KNOWN as the Castle on the Concourse, the former PS 31 at the Grand Concourse and East 144th Street, south of Hostos Community College, was designed by NYC school architect C.B. J. Snyder in a Collegiate Gothic style and built in 1896. Though it was afforded Landmarked status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1986, the school closed in 1997 and basically went unoccupied and uncared-for for the next 18 years until its demolition in 2015. Its site now hosts the tallest residential building with a Grand Concourse address. The site looks like this today.
The Tydol brand of gasoline was owned by the Tidewater Oil Company, which sold gasoline under the Tydol brand name from the 1920s through 1950s. After that Tidewater was folded into conglomerates Phillips 66 on the west coast and Getty on the east coast.
I had thought that Triborough Bridge-type lampposts were little used on regular city streets controlled by stoplights, but they did find a home on the Grand Concourse and Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx until the 1950s, and in the 2000s, they were revived on major streets in Queens and the Bronx. Today, twin Corvingtons light the GC (whose full official name is the Grand Boulevard and Concourse).
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Photo: Al Ponte’s Time Machine
11/24/22