When the Bronx was burning. (New York, Kings Point: insurance, crimes, loan)
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None of those buildings on those pics were affected. Usually the ones that were are where you see those new 'suburban' type of homes and the one story retail that is found all over the place. It is more likely that there were older buildings before in those places that were burn down and then demolished.
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That's what I meant.
I asked my mom about it. She didn't remember the Bronx ever burning until I showed her some pictures. She said she then remembered going to Yankee games with my dad in the late 70s and seeing the rubble in the neighborhoods around the stadium.
I think the Mott Haven buildings Super Mario posted look great. None of that is newer construction, although there must be large sections of Mott Haven that were re-built from scratch. The thing about the buildings north of Fordham Road were that they were originally built for the upper middle class whereas the South Bronx was traditionally a working-class neighborhood. Those apartments on the Grand Concourse are supposed to be very spacious and beautiful on the inside. There's not a ton of grafitti on the Grand Concourse, but I went to the library the other day and on Briggs north of there is full of grafitti. I don't understand why the owners aren't ticketed. I also don't understand why people grafitti their neighborhoods -- it's like **** where you eat.
I just saw your photos Cyrusjul -- great picture and perfectly illustrates what newer construction tends to look like.
According to old time NYer's back in the 1930's and 40's the Bronx was known as "the sticks". Because there were many rural sections in the boro.
The architecture reflects the ecomonic status of the neighborhoods back then. The tenement areas of the South Bronx were always poor, the areas where the newly arrived immigrants came from Europe and black migrants from the south.
The large art deco buildings were where the middle class upwardly mobile people lived. If you lived on Grand Conconcourse or further west on University Ave you were somebody. You had made it. You were a success.
I am old enough to remember the fires. The fires burned down entire Avenues. Like Jerome Ave from the 160's - 170's, Boston Road, Prospect Ave, Fulton, Southern Blvd block after block. This took a period of years during the late 70's starting around 1974. Most of the time people knew the fires would come, word got out in time. People relocated to other areas of the Bronx or in other Boros. Rents were much cheaper all over so people could move more easily throughout the city, not like today.
Some areas looked like ghost towns. It was very depressing. Look at that old "The Message" video with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five remember that background that they are standing in front of, that old burned out building, it was blocks and blocks of that.
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