This is one of two incredible gateways at PS 15/291 in the Bronx. (You can see them in their entirety here and here.) I have to admit: before today, I never realized that Colin Powell was possessed by the devil. Or that Helen Keller was related to Medusa.
This was the school's second championship in five years.
Speaking of teenage Bronx chess players, a high school freshman named Justus Williams was ranked as the top 9th grader in the US at the most recent national championships. In a stereotype-shattering performance, his school, the little-known Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics (not to be confused with the famous Bronx Science), located in what's said to be America's poorest congressional district and fielding a team of kids all raised by single parents, won the 12th-grade championship as well. Back in 2010, when he was 12 years old, Justus became the youngest black chess master in history. A year later, there were only thirteen chess masters in the country under the age of 14, and three of them (all of whom achieved the title before turning 13) were African-Americans from the NYC metro area.
Here's a video of Tết (Vietnamese New Year) celebrations inside the temple, which serves the Bronx's growing Vietnamese population. (As we saw last year, there's also a Cambodian Buddhist temple not too far away — and, more memorably, another one in Brooklyn.)
Hey, somebody else showed up! (He's talking on the phone, in case you can't tell.)
Curving around the back half of the Gould Memorial Library, it's America's first hall of fame! That's Mr. Dime in the lower right, FYI.
Not long before his brother shot Abraham Lincoln, this renowned 19th-century actor saved the president's son, Robert, from being seriously injured or killed when he fell between a moving train and the platform at a station in Jersey City.
No, I don't know what's on his face either.
From left to right, we have the Hall of Languages, the colonnaded Hall of Fame walkway, and the Gould Memorial Library, all designed by famed architect and champion moustache wearer Stanford White (whose scandalous 1906 murder resulted in the first so-called "trial of the century"*) and built around the turn of the 20th century as part of the original quadrangle of New York University's uptown University Heights campus (which is now Bronx Community College).
Providing a stark contrast to White's neo-Classical works, Marcel Breuer added five new Brutalist structures to the grounds in the 1960s, including Community Hall, which is serving as the mirror in this photograph. (The "Colston Hall" label on that green-and-white sign to the right refers to the much larger building standing behind this one; the two are linked by a pair of concrete sky bridges).
* What made it the trial of the century? The journalist Irvin S. Cobb put it this way:
"You see, it had in it wealth, degeneracy, rich old wasters, delectable young chorus girls and adolescent artists' models; the behind-the-scenes of Theatredom and the Underworld, and the Great White Way. . . . the abnormal pastimes and weird orgies of overly aesthetic artists and jaded debauchees. In the cast of the motley show were Bowery toughs, Harlem gangsters, Tenderloin panderers, Broadway leading men, Fifth Avenue clubmen, Wall Street manipulators, uptown voluptuaries and downtown thugs."
Another one of Breuer's Brutalist creations, Begrisch Hall "is a wedge of concrete balanced on its skinniest edge . . . It looks as if it could be tipped over in a prank." Here's a view from behind.
I once spotted this fortress-like structure from a couple of miles away; not realizing it lay within the bounds of Bronx Community College and never suspecting it could be an academic building, I assumed it was some kind of telecom facility. "The main facade is relatively conventional, if recognizably Breuer, but the southern side has eight windowless floors — seven in blinding white concrete — set on a featureless base. It’s neoclassical austerity on a modernist scale."
Pointed at our favorite set of quadruplets (the leftmost is hidden behind another building) from its lofty perch atop a hill on the campus of Bronx Community College, this (World War I-era?) gun and a couple of others mark the site of Fort Number Eight, a British redoubt that stood on these heights during the Revolutionary War.
Standing near the guns mentioned in the previous post is this mast from Shamrock IV, the unsuccessful British challenger in the 1920 America's Cup held in and around Lower New York Bay.
This plaque casually neglects to mention that the aforesaid redoubt was occupied, for almost the entire duration of the war, by a garrison of British troops who used its strategic location to rain fire down upon the Americans.
That's the Gould Memorial Library flanked by the Hall of Languages (on the left) and the Hall of Philosophy.
This community center occupies the former home of the Hebrew Institute of University Heights.
That shiny space pod is part of the Sedgwick Branch of the New York Public Library.
That kid on the right is having an especially good time.
stuck in the vents of the MTA's Westchester-Simpson Street substation
On the right, we appear to have an avian relative of the horrible dog monster.
Our Lady of Guadalupe watches over a tiny little garden on Simpson Street.
This jungle gym, with its many allusions to the rotary printing press, is located within the former estate of the man who patented the first such press, Richard March Hoe. (The Hoe family was apparently fond of cheery nomenclature: Richard's house was named Brightside, while his brother Peter resided nearby in the still-standing Sunnyslope — which, as we've seen, is currently home to an African Methodist Episcopal church by the name of Bright Temple.)
Hoe's printing prowess also left its mark on the local street grid. According to the Parks Department:
"In 1904, a portion of the estate was divided into a series of city streets which were named after historic printers. Guttenberg Street (sic), named for Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the early 15th century printing press, was renamed East 165th Street in 1911. Aldus Street is named for Aldo Manuzio, a late 15th century Italian printer and editor who used the new printing press to revive dozens of Latin and Greek classics, and published contemporary writers such as Erasmus. Hoe Avenue refers to Richard March Hoe whose rotary printing press of the 19th century built upon the inventions of Gutenberg and Manuzio."
A mighty name belied by a crummy reputation. At least no one's waiting in line in the snow.
This mural once overlooked a parking lot across the street from Yankee Stadium; now it's the backdrop for a new playground a couple of blocks away from the new Yankee Stadium, and a couple of newly deceased Yankees have since been added to it. From left to right, we have George Steinbrenner, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson, and Bobby Murcer.
I've passed by this intersection more than a dozen times in my life, but never before have I noticed this odd little monument sitting outside the Bronx County Courthouse. The plaque reads:
Keystone from an arch of the old bridge at Chateau Thierry
Gloriously and successfully defended by American troops
***
Presented to the County of the Bronx by the Grand Street Boys Post No. 1026 of the American Legion
Nov. 11, 1940
