Elm Place stairs, looking north. Photograph by Andy Simons.
WHERE: Stair streets at Oliver Place, East 197 Street, Elm Place, East 187 Street, Bronx
START: 205 Street subway station (D train)
FINISH: Fordham station, Metro North Railroad (Harlem and New Haven Lines, fully accessible)
DISTANCE: 3.0 miles (4.8 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl and Andy Simons except as noted. Maps courtesy of Google Maps.
This was a picture-perfect day to tackle two of the four stair streets in the Bronx I had not yet climbed (Oliver Place and Elm Place) and, along the way, return to two others (East 197 Street, East 187 Street) described in my post “A Raven, a Ram, a Two-Headed Eagle, and Prosciutto Bread” on this page. I was accompanied by my friend and new stair streets climber Andy.
Route of this walk, readng from top to bottom and then up to Fordham station.
Bronx Victory Memorial.
We started the walk at the northern terminus of the D train, 205 Street station, in Norwood, a residential neighborhood, We crossed the area’s commercial spine, East 204 Street, before coming to wide, leafy Mosholu Parkway and an unexpected delight in the median of the parkway: a local World War I memorial. For a nice history of Mosholu Parkway, go to https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/mosholu-parkway/history. At the end of the War in 1918, local citizens formed the Bronx Victory Memorial Association commissioned Irish-born, self-taught artist Jerome Connor (1875-1943) to create the war memorial, which was dedicated on Armistice (Veterans) Day, 1925. For more information on this monument go to https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/mosholu-parkway/monuments/164.
Oliver Place, looking up from Decatur Avenue, 1929 (New York Public Library)
Crossing Mosholu Parkway, we continued along Marion Avenue past Bedford Park Boulevard and the Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, a Roman Catholic college preparatory school for women founded in 1855, to the day’s first stair street, Oliver Place. It would be more correct to describe Oliver Place as a few steps sandwiched by two slopes, and more correct yet to describe it as just awful. Both slopes are steep, and the upper slope (leading from Marion Avenue) is in worse shape than the lower slope (leading to Decatur Avenue). There were just 5 steps down and the risers were not uniform. The whole street could do with resurfaced pavement and a continuous stairway from Marion Avenue to Decatur Avenue. Oliver Place, shown in the four images below, is treacherous and I probably won’t revisit it as I repeat the cycle of stair streets.
From the bottom of Oliver Place we continued to the stairs at East 197 Street, which I climbed before and which, at Andy’s suggestion, we climbed today. 36 stairs up and these are in decent condition. Back up on Marion Avenue, we continued to busy Fordham Road (U.S. Route 1) and then to Elm Place. A block south of Fordham Road are the Elm Place stairs, 43 steps up. The stairs are in decent condition but the handrail is a bit too low. The images below show the stairs looking up from East 188 Street, looking down from near East 187 Street, and from the top of the stairs south along Elm Place. The last image is of fire escapes, on a building next to the stairs, which caught my eye.
We turned left onto East 187 Street for the last stair street of the day, my previous climb of which I described in “A Raven, a Ram, a Two-Headed Eagle, and Prosciutto Bread.” From a distance it looks grand but the stairs are in poor condition. Except at the very bottom, there are no handrails, only concrete balustrades set too low. This staircase, built in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration, deserves to be rebuilt. 46 steps down. The first image below is from January 1937, collection of the New York Public Library.
Once at the bottom of these stairs we continued east on East 187 Street into the Belmont neighborhood, known popularly as Arthur Avenue, to that great Albanian restaurant, Çka ka Qellu (dellcious food, friendly service, rustic décor), for an excellent lunch, then to the Fordham station for a quick train ride to Grand Central Terminal. This was a beautiful day to take in a diverse, mostly untouristed, slice of the Bronx, for fun and physical therapy.
Profile of this walk, reading from left to right.
Stair recap: 79 steps up, 51 steps down, total 130 steps. As of this walk I’ve climbed 107 stair streets, the remaining ones being 2 in the Bronx, 4 in Manhattan, and 7 on Staten Island.