Day 504


Day 504

614 Courtlandt Avenue

May 17th, 2013



Now home to the Bronx Documentary Center, this recently restored building, with its "heroic roofline", is a survivor of the mid-19th-century days when Courtlandt Avenue was known as "Dutch Broadway" for the large number of German (Deutsch) immigrants who lived in the vicinity, many of whom had fled the "noisy and dark, cramped and airless tenements" of Little Germany on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

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This was originally the Church of the Holy Trinity, built in 1911 for the Italian Presbyterian community.

Day 504

Dominating the scene

May 17th, 2013



Our Lady of Guadalupe

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Originally the Reformed Church of Melrose, built in 1879

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The Eltona

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Looking out at, among other things, the beautiful old Bronx Borough Courthouse, at right. (Behind the courthouse is Boricua College's new 14-story "vertical campus", and off to the left is the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul.)




The red brick structure you see lurking in the back is part of the old Hupfel Brewery, which started making beer in the mid-1800s amid the emergence of a vibrant community of German immigrants here in the South Bronx. By the turn of the 20th century, Hupfel's was but one of several breweries in the area, and one of two standing on the steep slope (featured in the previous photo) rising from St. Ann's Avenue to Eagle Avenue, an advantageous location that allowed naturally insulated caves, ideal for aging and storing lager, to be cut into the surrounding hillside. Several caves built just south of here by the Ebling Brewing Company made the news a few years ago when they were uncovered during the construction of a large affordable housing development. (You can see additional photos of the caves, which have since been resealed, here and here.)

With the advent of Prohibition, Adolph Hupfel Jr. converted his family's brewery and caves into a "mushroom plantation", using "tiny thunderbolts" and "jazz music" to produce more than 200,000 pounds of the crop per year. He appeared before Congress on a couple of occasions in the early 1920s to ask for a tariff on imported mushrooms to protect what was then a nascent industry in the US, and was jokingly asked by a senator during one hearing if his brewery-grown mushrooms contained a "kick".

Day 504

Portal of the day

May 17th, 2013


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Continuing the proud naming tradition!

Day 504

The Gramsci Monument

May 17th, 2013



It was quite a surprise to come across this massive wooden pallet structure standing in the middle of the South Bronx's Forest Houses. As it turns out, this is the early stages of Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument, a tribute to Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist Italian political theorist and philosopher. Residents of the housing project have been hired to build the monument, which will eventually consist of "a bridge and a series of 'houses' that will include a library, theater platform, workshop area, lounge, Internet corner, and the Gramsci Bar, which will be run by local residents." The whole thing is scheduled to open on July 1st and run until September 15th. You can find much more information on the monument's official website. (That's Mr. Hirschhorn sitting on the edge of the pallet-platform, by the way.)

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A rather slender-looking

May 17th, 2013



Big Pun

Day 504

Churchagogue of the day

May 17th, 2013



The former Netzach Israel Jewish Center

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The red, white, and blue

May 17th, 2013


Day 504




IMPORTANT!
PLEASE UNPLUG THE
ELECTRICAL CORD
BEFORE YOU DRIVE


So says a sign taped up inside this unmarked police vehicle parked next to the former home of the NYPD's 41st Precinct — the infamous Fort Apache, whose reputation was cemented by the Paul Newman film Fort Apache, The Bronx.

Day 504

Duh.

May 17th, 2013