THE Sholem Aleichem Cooperative on Giles Plae west of Sedgwick Avenue in Kingsbridge Heights was built by labor unions and progressive Jewish organizations. Sholom aleichem, in Hebrew, means “peace be upon you,” and is the title of a song sung at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, but these houses’ name refers to “The People’s Storyteller,” Sholom Rabinowitz (1859-1916), who did much to promote the use of the Yiddish language in literature. He adopted Sholom Aleichem as his pen name. He is also remembered by a street subnaming at Park Avenue and East 33rd Street.
The late Bronx historian John McNamara related a Giles Place story in McNamara’s Old Bronx: In 1915 some neighborhood boys were playing war, digging trenches on Giles Place using borrowed picks and trowels. They hit something hard under the soil and found several cannonballs: it turned out they were left over from Fort Independence and were subsequently distributed to the New-York Historical Society, Dyckman House in Inwood, and the Van Cortlandt Mansion museum in VCP. The Parks Department soon founded Fort Independence Park along Sedgwick Avenue.
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2/10/25