This is the Bronx????
WHERE: Pelham Bay Park and City Island, Bronx
START: Pelham Bay Park subway station (6 train), fully accessible
FINISH: City Island Avenue and Fordham Street, then Bx29 bus to Pelham Bay Park subway station
DISTANCE: 3.3 miles (5.3 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except where noted. Directional map courtesy Apple Maps.
Route of this walk.
This walk was a logical follow-up to a walk I did in this area a year ago; see my post entitled “East Bronx Ramble 2” on this page (East Bronx Ramble 2 — ON FOOT, ON WHEELS). It was my first visit to City Island in over 10 years. In pre-stroke days I biked to City Island a few times. From my home in Brooklyn the round trip was 45 miles (72 kilometers) and made for a nice day trip. City Island is often characterized as looking like a New England fishing village, and it does look like one, more or less.
The starting point for this walk was the last stop on the 6 train, Pelham Bay Park. One enters the park directly across from this station. This area was, until the late 19th century, a collection of private estates and natural wetlands, suggested by this map from 1868:
Image courtesy New-York Historical Society.
From the NYC Parks website:
In 1888, the New York State legislature established this park, the city’s largest, and five others in the borough, creating a Bronx parks system after years of advocacy by the New York Park Association.
For decades the park remained largely unimproved except for upgraded approach roads, provisional bathhouses and extensive camping facilities at Orchard Beach. By 1911, the park had been improved with the addition of athletic fields, play equipment, tennis courts and an 18-hole golf course. During World War I, a massive naval training facility occupied a portion of the park, and in 1922 Isaac Rice Stadium was completed (demolished in 1999). In 1933 the impressive Bronx Victory Memorial was dedicated in tandem with a tree grove commemorating those lost in the war.
In the late 1930s, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses initiated a massive park renovation. A second golf course was added named Split Rock. The most ambitious project was a reinvented Orchard Beach, designed by Gilmore D. Clarke and Aymar Embury, created by dredging sand from the Long Island Sound to connect Hunter Island and Rodman’s Neck. This crescent-shaped “Bronx Riviera” features a massive parking field and two enormous Art Deco-style bathhouses. In 1947, the beach was extended 1.25 miles by filling in shallow areas of LeRoy’s Bay, adding 115 acres of parkland.
More recently, the 375-acre Thomas Pell Wildlife Refuge was created in 1967, and given its sheer size and complexity Pelham Bay Park remains a work in progress, its many amenities and scenic shoreline serving as a local and regional destination.
Compare the map below, dating from 1918, with the 1868 map. By this time the whole area shown was part of New York City and. the newly created Bronx County, not Westchester County. Wetlands and shoreline were being filled in. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad’s Harlem River Branch (today part of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor) and the City Island Bridge (about which more later) had been built.
Image courtesy alamy.com.
The Bronx Victory Memorial was something we saw early on the walk. It commemorates the Bronx residents who died in World War I. Sadly, the plaza in front of it needs some tender loving care,
Not too far along we crossed the Pelham Bay Bridge, which opened in 1908. The sidewalk accommodates pedestrians and cyclists and is too narrow.
In the left background are Amtrak’s Pelham Bay drawbridge and Co-op City.
Just past the bridge we turned right onto City Island Road. This has a bike and pedestrian path on either side of the road. The path and its surrounds make you forget that you’re in New York City.
In the background of the above image, the path ascends one of the very few hills on this route. The other side of that hill is a gentle down slope, past the end of which is the Turtle Cove golf course across the road followed by a traffic circle where one can go to Orchard Beach (no bike/pedestrian path), Rodman’s Neck, or City Island. Rodman’s Neck, a peninsula jutting into Eastchester Bay, hosts the New York Police Department’s pistol range and bomb disposal unit.
Not far from the traffic circle we arrived at the City Island Bridge. The current bridge, with a walkway and bike lane on either side, opened in 2017, replacing a less utilitarian span that opened in 1901 with one sidewalk and no bike lane.
Old City Island Bridge. Photo by Jim Henderson.
Current City Island Bridge, with Rodman’s Neck to the left.
Almost the first thing one notices about City Island is all the boats. Boat docks are appendages of restaurants. A number of yachts that competed for and won the America’s Cup were built at the Minnieford boat yard on City Island.
View from the park near the City Island Bridge. In the distance: 1 - Throgs Neck Bridge. 2 - Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. 3 - One World Trade Center.
Just to the east of City Island, accessible only by ferry, is Hart Island, home of New York City’s potter’s field, with over one million interments.
City Island draws a lot of visitors from the Bronx and beyond to patronize its bars and restaurants. It is a tight-knit, mostly quiet community with a lot of older, small houses on the streets off the “main drag,” City Island Avenue. It doesn’t seem as insular as that other small community on the water in New York City, Broad Channel in Jamaica Bay. Long Island Sound is never far away, and this is the essential character of City Island. I’ve always enjoyed visiting City Island and am glad finally to have returned there. Getting out of my zone is always a good thing, as is doing so on foot.
Lunch was not at one of the numerous seafood restaurants on the island. Too fancy for the occasion. Instead, lunch was at a locals bar and restaurant halfway down City Island Avenue called The Snug. Cold beer and tasty food hit the spot.
Last but not least, I walked over two more of New York City’s walkable bridges today, bringing my total to 43, with 32 to go.