HEY, I get it. Verveelen Place is nothing special; issuing from Broadway south of West 231st Street, it hits a dead end at what was once an active branch of NY Central Railroad, which abandoned passenger traffic in 1958 and freight in 1980; it’s part of the John Muir nature trail along its stretch in Van Cortlandt Park, and, well, a rubble-strewn ditch south of the park, as NYC hardly ever converts old right-of-ways to urban trails. There’s a parking lot building, and a couple of unmarked brick buildings; who knows, or other than their employees, cares, about what they are. But when I got this photo in 2016, I cared because the alley possessed a now-rare bracketed curved-mast streetlamp of 1950s vintage. Shortly after, the relentless Department of Transportation swapped it out for a regulation straight-mast.
Though its name reminds me of a boxed near-cheese product, according to the late great Bronx historian John McNamara, Verveelen Place is named for ferryman Johannes Verveelen, who owned a nearby tavern in the late 17th Century. It was still in use during the Revolutionary War. Verveelen Place itself opened in 1922.
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7/12/26
1 comment
Looking around it on Google Maps my guess is that the building with the green wall is part of the Walgreens that fronts on Broadway. At the very end of the street on GSV you can see baled cardboard right behind it, something a retailer would have.