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Bronx - New York - History |
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In
1609 Henry Hudson, probably the first European to see the shoreline,
sought cover from a storm for his vessel the Halve Maen in Spuyten Duyvil
Creek. Thirty years later in 1639, the mainland was settled by Jonas
Bronck, a Swedish sea captain from the Netherlands who eventually built a
farmstead at what became 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue; a small group of
Dutch, German, and Danish servants settled with him In
1639, Jonas Bronck arrived in the New World. He purchased a 500 acre tract
of land east of Harlem between the Harlem River and the Aquehung, which
was the Native American name for the river that flows through the center
of the Bronx. Bronck built a house and began to farm the land. The Native
Americans called the land "Rananchqua," but the Dutch and
English began to refer to it as "Broncksland." In a similar
fashion, the Aquehung was soon known as Bronck's River. In time, the
spelling was changed to "Bronx," and eventually the entire area
adopted the name. During
English rule most inhabitants were English, of English descent, or Dutch.
Anglicanism was the religion sanctioned by colonial law, but
Presbyterians, Quakers, and members of the Dutch Reformed church were in
the majority. The first blacks, slaves from the West Indies, soon made up
10 to 15 percent of the population. Indians left the area soon after 1700.
At this time the Bronx was composed of two towns and all or part of four
huge manors: the town of Westchester; the town of Eastchester; the manor
of Pelham, owned by the Pell family; the manor of the Morris family,
Morrisania; the manor of Fordham, settled in 1671 by John Archer; and the
manor of Philipsburgh, owned by the Philips family.
During
the early nineteenth century the chief occupations of lower
By
the late 1860s it was generally assumed that the towns on the mainland
would be annexed by New York City as it expanded northward. In 1868
Morrisania numbered its streets to make them conform to those of the city,
and in the following year the municipal parks department was given control
of the bridges over the Harlem River and the streets leading to them. In
1874 the towns of Morrisania, West Farms, and Kingsbridge were annexed to
the city; known as the Annexed District, they were placed under the
jurisdiction of the parks department and became the city's twenty-third
and twenty-fourth ward. Later, in 1888, the 3rd Avenue elevated line was
extended to 132nd Street, precipitating the most rapid growth the Bronx
had ever seen After
consolidation in 1898 the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards became the
borough of the Bronx, which with Manhattan remained part of New York
County (the other boroughs were already separate counties). But the
journey from the Bronx to the courts in southern Manhattan was so long
that inhabitants of the Bronx soon petitioned for county designation. It
was not until 1912, however, that the state legislature established the
County of the Bronx as the sixty-second county in the state, effective 1
January 1914.
In
1904 the first subway connecting the Bronx to Manhattan was built under
149th Street, providing cheap rapid transit that with the 3rd Avenue
elevated line persuaded hundreds of thousands during the first third of
the twentieth century to leave tenements in Manhattan for spacious new
apartments in the Bronx. Yugoslavians, Armenians, and Italians were among
those who made the move, but the largest group was Jews from central and
Eastern Europe After
the Second World War new housing was built and the makeup of the
population changed. Construction ranged from luxury apartment buildings in
Riverdale to public housing in the southern Bronx. Long-time residents and
former servicemen moved from older housing in the southern neighborhoods
of Hunts Point, Morrisania, and Mott Haven into privately built housing in
the northern Bronx, to the other boroughs, and to the suburbs. About
170,000 persons displaced by slum clearing in Manhattan, mostly black and
Puerto Rican, moved to Hunts Point and Morrisania, as well as to Melrose,
Tremont, and Highbridge. In 1950 social workers reported enduring poverty
in a section of the southern Bronx. Systematic rent control was introduced
during the Second World War to prevent rents from skyrocketing as empty
apartments became scarce; it soon prevented conscientious landlords from
paying for repairs to their aging buildings. Buildings were often set
afire, at some times by unscrupulous landlords hoping to collect
insurance, and at others by unscrupulous tenants taking advantage of the
city's policy that burned-out tenants should be given priority for public
housing and receive money for new furnishings. A period of rampant arson
in the late 1960s and early 1970s ended only after this policy was changed
and a limit was imposed on insurance payments for reconstructing
burned-out apartment buildings. From that time one-family houses and row
houses were built, hundreds of apartment buildings restored, and several
apartments converted to cooperatives and condominium units, permitting
more residents of the southern Bronx to own their homes.
By the mid 1990s the population of the Bronx was increasing. It was about a third black, a third Latin American, and a third Asian and white. Some musicologists maintain that salsa music and break dancing originated in the Bronx. Puerto Ricans accounted for more than a quarter of the population by 1990, and there were also growing numbers of Koreans, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, Cubans, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Greeks, and Russians. Many Albanians settled in Belmont, many Cambodians in Fordham. Co-op City remained a successful development, luxury apartments built in Riverdale in the 1950s became cooperatives, and the housing stock continued to include the world's largest concentration of buildings in the art deco style. Entrepreneurs formed new businesses, and the borough's public schools were overcrowded with new immigrants. In the 1990s, The Bronx began experiencing a period of economic renewal and in 1997 was awarded the designation of "All American City" by the National Civic Council. |
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Westchester
County were growing wheat and raising livestock; between 1800 and 1830 the
population rose from 1755 to 3023. Severe famine in Ireland and the growth
of industry and commerce in the city drew thousands of Irish to the Bronx
as laborers. Many Irish immigrants were employed in the construction of
the High Bridge over the Harlem River, the New York and Harlem Railroad,
and the Croton Aqueduct. Much of the area consisted of fertile lands that
yielded fruits, vegetables, and dairy products for sale in the city. The
first railroad tracks were laid over these lands, and rural stations
eventually became the centers of new villages such as Melrose, Tremont,
and Riverdale. As the railroad was extended, the center of population
shifted west from the area east of the Bronx River, and the towns of West
Farms (1846) and Morrisania (1855) were established.
After
Flynn's death in 1953 Charles A. Buckley succeeded him as the Democratic
leader of Bronx county and gained federal funds for the construction in
the 1950s and 1960s of housing and a network of highways linking the Bronx
with the rest of the city, among them the Major Deegan Expressway, the
Cross Bronx Expressway, and the Bruckner Expressway. As commuting by
automobile became more convenient, high-rise apartment building were
erected in southern and eastern neighborhoods along the new roads,
including Sound view, Castle Hill, Spuyten Duyvil, and Riverdale. Co-op
city, a complex of 15,372 units built in the northeastern Bronx between
1968 and 1970, housed sixty thousand persons and was among the largest
housing developments in the world. The distribution of products to the
metropolitan area and the rest of the east coast became easier for
industries occupying new industrial parks in the Bronx, such as those
along Bathgate and Zerega avenues, and for fruit and vegetable dealers in
the Hunts Point Food Market. Puerto Ricans accounted for a growing share
of the population (20 percent in 1970) and became more active in politics:
Herman Badillo was the first Puerto Rican to be elected to the borough
presidency (1965) and later to the U.S. Congress; Robert Garcia was
elected to congress in 1978; Fernando Ferrer was elected borough president
in 1987; and Jose Serrano succeeded Garcia in 1990.
