THIS past May I went on a couple of swings through Kingsbridge Heights along Bailey Avenue and Kingsbridge Terrace, in Kingsbridge Heights, which are positioned on a steep ridge the slants down toward Riverdale and the Hudson River to the west. Some of the photos from those walks wound up on my 25th Anniversary Forgotten NY presentation for the Bronx Historical Society in December 2024 that Dr. Steven Payne has generously passed along a link. Today, here’s a view I serendipitously stumbled on.
It’s on West 193rd Street between Bailey and Heath Avenues just south of West Kingsbridge Road. The grade is so steep that the attached brick buildings are perfectly stepped and repeated. In the distance, we see the Broadway Bridge, a combination road and railway bridge spanning the Harlem River and opened in 1962, replacing earlier such bridges. It’s a shame the parked cars impede the view somewhat but not enough to spoil it. In the forefront is the pedal to the metal Major Deegan Expressway, which becomes the New York State Thruway once entering Westchester.
Pardon the one-photo Gallery, but this !@#$ new WordPress edition blurs images when I drop them in as is, but not when I place them in a Gallery. Simply click on it for a full size image, as is done with multiphoto Galleries.
This hill is rather tame compared to the ones found in Pittsburgh or San Francisco, but there’s a bit of huff and puffing involved in climbing it east up to Heath Avenue. Along the way, you can glimpse a rare short-masted Donald Deskey lamp, usually seen only in parks. The many-gabled building with the blue siding at the crest is home to an organization called the Women’s Press Collective:
a women-led, all-volunteer, non-government funded membership association, dedicated to building independent press to tell the stories corporate media won’t. WPC was founded on the principle that those most affected by society’s problems must be involved in solving them and need access to the power of the printed word to do so…Established in New York City in 1982, WPC’s founding strategy was based in providing publication support for farm workers and other low-paid women workers whose organizing efforts had no voice in the major corporate media.
More to come from Kingsbridge Heights later…
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1/27/25