Bronx history includes large Jewish population
Boulevard of Dreams. By Constance Rosenblum.
New York: New York University Press,2009.277 Pages.$27.95

Those who come from the Bronx (doesn’t everyone?) will be fascinated by this intriguing account of its rise, fall, and the beginning of its rise again.The “boulevard” in the book’s title is actually the Grand Concourse, the wide thoroughfare that stretches north and south through the Bronx. This history by Constance Rosenblum, a New York Times reporter and editor, is being released just before Nov.24,2009 when the Grand Concourse will celebrate its 100th birthday. In the years before the Grand Concourse was constructed, the Bronx consisted largely of farms and park land. It was annexed from Westchester County by New York City in 1874, becoming the only part of the city attached to the mainland. Louis Risse, a French engineer who settled in New York at the age of 17, designed the Grand Concourse as an 11-lane speedway where wealthy New Yorkers could race their horses while, at the same time, it served as a link to the parks of the Bronx. Conceived in 1892, the Grand Concourse was dedicated in 1909,by which time the horses had given way to automobiles. In short order, the Victorian houses lining the Grand Concourse were replaced by opulent five- and six-story Art Deco apartment houses. Upwardly mobile Jewish families from the Lower East Side moved into these apartments.

By 1930,the Bronx had 585,000 Jews,many of them living on the Grand Concourse or its surrounding streets.The actual number was determined by counting how many students were absent from school on Yom Kippur. On the High Holy Days, the Grand Concourse bustled with well-dressed people heading home from the synagogues in the area. Their weddings and bar mitzvahs were held in the luxurious ballrooms of the Concourse Plaza at 161st Street and the Grand Concourse or in the many nearby catering halls. Close to the Concourse Plaza was the Yankee Stadium, which saw its first game on April 18,1923 and which is now replaced by a new Yankee Stadium. Further to the north where Fordham Road crosses the Grand Concourse, a shopping area, featuring Alexander’s and Loehmann’s, attracted customers. In that same neighborhood, the Loew’s Paradise began business in 1929 with its Italian Baroque architecture and a blue sky ceiling with twinkling stars.Close by were the ice cream parlors: Krum’s,Jahn’s,and Addie Vallins.

In addition to its large Jewish population, the Bronx had many Irish Catholics who were especially proud of their parochial high schools and Fordham University. Since New York University had a branch in the West Bronx, James J, Lyons, the Irish borough president called the Bronx, “the borough of universities.” Until the end of World War II, the only blacks in the area were women maids hired by the mostly Jewish matrons at the “Bronx Slave Market”where the women waited to be selected for a low-paid day’s work. In the 1960s, blacks and Puerto Ricans descended on the Grand Concourse neighborhood and the Jews moved out. The newcomers had many problems – poverty,alcoholism,mental illness,crime, and drug addiction.Landlords abandoned the buildings as they sank into chaos and disrepair. Inner cities across the country deteriorated, and the Bronx became a noted disaster area. Novelists depicted what happened, especially Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities. More recently, there are some signs of renewed health and development. The neighborhood appears to be struggling to move beyond its “nightmare past.”Some restoration has taken place including the reclamation of the destroyed Loew’s Paradise. There is hope that the Bronx could become a successful interracial community. Rosenblum has told a harrowing story of construction and destruction,ending with the realistic requirement for changes in attitudes to restore the happy days that once made the Bronx a desirable place to live.