx
(Bessa, Antonio Sergio).
In October 1929, the prosperity that created the Bronx evaporated. The
architecture was state of the art at this time and it all happened very quickly until the
Depression came, it came to a halt. The distinction between wealth and prosperity then
became clear - the Bronx wasn’t quite what it was in Manhattan. The Bronx never had
an absolute separate identity because it served as the northward to the centerpiece,
Manhattan. Samuel Goodman, an urban planner for the Bronx Borough President,
stated in an interview that the Bronx became a “golden ghetto”, a high-end urban area
that became dysfunctional due to excess wealth, as opposed to a traditional “ghetto”
community that is destroyed by poverty. This haunted the borough’s evolution ever
since. Despite the Depression, the Bronx grew by 128,000 people due to desperate
landlords. In order to attract tenants, landlords had to offer everything they had, and
then came the emergence of Art Deco buildings (Bessa, Antonio Sergio). As mentioned
before, these buildings were top of the line - soundproof, gave the illusion of more
space, allowed lots of sunlight, and even colorful tiles in the bathroom. The large lobbies
were very luxurious and elaborate, most of which had doormen and canopies. This was
all designed to attract people because the vibe, appearance, and impression that the
buildings have are defining factors of the community. According to Sam Goodman, the
goal was to have someone walk up a street and given a choice, would that person want
to spend a night in that building. To lure tenants to come north from the Lower East Side
and other parts of Manhattan, builders included grand lobbies, courtyards, elevators,
rooms, and sufficient windows to provide sunlight and cross-ventilation — features
relatively foreign to the tenements from which many of the new tenants were drawn. An
address on the Grand Concourse became a mark of social status.
By the 1940s, children and young adults begin going off to war and the state of
New York recognized that when they came back, they would arrive as adults looking for
their own homes. According to the 1943 census, the total population was at 176,828.
114,221 were Native White, around 64% of the population, and 61,397 foreign born
white people, which was another 35% of the population, together making up almost
90% of the total population. This implies that the neighborhood was almost completely
white with the exception of 1,110 African Americans and 100 people of other races.
By 1945, rent control made the rent of any building built prior to the new rents
frozen. This provided those already living there an incentive to stay, and all of these
buildings would have income and rent that is stabilized for the social evolution of the
community. Two decades later, the state of New York was confronted with a number of
challenges. Change came quickly as city housing policies and urban renewal projects
relocated many poor black and Puerto Rican residents to the South Bronx (Bessa,
Antonio Sergio). Meanwhile, the persecution of African Americans in the South drove
many people to migrate north. The city of New York became a destination for jobs,
which came a dire need for housing. It was no longer politically possible for the city of
New York to build housing for poor people. Conceived by Robert Moses, the Cross
Bronx Expressway would destroy the social fabric of the community by separating
stores and where people lived. It didn’t get better - in 1966, news articles would emerge
about the growing diversity in the neighborhood. Sam Goodman recalled his “very
Jewish mother” worrying that “negroes” would move into her strictly Jewish apartment.
Then one headline emerged, “Grand Concourse: Hub of the Bronx: will be 76% negro in
10 years.” Goodman remembered that it terrified his mother that she immediately
contacted her congressman, James Schuer, to beg him to tell her whether the
newspaper's predictions were accurate. The congressman told her, "We're going to
bulldoze the whole place down." This demographic shift from the 90% white people
living in the neighborhood in 1943 resulted in intense social unease. Urban-renewal
projects forced many poor black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers from their
neighborhoods to the South Bronx. Politicians and real estate landlords created these
ethnic shifts led to fear among the residents, many of who claim. "The street was very
vulnerable to any kind of change, because everybody came here at the same time,"
said Sam Goodman. The city’s diminished services and fiscal issues led to people
leaving the Bronx to Queens, other parts of the borough, and Connecticut suburbs. By
October, Sam and his family had moved to Connecticut.
Crime began to rise, and children for the ghetto would come to the parks at night,
which made people not want to sit at the park anymore. This one particular article
scared everyone and people began moving - around 7000 apartments were getting
people to move out because the very presence of a different colored family in that
building meant something was changing, and the article referred specifically to that
phobia. No longer politically possible, the City of New York was not going to build
housing for poor people.
The city of New York could no longer afford to maintain a comparable level of
service. A controversial theory then emerged called planned shrinkage is essentially a
controversial policy that purposely withdraws services to blighted neighborhoods. It
involves decreasing the city’s services that are plagued with crime and poverty. The city
was broke, and the only theory was to place poor people in one neighborhood but
withdraw essential services from those neighborhoods. Banking institutions would have
mortgages on all these buildings, but refused to lend money to them because the
neighborhood now had buildings that landlords couldn’t sell. The landlord had buildings
that were of no value. In ten years of the 1970s, almost 30% of the people left the
borough. In 1970, the population was 144,207 people. A decade later, the population
decreased at a 20.7% rate, where only 114,312 were reported to live there. It is implied
that issues such as crime rates, poverty, and unwanted residency could be the cause of
this, but after many years, development is beginning to attract more people to the area.
The Bronx was also plagued by arson and crime, while rent control laws made it more
expensive for the landlords to maintain their buildings. The assessed value of the
buildings were greater than the real value, so the landlords committed arsons to their
own buildings. The buildings were devalued and the parts were being sold, resulting in a
decrease of value of Bronx real estate.
Consequently, during the 1970s, fire insurance companies would not insure the
now broke neighborhoods. The withdrawal of fire insurance services inevitably caused a
once densely populated neighborhood to an abandoned one. Despite the notion that
arson is to blame, during the 1950s, city fire marshals attributed less than 1% of fires to
arson. In its peak during the late 1970s, arson made up less than 7% of fires and
occurred in buildings that were already abandoned. Things such as faulty wiring,
building malfunctions, and cigarettes mostly caused fires. When the landlord no longer
makes money off of his property, he or she has no incentive to maintain its services.
Fire rates were already rising due to a number of factors such as poverty, overcrowding,
and aging house stock. In an interview for the New York Post, a man named Jerry
DiRazzo recalls: “I’d say a quarter to a third of the hydrants didn’t work. You can see the
way an area changes when they don’t repair a neighborhood. Every day I drove over
the border from Queens to Brooklyn to go to work, and it was like this imaginary line
was crossed. Almost like suddenly the sun wasn’t shining, like it was darker somehow…
People would ask me, ‘How can you deal with this, seeing that every day?’ And I’d tell
them, ‘I have a front row seat to the greatest show on earth.’ This was history being
made, a city collapsing (Flood, Joe).” Nevertheless, when a fire famously broke out near
the Yankee Stadium in 1977, an announcer said, “There it is ladies and gentlemen: the
Bronx is burning.” Samuel Goodman states that this remark became a symbol of New
York City and the borough’s decline. To me, it seems as if the only way for the Bronx to
prosper again is if a new city is built, only to satisfy profit desires.
The borough began to see resurgence around the 1980s. Like most of the South
Bronx, the Grand Concourse was threatened by arson and crime throughout the era.
But unlike the South Bronx, not a single building along the street of Fordham Road was
destroyed. Therefore, the boulevard avoided rebuilding projects while the streets look
the same as it did 50 or 60 years ago. This would have changed much of the
boulevard’s character. We saw an increase in the population, and it was finally greater
than what it was 40 years ago. The city of New York was going to bulldoze the Melrose
Commons and create an entire new community (Rosenblum, Constance). The We Stay
Committee attempted to adjust to this by demanding no tall buildings and different type
of houses instead. The following decade saw an increase of 4.7% in the population
where 119,962 were reported to live there. According to the last census of the NTAs, it
was only until the 1990s that growth of population began to emerge where 146,441 now
currently reside there.
Some buildings, however, still stand there proudly today, such as the Andrew
Freedman Home, a block-long mansion built on 166th Street. It opened in 1924 as a
home for the formerly wealthy that had suffered fiscal losses. It was created to make
them feel as if they were at home, despite their losses. Now, the building is used for
social services and members of the community. Many other buildings are in the midst of
resurgence, such as the Executive Towers. It was built in the 1960s and has gone from
⅓ occupancy to $180,000 one-bedroom apartments. Lukas Herbert, an urban planner,
bought a one-bedroom apartment in the Executive Towers and claims: “I’m pretty much
expecting the neighborhood to continue to improve. I don’t know why it wouldn’t. The
building stock is amazing (Rosenblum, Constance).”
Today, the D train stop at 167th street lies in the heart of the fourth Community
District (CD4) of the Bronx. Along the block between 168th and 169th Street on the
Grand Concourse, there are a variety of shops and businesses that are on floor level of
similar styled apartments. From beauty salons to grocery stores, the Concourse also
has a beautiful touch of plants and trees along the service road that is adjacent to the
sidewalk. The plants are not uncommon along the streets, similar to Manhattan’s
planted road medians. Though the piercing cold air kept many of the residents indoors,
it definitely gives off the vibe of a tight-knit community. Because the Grand Concourse
stretches along a large portion of the borough, it is difficult to analyze the entire region.
Therefore, it is divided into five neighborhoods, each with a distinct name and district.
We have decided to study the region of the East Concourse and Concourse Village.
The region of the East Concourse-Concourse Village is classified under the
Neighborhood Tabulation Area, which has different codes that represent the districts in
the area.
The demographics of the East Concourse-Concourse Village is particularly
interesting because it seems to be a home for people of older generations. According to
the American Community Survey, 8,833 people are age sixty and older and make up
13.9% of the population in Bx14. This implies that a large portion of the residency is
family-oriented and community based. A larger population of elderly people may also
imply that these people are living with their families and younger generations as well. It
can also mean that this is an area that people of older age might go to live for the rest of
their lives because it is a neighborhood that they feel can provide a safe and
independent environment. Although the data does not state the ethnic backgrounds of
the residents, it can be implied that the neighborhood has a sense of community that
tends to particular cultures, standards, and needs. The Concourse seems like it is a fine
place for elderly people because it has institutions such as the Bronx Senior Citizen
Center. Its location, 161st and Grand Concourse, is accessible and in the heart of the
neighborhood, which is vital to the needs of the elderly population.
According to the 2010 census data, there are 146,441 people that live in the
neighborhood. In 1990, there was 119, 962 people living there and increased by 16.3%
in the following decade. The neighborhood was just starting to see the total population
close to where it was when it reached its peak. The population in the Bronx is growing
increasingly in comparison to the growth of previous decades. It is clear that the
population will continue to increase, especially if construction and development is in
effect. Residential development is continuing to prosper due to new infrastructure
investment and re-zoning in the city that provide new opportunities for affordable
housing. Development includes plans such as the revitalization of vacant land and
attracting retail businesses. The NYC Department of Transportation also unveiled
improvements to the Concourse that included replacing the 161st Street underpass
adding an improved, urban design. New roadways, traffic patterns, sidewalks, and bike
lanes also improve infrastructure, mobility, and encourage safety among the
neighborhood. Crime, which had been a major factor in driving residents out of the
neighborhood in the previous decades, saw a major decline within just two decades.
According to the New York City Police Department report, in 1990, there were a total of
79,825 total crimes committed. In 2014, just a mere 19, 873 crimes were committed in
comparison, which entails almost a 75% decrease in crime rates.
After decades of decline, many look forward to the change, and the change has
certainly begun to come. As one of the members of the Community Board said, the
Bronx is a “gold mine” for real estate developers. The once prestigious address and the
promise that the Grand Concourse once offered is beginning to reemerge as its era of
decline is beginning to see a turn of a new leaf.
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