WHERE: East 174 Street between Anthony Avenue and Clay Avenue, Bronx
NEAREST TRANSIT: Tremont station (Metro North Railroad Harlem Line); Tremont Avenue subway station (D train), fully accessible
Photographs by Michael Cairl. Map courtesy openstreetmap.org.
Lately I’ve been reading Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier. It’s an excellent book and one doesn’t have to be in or from the Bronx to enjoy it. About halfway through Frazier describes a walk he did paralleling the Cross Bronx Expressway (Interstate 95). Intrigued, I mapped out how I might do that and discovered a stair street I had previously missed. It is so close to the walk I described in the post on this page entitled “Claremont Park and Mount Eden (Bronx)” that I could have covered it on that trip.
This stair street is the block of East 174 Street between Anthony Avenue and Clay Avenue. The sidewalk on the block east of Anthony Avenue is so uneven that I determined it was safer to walk in the street. The stairs abut the expressway and probably date from when this section of the expressway was built in the late 1950s - early 1960s. The stairs themselves are in decent condition and are wider than usual, but there is a handrail only on one side. It’s 50 steps up to Clay Avenue. I doubt the stairs have had much attention since they were built.
The Cross Bronx is an ugly gash right through the Bronx, spewing congestion and pollution onto communities that didn’t ask for it, displacing many thousands of people, and giving the Bronx urban problems it has not overcome. Here’s a view from the Monroe Avenue overpass.
Robert Caro’s masterwork, The Power Broker, describes in detail how New York’s “master builder,” Robert Moses (1888 - 1981), pushed the Cross Bronx to realization. Ian Frazier describes how Moses simply took a plan devised by Manhattan grandees in the 1920s and brought it to fruition.
Along this walk, I was treated to some interesting sights. This old storefront by the Tremont railroad station, Frank’s, caught my eye.
The building at 1744 Monroe Avenue appeared to be under renovation. This balustrade made me stop and look.
This restrained Art Deco building at East 176 Street and Monroe Avenue, the Kenneth Arms, perhaps epitomized what was called living “just off the Concourse.” Starting after World War I, people who were not wealthy but lived on the Grand Concourse had “arrived.”
And at the intersection of Grand Concourse, East Tremont Avenue, and Weeks Avenue is the Bronx’s Flatiron Building.
This was my 121st stair street in New York City. Perhaps I will find others. When I do, I will ascend or descend them, or both.