From The Peopling of New York City
Ming's Page
The walking tour through South Bronx The South Bronx used to be a very popular settlement of New York City. The Grand Concourse had a similar design to Manhattan’s Park Avenue, with broad streets that allowed fluid traffic to through the avenues. On the intersections that cross the Concourse, the Concourse either goes under the “bridge”, or goes over the “tunnel”. Both sides of the streets are filled with art décor apartment buildings that resembles the most luxurious buildings of Upper East Side. Art décor buildings are those that have simple designs on the lower parts of the buildings. But towards the roof they are filled with fancy designs, such as eagles and gargoyles. Our tour guide, Mr. Green, informed us that the buildings were all designed to be simple looking buildings. When you look past these buildings, there are only supposed to be doormen lining the outsides.
The Grand Concourse has a rich history. At the beginning of the city, there used to be two villages, Mott Haven and Melrose, that were located at the current sites of the boulevard. In fact, at the start of our tour, a sign of the Mott Haven Station stood tall across from the Seven Eleven and the train station. Although the two villages were close in geological location, there weren’t many interactions between them. After the city started to flourish, overcrowding began to appear in the island of Manhattan, and the citizens were moving to the Boroughs surrounding the island. The South Bronx, because of its prime geological location, became the destination of many recent European immigrants. Even during the ‘70s when the Bronx was “burning,” the Concourse escaped the disaster, and was pretty much unscratched.
