THERE is a curious-looking “ghost street” in Wakefield, a curved dirt pedestrian path along the stone wall that marks the south end of the 239th Street subway yard serving #2 and #5 trains on the White Plains Road line in the Bronx, between Barnes and Baychester Avenues. It’s occasionally marked by street signs at the dead end stubs of the north-south avenues, and occasional street lighting, an indication that the street was once open to traffic.
The street, when it was open, was named Bissel Avenue and was likely open to traffic as late as the 1980s, judging by the street signs that pop up here and there.
Bissel Avenue shows up clearly on this 1949 Hagstrom, and East 241st Street east of Baychester Avenue was also once called Bissel Avenue.
Here’s the newest Google map of the area, with its old path marked with a red line. A public garden at Barnes and Bruner Avenues commemorates the former avenue.
Who was the Bissel for whom the street was named? George Bissel was a Civil War paymaster and a renowned sculptor who completed portraits of General Horatio Gates, President Chester Alan Arthur (in Madison Square) and early NYC mayor Abraham DePeyster, whose massive statue has found its latest home in Thomas Paine Park just east of the intersection of Lafayette and Worth Streets.
Thus, Bissel Avenue is all but gone…but two of its namesake sculptor’s works are going strong.
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3/20/25