Forgotten New York

EAMES PLACE, Kingsbridge Heights

Tucked between the Bronx Community College campus, where the Hall of Fame of Great Americans is located, and the Jerome Park Reservoir is a little network of streets that seems to be on the borderline between Kingsbridge Heights and Bedford Park. Since one of the area’s big landmarks is the massive Kingsbridge Armory, I’ll assign it to the former. One of the area’s smaller streets is Eames Place, which runs for a couple of blocks between Webb and University Avenues north of West Kingsbridge Road.

 

I’ll repeat the title card photo here at Webb and Eames, since my title cards cannot be seen on mobile devices (thanks WordPress). In the Borough of Apartment Buildings there’s a distinctive design that is seen only rarely in other boroughs: Moderne apartments with sharp right angles, with wraparound windows on the corners. I love the design. In those rooms, you have views in two directions. There are dozens of buildings of this type on the Grand Concourse. (I have not been for a walk on The Conk in a few years and perhaps I will return in 2016.)

 

This building with an unusual facade at #124 Eames abutting a more recent building is the former Kingsbridge Heights Jewish Center, constructed in 1926. It currently serves as PS 307.

 

A couple of doors down, facing Claflin Avenue, is the Jerome Park Branch of the NY Public Library, named for the nearby reservoir that sits on the former site of a racetrack built by 19th Century financier Leonard Jerome, the grandfather of Winston Churchill. The branch opened in 1968 and was completely renovated in 2007.

(Hey folks, I’m a bit rusty with my fonts. The sign on the facade seems to be set in Bembo, but it’s not quite. Which font is it?)

 

Here’s a holdout house on Claflin and Eames, like the one on Webb Avenue a short distance away I presented earlier this week. It’s wedged on the corner between two big apartment houses. It’s likely that similar dwellings neighbored it a century ago.

 

From Street View, another Moderne classic with set back sharp corners and wraparound windows, classic Bronx.

 

Across the block on University Avenue is his group of apartment houses that predates the Modernes by about twenty years, I’d say.

University Avenue is a candidate for an FNY walk along its lengthy route from Sedgwick Avenue west of Yankee Stadium north to Jerome Park reservoir. It takes its name from New York University, which ceded its Bronx campus to Bronx Community College some decades ago. It was subnamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard from Sedgwick north to West Tremont Avenue but oddly, not along its entire length. It closely parallels the route of the New Croton Aqueduct, which has become parkland in several spots.

4/12/16

 

 

 

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