| This was the jump-off point for the Forgotten NY walk of 7/18/99 (Pardon me. Make that 1999 for all you Y2K sensitive souls). The Grand Concourse, looking south, is lined here as it is for most of its long length, with 1920's-1930's era apartment houses. While the Grand Concourse was not exactly a limited access highway, it was sort of a forerunner of them, laid out as it was in the late 1800's as a broad carriageway evokative I suppose of some Parisian boulevard. Most major cross streets, such as Bedford Park Blvd, offer crosstown motorists the choice of going through the Concourse intersection, or bypassing it by passing beneath the Concourse. Since few travelers would elect to go through an intersection when offered a better alternative, most of these crossroads only have to cope with motorists intending to turn from the sidestreet onto the Concourse and vise versa. If these intersections can thus be seen in the light of on/off ramps, then the Concourse is very close to being a limited access arterial highway. |
  Just off the Concourse, to the east on Bedford Park, Kevin and I noticed this old candy store while on our way to meet the rest of the walk group. This store still nurses two generations of aging co-operative signs, the more prominent sporting the Breyers Ice Cream logo and the rusting hulk beneath it the old 1950's era 7-Up logo. I still own a paper sodajerk hat with that 7-Up logo on it, from the 1964-65 Worlds Fair. |
 One of the members
of the walking group knowledgable about this part of the Bronx,
led us across the Concourse and past Jerome Avenue a block to
the west. The bridge carrying Bedford Park Blvd across the expanse
of the MTA subway yards there is undergoing major reconstruction.
The wreckage you see in the foreground of the shot above is on
the bridge, not in the yard.As we proceeded making our way down the Concourse we passed many apartment houses with varying degrees of terra cotta adornment. One building's arched entrance is flanked by two prominent gnomes. |
