The Bronx In 1897 – Beautiful Streets and Homes Part 2
Lewis Morris homestead Morris Heights Bronx 1897
Poet Ogden Nash once quipped, “The Bronx? No thonx.”
By 1964, Nash had changed his mind and said “I can’t seem to escape the sins of my smart-alec youth. Here are my amends. I wrote those lines, ‘The Bronx? No thonx!’ I shudder to confess them. Now I’m an older, wiser man I cry, ‘The Bronx, God bless them!”
Many people deride the Bronx without actually setting foot in it. In the 19th century, no such derision existed. The Bronx’s reputation as a great place to live and work was justified.
Let’s continue our look at the Bronx in 1897 from the book The Great North Side.
The following words were written for the book by Albert E. Davis, architect & and a North Side Board of Trade organizer:
“The conditions which caused over-crowding on Manhattan Island do not exist on the North Side. It contains about two-thirds of the combined area of both, is broader and less closely confiued by water, and has unlimited room to expand northward into Westchester County whenever the growth of the city demands it.”
Martin Walter residence 2082 Washington Avenue Bronx 1897
“Hence, while the state of affairs below the Harlem was perhaps the natural outgrowth of the necessities of restricted area, it is absolutely unjustifiable and positively wrong to thus crowd the habitations of human beings where there is so much room to spread out, and the price of land is still low.”
Hugh N. Camp residence Fordham Bronx 1897
