Visiting the Bronx

The Grand Concourse boulevard in the Bronx

There is something special about the Bronx. Not only is it the only New York county bearing a definite article in its name; but it also carries the burden of what has become known as the "Bronx Stigma". Indeed, hardly anyone aware of New York City hasn't heard meaningful rumours about its dreadful and dire north-most borough, where Hip Hop culture originated, Albanian and Latin American Mafias have long been in authority, and no white people live: The legendary Bronx.

Art-deco block on the Grand Concourse

Today we have gone a great deal towards destigmatising the Bronx in our heads. Joining a walking tour organised by the Municipal Art Society, we visited the Grand Concourse and took advantage of the occasion to stop by the Bronx Museum of Art. It has been a day full of revelations about urban economics, the intertwining of public policies and personal decision making and scenarios of a living which, despite happening no more than a 20 minutes subway ride from the current center of gravity of our existence, could not be much further away from our personal realities.

Interior lobbies of art deco residential buildings on the Concourse 

The Grand Concourse, built between 1890 and 1900, is a grand boulevard of 60 metres breadth which was conceived on the model of Paris' Champs-Elysées. Its conception was the product of speculation about upcoming growth and future wealth; by the time of its construction it was nothing but a path through nowhere leading to recreational woods in the Northbronx. It was in the 1920s and 1930s, when privately built subway trains began to assure a fast and secure connection to Downtown Manhattan, that the Grand Concourse became a prosperous residential area, flanked on either side by finest art deco buildings, and inhabited mostly by Jewish immigrants resettling from Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Left: A very well traveled Lorelei sculpture in honor of Heinrich Heine.

Right: Residential Art-deco building on the Concourse

Thanks to recent urban renewal initiatives and a declaration of landmark status in the early 21st century, some of the past glory of the Grand Concourse has again become visible and was tangible to us during today's visit. Yet in between its promising beginnings and recent urban renewal, Grand Concourse went through a story of decline, which seems to have been the poisonous product of false economic incentives, unintelligent slum clearance programs for Manhattan, commercial interest in the relocation of white middle class people to suburban housing areas and strategic disinvestment in the pursuit of political interests. An insight we take home is that much of the racial and income based segregation of New York is not just the inevitable result of too much ethnic diversity in a dense urban environment, but has come about also because serious economic and political mistakes were made.

The 2006 building of the Bronx Art Museum,
on the grounds of the former Synagogue

Today the renewed section of the Grand Concourse is home to lower middle-class hispanic and African American residents, who seem to enjoy and somehow cherish their environment (as a local public initiative for the preservation of the Heinrich Heine Fountain in a Concourse park seems to suggest). And yet, extreme poverty is not far, racial segregation remains almost total, and the future seems somewhat open.

There are encouraging signs, though, not least the successful work or urban renewal activists (such as today's guide), the recent growth of the Bronx Art Museum and, above all, its warm, inviting, caring and enthusiastic staff.

Art installations by Tony Feher at the Bronx Art Museum