WHERE: Van Nest and Parkchester neighborhoods, the Bronx
START: East 180 Street subway station (2 and 5 trains; fully accessible)
FINISH: Parkchester subway station (partially accessible; escalators from street level to platforms)
DISTANCE: 2.0 miles (3.2 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl
Route and profile of this walk, courtesy Google Maps.
This walk was not particularly physically taxing, it definitely was not scenic, and I knew all that ahead of time having biked these streets in the past. So why did I go there? A work assignment has me developing a work scope for the design of two stations for Metro North Railroad’s Penn Station Access project. This project will have commuter trains operating along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor from New Rochelle, New York to Pennsylvania Station, with four new stations in the Bronx. One of them will be in the area I walked through today. Not being one to try to do this from my armchair, I had to get out there for a good look. And I coupled that with a look at Parkchester, an interesting residential area.
On the opposite side of the tracks once stood the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad’s main repair shops for electric locomotives and, before that, a thoroughbred race track. The New Haven electrified this line in 1912 and it once had as many as six tracks for both passenger and freight trains. Now it has just two tracks for Amtrak, The old steel bridges carrying the overhead wires that carry the electric power for the trains still stand, and one is visible in the third image below.
Starting at the landmark East 180 Street subway station (look at my post “Lower Bronx River Greenway” for a photo and description), I walked to and along East Tremont Avenue, with the Northeast Corridor tracks on one side and the northern extent of Parkchester on the other. This streetscape is ugly. Enough said. There are plenty of automobile repair places, parking lots, filling stations, a car wash, and a Golden Corral all-you-can-eat buffet. Some of this stretch of East Tremont was part of my bike route from Brooklyn to City Island. I turned off at Castle Hill Avenue, with St. Raymond’s Church at the corner, then turned onto Metropolitan Avenue for the walk through Parkchester.
East Tremont Avenue streetscape.
St. Raymond’s Church, corner Castle Hill Avenue and East Tremont Avenue. Yet another neighborhood cathedral in the Bronx; see St. Nicholas of Tolentine on Fordham Road.
Parkchester was one of several planned apartment communities in New York City built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on the eve of U.S. involvement in World War II. The others are Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on Manhattan’s East Side, and Riverton Houses in Harlem. When these were built, African-Americans were restricted to Riverton, which was built to much the same standards as the others but was smaller. For a concise history of Parkchester go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkchester,_Bronx
Parkchester is traversed by two wide streets, Metropolitan Avenue and Unionport Road, forming an X and meeting at Metropolitan Oval, a pleasant park. The commercial heart of Parkchester is along Metropolitan Avenue between the oval and the Parkchester subway station. There are numerous restaurants and stores, even a branch of Macy’s. Walking along the length of Metropolitan Avenue, the area had something of the feel of Roosevelt Island, only older, lower-rise, and more spacious. Those of you who are familiar with Roosevelt Island and Parkchester will understand exactly.
Parkchester is well-designed and its population is now very diverse, certainly representative of the crazy quilt that is this city. Although as I started along Metropolitan Avenue the ugliness of East Tremont Avenue was only a block away, the streetscape gave no hint of that. Many building facades are enlivened by terracotta art work; this and the sculptures in the fountain at Metropolitan Oval lend a definite whimsy to the place - but one has to look up and around.
View along Metropolitan Avenue; examples of terracotta artwork.
Top row: fountain and sculpture in Metropolitan Oval. Bottom row: subway station in Hugh J. Grant Circle; marker explaining who Hugh J. Grant was.
This walk ended at the Parkchester subway station, a massive structure with nice tile work in the middle of Hugh J. Grant Circle, named for the youngest-ever mayor of New York. This walk had its share of contrasts and even a few surprises, making for a Sunday afternoon well spent.