WHERE: Throgmorton Avenue, north of Fairmount Avenue, Bronx
NEAREST TRANSIT: Bx8 bus from Westchester Square subway station (6 train) or Pelham Parkway subway station (5 train)
Photographs by Michael Cairl.
Location (highlighted) of Throgmorton Avenue stairs. Map courtesy OpenStreetMaps.
In the east Bronx, between the Bruckner Expressway (Interstate 95) and Long Island Sound, and south of Pelham Bay Park, lies the neighborhood of Country Club. This is a tidy, suburban place that I’ve biked through several times but never walked through before. Each time biking through, my reaction was to rub my eyes and wonder “This is the Bronx?!,” much as I had in Riverdale and Soundview. Country Club gets its name from the Country Club of Westchester. From The New York Times on April 4, 2010:
Country Club was once, indeed, a country club, or at least part of it was. The Country Club of Westchester occupied part of the area from 1881 until it burned down in 1922, an event during which “fashionable women left dance hall and dining room to form bucket brigades” to help fight the fire, according to an account in The New York Times. Parts of the land were owned by families like Lorillard Spencer’s, whose estate was parceled into 1,200 lots and in 1922 sold at public auction.
In Country Club lies the shortest stair street in New York City, all of six steps on Throgmorton Avenue.
Looking north on Throgmorton Avenue from Fairmount Avenue.
The part of Throgmorton Avenue just north of Fairmount Avenue lies in a hollow. I assume it is part of the natural topography so was never filled in when the area was subdivided.
The Throgmorton Avenue stairs.
The stairs themselves are in very good condition. Only the fact that the handrail on the right in the above image isn’t securely anchored at the bottom keeps this little stair street from getting an “excellent” grade. Note to the New York City Department of Transportation and Bronx Community Board 10: this would be a really easy and worthwhile fix. Fix it and I’ll come back. These stairs also appear on Urban Archive at Throgmorton Ave (Baisley Ave to Fairmount Ave) | Urban Archive.
From the top of the stairs I continued northwest to the footbridge across the Bruckner Expressway, then a couple of good slices of pizza (thin crust, a lot of pepperoni) at Louie’s & Ernie’s on Crosby Avenue, then to East Tremont Avenue and the bus to the subway to take me home.
This was my 115th stair street, and some of those I’ve climbed more than once. I have 1 left in the Bronx and 4 on Staten Island.
STAIR RECAP: 6 steps up.