Evangelina Williams happily celebrated her 106th birthday yesterday in The Bronx with her 103 year old sister, Amparo Perez who will turn 104 this summer.
She told the New York Daily News that her longevity is attributed to her love of music and abstaining from drinking.
Congressman Joseph Crowley has written a letter to MTA chair, Joseph J. Lhota, urging that the agency prioritize and accelerate plans for four new East Bronx Metro North stations so that residents of the area have access to better options in this transit desert.
For over a decade, residents have been teased about getting four new stations located at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester, and Hunts Point which would allow for a faster commute into midtown as well as points north into employment centers in Westchester County and Connecticut.
Map via NYTIMES
While Cuomo indeed has touted this expansion as a plan since 2014 and it has been included in the previous and current MTA Capital Program, Crowley urges that not only should it be included in the next but the time to make this a reality is now.
“Despite the many benefits of bringing Metro-North to the East Bronx, the project has languished for more than a decade,” wrote Chairman Crowley. “It is time to take concrete steps toward making this new service a reality. It’s continued inclusion in the MTA’s Capital Program is critical, as is an accelerated timeline for construction and completion. The residents of the Bronx have waited far too long.”
For more than a decade, Chairman Crowley has been fighting to bring Metro-North to the East Bronx, which would vastly improve transportation options in the area and boost the local economy. The benefits of expanded service would be immense. Currently, residents can only access a single, overcrowded subway line with exceedingly long travel times. Demand for alternative transit options is on the rise in the Bronx, demonstrated by the fact that the borough saw an increase of nearly 800,000 subway riders between 2015 and 2016.
We agree with Crowley on this because we know all too well that our transit infrastructure is crumbling and our East Bronx residents are held hostage by lack of options.
The 6 line is overcrowded and express buses into Manhattan don’t always cut it when your commute can be over an hour with traffic.
Perhaps given that this is an election year for Cuomo and he’s facing heat from opponent Cynthia Nixon, maybe, just maybe, something will finally get done.
What we do know is that the MTA has to do right by the people of The Bronx.
A four bedroom apartment in Longwood on Beck Street for just $100k sounds like a steal and too good to be true but for most in the area and the South Bronx, it is just that.
Our friends over at Brick Underground report that there are four four-bedroom apartments available at an HDFC Co-op at 748 Beck Street but the catch is that you have to have a household income of $71,588 to $151,200.
The average 4 person household in community board 2 (which is the minimum number of people that can qualify for these apartments) only makes $37,582 so these units clearly are not for the average family in the area.
The shame is that home ownership is the best way to combat gentrification but how can local residents defend themselves when the odds are stacked against them and the opportunities created are not for them?
Via Acacia Network
If you want to apply you must be a first time home owner so if you own or have owned real estate in the past, you do not qualify for this lottery.
But you must hurry as all applications MUST be postmarked by May 4th.
Get the application hereand you can head over to Acacia Network for more information.
Engineering students at Manhattan College in The Bronx worked together to create a water filtration system for a school in Puerto Rico dealing with the aftermath of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Maria which created the largest humanitarian crisis in US history.
According to News12, the students hope to have the system in place at the school in Añasco, Puerto Rico by the summer.
Since a 2011 rezoning that increased density in Norwood and Bedford Park along Webster Avenue, these Northwest Bronx communities have been facing an increased onslaught of developments completely out of character for the area.
Now, a new development has been announced for the area which will go up at 3524 & 3528 Parkside Place and 209th Street overlooking Webster Avenue.
No mention if it will be affordable or market rate.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
YIMBY reports that the 7 story proposed building will have 97 units across the 77,640 square foot development.
No set date for construction or completion is reported as these permits that have been filed and still have to be approved.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
Existing infrastructure, from transportation to schools, cannot continue to support increased development. These are things that must be addressed before continuing to build.
Renderings via UA Builders Group/Marin Architects
There’s also the case for what does the community want? Many have expressed
What are your thoughts? Do you want to see more of these developments?
Yesterday we reported on Related and Somerset’s $700 million proposal to develop 13 acres of the Harlem River Yards in Port Morris which would include a soccer stadium and 550 affordable housing units but another proposal was submitted proposing 2,000 units of much mixed housing which would include “affordable” housing as well.
Today, Crain’s reports on L+M and Onmi New York’s proposal for the site which would cost $2.2 billion for a significant open space along the waterfront with a medical facility run by Montefiore Medical Center as well as retail and a school.
Their proposal is much more robust than just simply 550 units of housing and a soccer stadium that the community doesn’t really want and has fought against it moving here.
The unanswered question is how many units would be affordable and would they be permanently affordable? If you have to take one or the other, we’d pick housing over a stadium but it should be skewed towards affordable housing or rather truly affordable housing.
Actually, there’s no room for market in the neighborhood, it really should just strictly be affordable.
The following is a guest post by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Robert Zahn, Navy Office of Community Outreach who graciously allowed us to post the following article.
YOKOSUKA, Japan- A Bronx, New York, native and 2011 St. Raymond Academy graduate is serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Chelsea Serrano is a machinist’s mate aboard the aircraft carrier operating out of Yokosuka, Japan.
A Navy machinist’s mate operates, maintains, and repairs ship propulsion machinery, auxiliary equipment, and various equipment throughout the ship.
Serrano is proud to serve in the Pacific and fondly recalls memories of Bronx.
“My parents instilled a good work ethic in me,” said Serrano.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Chelsea Serrano/Image Via Navy Office of Community Outreach
“They also taught me to be more independent which has helped me in the Navy.”
Moments like that makes it worth serving around the world ready at all times to defend America’s interests. With more than 50 percent of the world’s shipping tonnage and a third of the world’s crude oil passing through the region, the United States has historic and enduring interests in this part of the world. The Navy’s presence in Yokosuka is part of that long-standing commitment, explained Navy officials.
Named in honor of former President Ronald Reagan, the carrier is longer than three football fields, measuring nearly 1,100 feet. The ship, a true floating city, weighs more than 100,000 tons and has a flight deck that is 252 feet wide. Two nuclear reactors can push the ship through the water at more than 35 mph.
Powerful catapults slingshot the aircraft off the bow of the ship. The planes land aboard the carrier by snagging a steel cable with an arresting hook that protrudes from the rear of the aircraft.
“Being deployed here is nice because I like the consistency of knowing what we are doing,” said Serrano.
Serrano is also proud of overcoming her personal battle of beating cancer. She said that going through treatment showed her that she had a strong support system from home as well as on the ship.
Sailors’ jobs are highly varied aboard the carrier. Approximately 3,200 men and women make up the ship’s crew, which keeps all parts of the aircraft carrier running smoothly — this includes everything from washing dishes and preparing meals to handling weaponry and maintaining the nuclear reactors. Another 2,500 men and women form the air wing responsible for flying and maintaining more than 70 aircraft aboard the ship.
Ronald Reagan, like each of the Navy’s aircraft carriers, is designed for a 50-year service life. When the air wing is embarked, the ship carries more than 70 attack jets, helicopters and other aircraft, all of which take off from and land aboard the carrier at sea.
As a member of one of the U.S. Navy’s most relied-upon assets, Serrano and other sailors know they are part of a legacy that will last beyond their lifetimes providing the Navy the nation needs.
“Being deployed on this ship took a while to get used to but there’s the camaraderie and there’s always someone to talk to,” said Serrano. “I really enjoy experiencing the different people I’ve met here and the bonds I’ve created.”
Seventh Fleet, which is celebrating its 75th year in 2018, spans more than 124 million square kilometers, stretching from the International Date Line to the India/Pakistan border; and from the Kuril Islands in the North to the Antarctic in the South. Seventh Fleet’s area of operation encompasses 36 maritime countries and 50 percent of the world’s population with between 50-70 U.S. ships and submarines, 140 aircraft, and approximately 20,000 Sailors in the 7th Fleet.
Two years after NYS issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to develop 12.8 acres of the Harlem River Yards in Port Morris, Yimby has revealed that a massive project to include a soccer stadium and 550 “affordable housing apartments”.
Behind this proposal is Related Companies partnered together with Somerset Partners (who spearheaded the ill-named Piano District and just a few weeks ago sold their development site for $165 million) who teamed up with New York City Football Club who, if you recall, was looking for a a soccer stadium to be built south of Yankee Stadium a few years ago.
Lower left, renderings for market-rate luxury housing at the former Somerset/Chetrit site which sold several weeks ago for $165 million to Brookfield and upper right the stadium and a 550 unit affordable housing development./Image via Rafael Vinoly Architects
If this proposal is chosen, this would be the city’s first soccer stadium and it will be designed by starchitect Rafael Viñoly who designed Manhattan’s 432 Park Avenue which is NYC’s best-selling development to date with over $2 billion in condo sales.
Viñoly is no stranger to The Bronx having designed both the housing court on the Grand Concourse as well as The Bronx County Hall of Justice in Melrose on 161st Street.
Image via Rafael Viñoly Architects
Yet again, Bronxites will be shut out from the waterfront even though the plans call for some open access. Why can’t we just have an open park like the Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront Planset forth by South Bronx Unite years ago which received priority status by NYS in 2014?
This is, once again, our government not listening to the community and what they want or need and instead giving handouts to local developers rather than investing in the existing community.
Image via Rafael Viñoly Architects
According to the RFP issued by Related, they would only be paying $500,000 a year in rent for prime real estate that we all know is worth far more than that. Why are they being considered for yet another sweetheart deal like FreshDirect and the Yankees where the community ends up losing?
The location is also utterly ridiculous for a stadium for a variety of reasons including that it would place it on the busy approach to the Third Avenue Bridge along Bruckner Boulevard where trucks are zooming by.
What kind of traffic will that add to an area already suffering from some of the highest rates of asthma in the nation?
The nearest subway station at 138th Street and Alexander Avenue on the 6 line is 5-6 blocks away from the site and in order to get to and from there, pedestrians have to cross dangerous intersections created by the Major Deegan Expressway and Bruckner Boulevard where pedestrian fatalities are an issue.
The best use of this site is not a soccer stadium or “affordable” housing that won’t be affordable for anyone who needs.
The best use is the proposed Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront Plan created BY the community NOT greedy developers who do not care about our quality of life and only offer up such “token” amenities like access to the waterfront (which belongs to the people anyway) and “community facilities.
The area was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy and was flooded considerably so why are we developing on the waterfront when we should be building resiliency for when (not if) the next big storm hits NYC?
All these renderings and proposed ideas might look cute on paper but in reality we already know that it does nothing for the poorest congressional district in the nation. It doesn’t address the existing problems or helps them except in that it will just further accelerate displacement.
The Legacy of Casa Amadeo: NYC’s Oldest Latino Music Store
Encouraged by subsidy programs that offered zero-down mortgage payments on houses in other counties, most of the middle-class had left The Bronx by the 1970’s. The borough became an enclave for working- class immigrants, African Americans and Puerto Ricans, many from East Harlem or El Barrio.
Unfortunately, an unwanted visitor was also making its debut.
An almost invisible visitor in the form of a white powder that filled people’s lungs with an acrid smoke, crack, called by some the “fast food” of drugs, brought with it an epidemic of additional poverty and crime.
In the midst of this gloomy time, Mike Amadeo found the perfect conditions to start a business. He established a store that would maintain the spirit of Latino culture in the same place where another Latino music store, called Casa Hernandez, had been functioning since 1941, before Mike took over the place. Mike named his new store Casa Amadeo, and since the 1960s until today, it has been in the same place in the South Bronx. It remains the oldest Latino music store in New York City, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
Mike Amadeo’s affinity for music began when he was a little boy. He made a living out of this passion when he arrived to New York City from Puerto Rico. As a member of a salsa music group called Los Tres Reyes, he recorded his music with a company called Compañía Alegre (The Happy Company), which was located in the same building as Casa Amadeo. In his lifetime, Mike has composed over 200 songs.
Mike moved to the South Bronx in 1969 when he rented a shop at 786 Prospect Avenue (also known as 850 Longwood Avenue) for a price much lower than the average rent of the city. At the time, many of the longtime residents were fleeing the area, which was starting to feel more like a war zone than a neighborhood, but Mike was lured by the cheap rent and the increasing Latino community.
New York City has always been the home of diverse cultures and values, and this diversity created the perfect place for Mike to prevail and establish a profitable enterprise. The Hispanic population was becoming the majority in the South Bronx, and they became Mike’s most distinguished customers. He filled up the stalls of his store with Latino music.
Latinos love to dance, and all the countries that comprise South and Central America have their own original rhythms with the same festive cadence. They all are danced vividly, and give Latino countries a cheery ambience. This cultural bliss was sustained by Casa Amadeo, as Mike was providing the community with the most iconic salsa discs.
Large numbers of Latinos began to arrive to the South Bronx in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and they encountered a bleak atmosphere infested by drugs and decay. To uphold their culture, Latino nightclubs began to prosper, and they became a shelter for the joyous identity of immigrants coming from South and Central America.
Soon enough, these nightclubs became Mike’s privileged customers. Mike was supplying jukeboxes in Latino nightclubs with compact discs, and his customer base continued to grow, while at the same time he was paying a very low rent in a depressed neighborhood.
Only a few people had Mike’s determination to stay in The Bronx at that time. In the 1970’s, this borough lost one in five residents, and its population declined from 1.472 million to 1.169 million. As The Bronx continued to be neglected, the circumstances for Mike became harder, but his determination to stay remained strong. .
For more than two years, the building where his store is located was abandoned and no one was collecting the rent. Junkies constantly broke into the building, and sometimes into his store. Utilities were shut down, and Mike had to get water from the fire hydrant outside his building which he carried with a bucket into his space. He eventually convinced ConEdison to reconnect the utility supply.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter visited The Bronx and walked along Charlotte Street, just some blocks away from Casa Amadeo. The New York Times covered this visit by saying that the president “viewed some of the country’s worst urban blight, rubble‐strewn lots and open fire hydrants, and people shouting ‘Give us money!’”
Amongst this bleak landscape, Mike’s business was flourishing. The store became a gathering place for Latino culture and his creativity grew delightful songs written by him on the counters of the store. The entire borough was falling apart, but the interior of Mike’s store was radiating colorful beams of imagination that united the community.
Today, Mike has a deep bond with his store, even though it does not provide him with the necessary income to cover his expenses. However, the emotional reward of having overcome those dark times is ample satisfaction.
Mike blames the decline of his store on two reasons : the disruption caused by digital music and the Giuliani administration. Most traditional businesses had to reinvent themselves in the last decades due to the arrival of the digital platforms. Mike’s business was in the center of this wide-reaching turmoil.
Additionally, in the 1990’s, Mayor Giuliani’s administration required that specifically zoned “cabaret” business apply for license renewal every two years for a fee up to $1,300. This requirement got rid of many informal nightclubs that were operating without any license. Mike believed that by doing so, Giuliani criminalized the city’s nightlife.
Casual buyers of music could now access to all the music they wanted online, and many nightclubs with jukeboxes that demanded Mike’s compact discs are now on the verge of disappearing or are gone, but Mike’s determination has remained strong. From Monday to Saturday, he arrives at 11:00 in the morning to keep his store running.
At the age of 84, he is energetic enough to pull up the heavy gates of his store, answer the phone, offer interviews, and attend to his customers; most of whom are seniors that spend a great deal of time walking around the store, staring at compact discs of old salsa orchestras that trigger a sense of nostalgia.
That same nostalgia, and perhaps melancholy, is also present in Mike, as he shows an LP record that contains the music of his father, who also was a prominent musician, and abandoned Mike when he was a little child living in Puerto Rico. Mike talks of his father with both admiration and sorrow. He proudly played the music of his father, while saying “What kind of affection could I have for someone who abandoned me when I was a child?”
Although it has national recognition, Mike’s store, and the building where it’s located, are not protected as historic landmarks. Casa Amadeo and 786 Prospect Avenue deserve to be protected as survivors and witnesses to the development of The Bronx.
In a neighborhood where there are not many surviving historic buildings, 786 Longwood Avenuewas built in 1905 and has gone through The Bronx’s prosperous and turbulent times. Currently, the Historic Districts Council is working to protect this important cultural landmark by securing New York City Landmark designation.
About the author:
This post comes from the Historic Districts Council. Founded in 1970 as a coalition of community groups from the city’s designated historic districts, HDC has grown to become one of the foremost citywide voices for historic preservation. Serving a network of over 500 neighborhood-based community groups in all five boroughs, HDC strives to protect, preserve and enhance New York City’s historic buildings and neighborhoods through ongoing advocacy, community development, and education programs.
Now in its eighth year, Six to Celebrate is New York’s only citywide list of preservation priorities. The purpose of the program is to provide strategic resources to neighborhood groups at a critical moment to reach their preservation goals. The six selected groups receive HDC’s hands-on help on all aspects of their efforts over the course of the year and continued support in the years to come. Learn more about this year’s groups, the Six to Celebrate app, and related events here >>
For the past 70 years we’ve been taught to never forget the genocide of six million Jews but a new survey released today on Yom Hashoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day, shows that it is fading into memory.
Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Only 39 percent of Americans know that Hitler was democratically elected.
“As we get farther away from the actual events, 70-plus years now, it becomes less forefront of what people are talking about or thinking about or discussing or learning,” said Matthew Bronfman, a board member of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which commissioned the study. “If we wait another generation before you start trying to take remedial action, I think we’re really going to be behind the eight ball.”
But here’s a story about our Bronx’s past that we should never forget.
Many New Yorkers, and Bronxites for that matter, do not know that at one point, the Bronx was the most Jewish of all the boroughs. With over half a million residents of Jewish ancestry, they made up almost 57% of the population of our beloved borough in the 1930s through the 40s.
According to bronxsynagogues.org, there were over 260 registered synagogues registered throughout the borough’s landscape. Most lived in the South Bronx with highest concentration around the lower Grand Concourse.
As Israel and the rest of the world observes Yom HaShoa, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, here is an accountof a Bronx rabbi, as told by his son,
of how they saved one family.
The account begins:
“In the early 1940’s, my father was a rabbi in the Bronx, NYC. His salary was twenty dollars a week.
One day, he received a phone call. It was urgent, the man said. A matter of life and death. It was about the Jews in Europe.
The following Saturday morning, the man spoke to the congregation. He had “inside” information. The Nazis were planning to exterminate the Jews. The “relocation camps” were really death camps. Gas chambers. Gold extracted from the teeth of the dead, their body fat to be used to manufacture soap. He begged people to sign affidavits, at ten dollars each, documenting that they were seeking household help. This had to be done quickly. People could still be saved. Soon, it would be too late.
Everyone was shocked. Surely, this man was exaggerating. Maybe even crazy. Germany — the most cultured of countries — How could this be?
The man asked my parents to sign two affidavits, stating their interest in hiring a butler and maid. They would have to pay twenty dollars for the affidavits. A week’s salary – somehow they would manage. But my parents were not sure whether to believe him. And, documenting that they were hiring a butler and maid, in their small Bronx apartment? Wasn’t that fraud?
My parents gave him the money, and they put their signatures on the affidavits.
Three months later, the doorbell rang. A man and woman held a piece of paper. “We are looking for this family,” the man said, in heavily accented Yiddish. My family’s name was written on the paper. The woman bent down, and kissed the hem of my mother’s dress. “You saved us,” she said. Let us always remember and never forget.”
StreetEasy has issued a report on average housing costs and incomes broken down by NYC boroughs and as usual, The Bronx comes in the worst possible rankings.
Although Bronx renters have the lowest average housing costs in the city at an annual average of $13,176, due to an average income of $29,302 it is also the most rent burdened borough with roughly 45% of annual income going to rent.
The situation for Bronx homeowners is more on par with Brooklyn and Queens with 37% of income going to annual housing costs which average $28,548 in our borough.
According to StreetEasy, the average income for homeowners in The Bronx is $76,454.
“Renters and owners in the Bronx earn the least of any borough, and face the lowest absolute housing costs, but are significantly burdened by them. If Manhattanites earn more and pay relatively less, Bronx residents earn less and pay relatively more: The borough has the highest median-rent-to-income ratio in all of NYC, at 45 percent, meaning that the average earner in the median apartment pays a staggering 45 percent of their annual income in rent.
Exacerbating the difference is the fact that average renters in Manhattan make more than $33,000 more than average renters in the Bronx — an astounding difference of 112 percent — but pay rents of roughly just $500 more per month. Similarly, Manhattan homeowners earn nearly $66,000 more per year on average than those in the Bronx, despite paying a premium of only $642 in average monthly housing costs.”
This data doesn’t come as a surprise, however, as this has been consistently the case for the past several years with study after study.
Tucked away in Riverdale is Fieldston filled with mansions on oversized lots of which 252 of its homes were declared a historic district back in 2006.
Curbed writes today about 4730 Fieldston Road, a massive 10,000 square foot home for sale sitting on 1.3 acres and it even comes with its own badminton court (yes, I love badminton but alas I don’t have $6.65 million shekels to buy this 10 bedroom home).
But then again, what do I need 10 bedrooms for?
The home itself is gorgeous but it’s all about the landscape and lot, for me at least.
The house, currently listedfor $6.65 million, was built in 1930 and designed by architect Julius Gregory, a prolific designer whose stamp can be found on dozens of the homes in the Fieldston Historic District. This particular one is, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission designation, “substantially intact today” and “representative of the homes built in Fieldston during the period in which the neighborhood was being developed.”
But what does that mean, exactly? Gregory, a regular contributor to House Beautiful and Home & Garden, designed this mansion in the Georgian Revival style, with a gabled, slate-shingled roof (with chimneys, and yes, there are fireplaces—three of ‘em), five front bays, and a muted facade made of fieldstone. (Of course.)
This is the beauty of The Bronx. There is literally something for everyone in our beautiful borough.
Fieldston is one of the very few neighborhoods in NYC where it’s privately owned down to the very streets itself.
In NYC Landmark’s designation report of the Fieldston Historic District, Virginia Kurshan writes, “The Fieldston neighborhood is one of New York City’s most beautiful and well-planned early twentieth century suburban communities consisting of approximately 257
houses and related structures.”
Oh and this isn’t the most expensive house to hit the market in The Bronx.
The average 4 person household in community board 2 (which is the minimum number of people that can qualify for these apartments) only makes $37,582 so these units clearly are not for the average family in the area.
The best use is the proposed Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront Plan created BY the community NOT greedy developers who do not care about our quality of life and only offer up such “token” amenities like access to the waterfront (which belongs to the people anyway) and “community facilities.
