NORWOOD, BEDFORD PARK & KINGSBRIDGE HEIGHTS
Borough: Bronx
Districts: 10 & 12
Location
Norwood, Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights are located in the central western region of the
Bronx.
• Norwood is bound to the north by Van Cortlandt Park and Woodlawn Cemetery; to the
east and south by Bronx Park—including the New York Botanical Garden; and to the
west by Mosholu Parkway.
• Bedford Park is bound by Mosholu Parkway to the northeast; Webster Avenue and Bronx
Park to the southeast; 196th Street to the southwest; and Jerome Avenue to the
northwest.
• Kingsbridge Heights is bound by Kingsbridge Road to the southwest, Goulden Avenue to
the northwest, Jerome Avenue to the southeast, and Fordham Road to the southwest.
Transportation
1, 4, B, D Trains
Bx1, Bx2, Bx3, Bx9, Bx12, Bx22, Bx25, Bx26, Bx28, Bx32, Bx34, Bx41, Bx55 Buses
Metro-North Railroad Harlem Line
Express Buses
School Information
The West Bronx neighborhoods of Bedford Park, Norwood, and Kingsbridge Heights have 24
schools located within the adjacent neighborhoods. The 21 schools listed below have three or
more Fellows currently teaching there, with an average of ten Fellows per school. Nearly all of the
schools in West Bronx qualify for Title I Funds. More than 79 percent of students in these schools
are eligible for the free lunch program (see below). The majority of schools in the West Bronx
meet the Adequate Yearly Progress standards measured by New York State Department of
Education. For more information about specific schools, you may visit the school report card
section of the Department of Education’s website at http://schools.nyc.gov/daa.
Fellows who work in the neighborhoods of the West Bronx tend to live throughout the West and
South Bronx, on Manhattan’s Upper East and West Sides, and in Inwood (Manhattan).
Please see the Relocation Guide for information on finding a place to live.
Please visit www.nycteachingfellows.org/mypersonalinfo/downloads/SchoolsBriefDescriptions.pdf for more information on
Title I Funds, Free Lunch Program, and Adequate Yearly Progress.
Number
of
Fellows
Percentage
Eligible for
Free Lunch
335
8
22.40%
2,502
27
90.80%
School
Code
School Type
Grade
Levels
Bronx High School of Science
X445
High School
9-12
De Witt Clinton High School
X440
High School
9-12
High School for Teaching and The Professions
X433
High School
9-12
4,410
8
74.50%
Bronx High School of Music
X442
High School
9-11
364
4
74.50%
Discovery High School
X549
High School
9-11
540
9
25.60%
Walton High School
X430
Secondary
7-12
1,067
6
81.20%
I S 308-Bronx Dance Academy School
X308
Middle School
6-8
286
8
100.00%
J.H.S. 80 Mosholu School
X080
Middle School
6-8
432
12
76.60%
I.S. 206-Ann Cross Mersereau School
X206
Middle School
5-8
757
8
93.90%
P.S. 86-Kingsbridge Heights School
X086
K - 8 School
PK - 6
1,266
21
88.20%
P.S. 15-Institute for Environment Learning School
X015
K - 8 School
K-8
388
5
92.40%
School Name
Student
Enrollment
P.S. 20-George J. Werdan III School
X020
Elementary
K-8
1,676
24
82.70%
P.S. 246-Poe Cottege School
X246
Elementary
K-6
1,225
8
91.40%
P.S. 340
X340
Elementary
K-6
1,046
3
88.70%
P.S. 46 Edgar Allen Poe School
X046
Elementary
K-5
808
22
88.40%
P.S. 94-Kings College School
X094
574
22
77.00%
X008
Elementary
Elementary
K-5
P.S. 8 - Briggs Avenue Academy
K-5
725
5
69.50%
P.S./I.S. 54
X054
Elementary
K-5
540
7
92.50%
P.S. 310-Marble Hill School
X310
Elementary
K-5
1,161
3
88.20%
P.S. 291
X291
Elementary
K-4
551
5
89.30%
P.S. 168
X168
District 75
PK - 7
574
9
74.30%
Neighborhood Demographic Data
Demographic data from 2000 New York City Community District Census Data
Median Household Income
Total population under age 18
$27,577
Percent of Population
31.2%
Ethnicity
Hispanic Origin
Black/African American
White
Asian or Pacific Islander
Other
American Indian and Alaskan Native
59.2%
20.0
10.7
6.4
3.4
0.3
Total foreign born population
36.7%
Total population not proficient in English*
33.4%
*Older than five years
Brief History of the Norwood, Bedford Park & Kingsbridge Heights
South of the modern-day New York City line, the Town of Kingsbridge and the entire western half
of the Bronx were annexed by the City of New York in 1874 from the Town of Yonkers. The area
now known as Bedford Park was mostly farmland and considered a suburb of New York City. The
area began developing with the construction of the Jerome Park Racecourse--the first home of
the famous Belmont Stakes horserace--until it was moved to Morris Park in 1890. To attract the
wealthy to the Racecourse, Leonard Jerome, one of the original builders of the racecourse, built
what is today Jerome Avenue. The neighborhood of Norwood (at times called Bainbridge
because of its central street) was laid out in 1889 by Josiah Briggs between Mosholu Parkway
and Woodlawn Cemetery.
To store fresh water from the New Croton Aqueduct, construction began to convert Jerome Park
into the Jerome Park Reservoir Manhattan in 1890. Bedford Park began to take shape, with forty
"villas" built on a 23-acre stretch, in a planned community modeled on the London "garden"
neighborhood named Bedford Park. The area became a part of the newly created Borough of the
Bronx in 1898, and with the completion of Jerome Park Reservoir in 1906 became a valuable
asset for the much-expanded New York City. The Italian and Irish immigrants who worked on the
Jerome Park Reservoir project soon anchored the community there.
With the completion of two major transportation projects, the Grand Concourse in 1916, a multilane thoroughfare, and the extension of the Inter-borough Rapid Transit (IRT) Jerome Avenue
Line in 1917, development was in full swing. Along with the rest of the borough of the Bronx,
these neighborhoods saw a boom in housing construction along the Grand Concourse in the
post-World War I era. Much of this was from middle-class white ethnic (primarily Jews, Italians,
and Irish) emigrants moving from crowded Manhattan to settle down in the area.
From the 1970s through the 1990s the area was well known for its Irish population, having
attracted a number of immigrants from Catholic areas of Northern Ireland who fled an Irish civil
war known as the Troubles in the mid-twentieth century. The area contributed much in Irish and
Irish-American culture and politics during this time. Since the mid- to late-‘90s, a number of
factors, such as the American recession and an end to the Troubles, contributed to the emigration
of the Irish population from this area, which by this time had come to be known as “Little Belfast.”
Those who did not leave the country migrated to other Bronx neighborhoods and Westchester.
As the Irish emigrated, the Latino community, consisting mostly of Puerto Rican and Dominican
immigrants, pushed up from the South Bronx and Manhattan. At the time, Puerto Ricans were
the city’s most sizeable Latino minority group, steadily arriving in New York City from the early
1900s for jobs and wartime demand for labor. The Dominican population, now the most sizeable
minority group in New York, started arriving in noticeable numbers in the 1960s as economic
disparity in the Dominican Republic increased. Caribbean and South American Latinos are now
the majority in the area.
Due to its unique location as a hub for close and easy public transportation, open space parks,
excellent public schools, and nearby shopping venues, this cluster of West Bronx neighborhoods
has recently seen a huge increase in population, building and commercial construction--including
a new shopping complex opening this year.
*Information in this section is from the following sources:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/NEIGHBORHOODS/norwood/norwood.html;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Park,_Bronx
Gonzalez, Carolina & Kugel, Seth, Neuva York, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2006, pgs.1-3
Cultural & Recreational Institutions
• Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval, 3225 Reservoir Oval East
• The Bronx County Historical Society, 3309 Bainbridge Avenue
• The Jerome Park Reservoir, Sedgwick and Goulden Avenues
• The Bronx Park, including The Bronx Botanical Gardens, between Southern Blvd,
Webster Ave, Burke Ave, Bronx Park East and 180th St
• Van Cortlandt Park, between Broadway, Jerome Ave, Van Cortlandt South and the city
line bordering Yonkers
• Kingsbridge Armory, Jerome Ave and West Kingsbridge Rd
Further Research/Community Information
http://www.lehman.edu/publicart/neighborhood.htm
http://www.theamazingbronx.com