https://digital.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/files/original/36899a5e1b44bc0b23db32120b9bc93a.pdf a6a05ef2bc54340b649c11a57b933ce8 PDF Text Text The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL Volume LXII Spring/Fall 2025 EDITORIAL BOARD G. Hermalyn Elizabeth Beirne Jacqueline Kutner Patrick Logan Steven Payne Gil Walton Roger Wines © 2025 by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. The Bronx County Historical Society Journal is published by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. All correspondence should be addressed to 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, New York, 10467. Articles appearing in this Journal are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Periodical Source Index, and Recent Scholarship Online. Articles in The Bronx County Historical Journal can also be found on EBSCO host research databases and on our website, which will soon contain an online index, sponsored in part by the first editor-in-chief of the Journal Professor Lloyd Ultan. ISSN 0007-2249 The Journal and its editors disclaim responsibility for statements made by the contributors. www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org �THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY TRUSTEES Jacqueline Kutner, President Anthony Morante, Vice President Patrick Logan, Treasurer Gil Walton, Secretary Steve Baktidy, Trustee Robert Esnard, Trustee Mei Sei Fong, Trustee Dr. G. Hermalyn, Trustee Joel Podgor, Trustee Lloyd Ultan, Trustee Jac Zadrima, Trustee EX-OFFICIO Hon. Eric Adams Mayor of New York City Hon. Vanessa Gibson The Bronx Borough President Hon. Iris Rodriguez-Rosa Commissioner, New York City Dept. of Parks & Recreation Hon. Laurie Cumbo Commissioner, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs STAFF Dr. G. Hermalyn, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Steven Payne, Director Teresa Brown, Chief Administrative Officer Pastor Crespo Jr., Research Librarian/Archivist Roger McCormack, Director of Education Maeve McGroary, Museum Educator Chris Padilla, Bookstore Manager Serena Velasquez, Museum Educator Kathleen A. McAuley, Curator Emerita Dr. Mark Naison, Bronx African American History Project Consultant ii �Volume LXII Spring/Fall 2025 CONTENTS ARTICLES The Bronx in the Great Depression......................................................................1 By Ed Beller Dutch Tiles in The Bronx.........................................................................................39 By Paul Herther with Victoria Keller The Mott Haven History Keepers.....................................................................55 By Sonyi Lopez, Steven Payne, Oscar Rivera, and Amy Starecheski Notes on Bronx Geography.....................................................................................67 By G. Hermalyn About the Authors.........................................................................................................71 iii �LEAVE A LEGACY Many generous members and friends choose to give to The Bronx County Historical Society through bequests and life income gifts. Their donations represent an important source of support for the future of The Society. Charitable gift annuities and individual charitable trusts are merely two of the ways you can support your Society. Bequests Bequests may be stipulated at the time a new will is executed or may be added as a codicil to an existing will. Bequests to The Society are exempt from federal estate taxes and may be unrestricted or for a specific purpose. Charitable Gift Annuities Charitable gift annuities are a simple way to provide both a gift to The Society and an annuity for the donor. Some of the benefits include guaranteed lifetime income, a federal income tax deduction for a portion of the gift, partially tax-exempt income, and most importantly, the satisfaction of making a significant gift to The Society. Individual Charitable Trusts A charitable remainder trust is an excellent way to make a generous gift to The Bronx County Historical Society today and still retain the use of the income from your capital, stock, or other assets. Donors also enjoy current tax benefits. Charitable remainder trusts can be designed to accomplish a variety of goals depending upon your needs. For more information on making a bequest or life income gift, please contact Mr. Joel Podgor, CPA, Treasurer Emeritus, 718-8818900, or write to our main office. �THE BRONX IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION: STRUGGLE, CONFLICT, RESILIENCE, AND THE NEW DEAL BY ED BELLER I. Introduction The Bronx, a working- and middle-class community with a large immigrant and first-generation population, took its lumps during the Great Depression (c.1930–1941).1 Bronxites, like the rest of the nation, suffered unemployment, foreclosures, evictions, homelessness, hunger harsh enough to force scavenging for food in garbage dumps, the need to relocate to unfamiliar environments, family breakups, and mental health problems. Not as drastic but nonetheless troubling was the loss of local, close-to-the-ground resources like small hospitals and neighborhood health stations and the cutting of public services and amenities.2 One letter writer to The Home News said: “God help us poor people if the city will close the health stations and turn away the Civil Service workers who have been so kind to the poor mothers and children.”3 There were vehement reactions like rent strikes that ignited confrontations with the police, marshals, and the private guards that landlords hired (“thugs” according to the strikers); and raucous public demonstrations and strikes against terminating The Bronx in the Great Depression 1 �the Civil Works Administration (CWA; November 1933–May 1934), the first federal work relief program.4 Meanwhile the CWA and its successor the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as federal loans and grants, funded construction, infrastructure, beautification, and arts projects that put people back to work.5 By 1941, after the “speed bump” of a severe recession in 1937 and before the industrial and military stimulus of World War II took full effect, the United States economy had inched within 10% of pre-Depression levels.6 The Bronx survived, albeit with a massive loss of industrial jobs. (In 1940, the unemployment rate in The Bronx was 18%). The jobs that remained were in Mott Haven, Morrisania, and Hunts Point—mostly at piano, garment, and machine tools factories. Compounding the employment problem, starting even during the Depression, many new residents had settled in The Bronx: Blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans from the island and East Harlem arrived.7 This essay, however, will focus on the Depression years, a period when a still primarily Irish, Jewish, Italian, German, and Polish population faced the economic crisis and social turmoil of the 1930s and lived to talk about it.8 II. Rent Strikes Rent strikes were an expression of working- and middle-class anger and activism during the Depression. They often became violent and chaotic, although the strikers’ demands usually went no further than a reduction in rent and no evictions of the unemployed, and Bronx landlords did nothing especially provocative except try to collect rents. But the sight of families and their belongings on the sidewalk could not help but be 2 EDWARD BELLER �provocative. To safeguard their interests in a hostile environment, landlords formed the Bronx Landlords Protective Association and the Greater New York Taxpayers Association. Both advocated for quicker processing of dispossession notices in Bronx municipal courts and relief from high real estate taxes. They claimed that delinquent rents, a high vacancy rate, and high taxes were making it difficult for them to pay their mortgages.9 However, to tenants, landlords were the personification and symbol of an economic system that working people perceived as not working for them. Some rent strikers were politically motivated (the Communist Party was a force behind the strikes). Others simply could not pay. Of course, these motives were often mixed.10 The Bronx of the 1930s had a strong radical tradition dating back to the arrival in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of German, Russian Jewish, and Italian immigrants, many with socialist, trade union roots. This tradition was the soil from which Bronx Depression-era rent strikes, resistance to evictions, labor activism, and protest grew. In 1926, for instance, the United Workers Co-operative Association (UWCA), founded in 1910 by Yiddish-speaking Jewish garment workers from Eastern Europe, bought a three-block plot along Bronx Park East north of Allerton Avenue. The goal was to establish cooperative housing as authorized by the state legislature in the same year. The legislation provided that apartment dwellers were to be shareholders and decision makers in non-profit corporations that owned one or several buildings. The Allerton “Coops,” as they were affectionately known, consisted of three ornate courts on Bronx Park East.11 Members of the UWCA had ties to the Communist Party and the International Workers of The Bronx in the Great Depression 3 �the World, the infamous “Wobblies.” Some of these also belonged to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and the International Ladies Garment Workers.12 The year 1932 saw a sharp increase in Bronx dispossession cases (11,903) over 1931 (7,207). In April, court clerks were enlisted to take over the proceedings that were overwhelming the four justices who staffed the two Bronx Municipal Courts (162nd Street and Westchester Avenue). This was especially necessary since an increase in rent strikes was expected in May, with many Bronx apartment dwellers leaving with rents unpaid and landlords filing recovery papers.13 Indeed, during the Depression, Bronx landlords were hard pressed to find enough paying tenants to make their mortgage payments. Raising rents and cutting services was the alternative, and the rent strikes that erupted in the Allerton Avenue neighborhood in 1932 were aided, organized, and encouraged (some might say instigated) by the residents of the Allerton Coops (“Coopniks”), who brought a perspective and an energy formed by left-wing union and radical traditions to the struggle that could not help but add to its spirit and vehemence.14 Thus, from early 1932 to the end of that year the northeast Bronx was the scene of intense rent strike activity, so intense that it is called “The Great Rent Strike War of 1932 in the Bronx.”15 The mostly Jewish skilled workers and small business owners who lived on Allerton Avenue, Unionport Road, Longfellow Avenue, and Olinville Avenue were at the center of the conflict. As historian Evelyn Gonzalez notes, “It was Jewish tenants versus Jewish landlords.”16 Windows in rent-strike buildings were painted red, and when furniture, bedding, domestic accoutrements, clothing, and keepsakes were on the street, crowds 4 EDWARD BELLER �gathered and confronted police, marshals, and private guards, physically preventing their removal.17 (East Bronx native, City College graduate, and distinguished scholar Irving Howe remembers “the piles of furniture on top of which sat the children of evicted tenants.”) Olinville Avenue saw the first large strike. The strikers withheld rent, demanded a 15% rent reduction, repairs, no evictions, and recognition of the tenants committee as an official bargaining agent. When the inevitable evictions approved by pro-landlord judges began, and the belongings of seventeen families were on the street, there ensued what The Bronx Home News called a “rent strike riot.” A crowd of 4,000 gathered and attacked the police with fists, stones, fingernails, and sticks. Police reinforcements quelled the violence and eventually the strikers agreed to a two-dollar or three-dollar rent reduction and returned to their apartments.18 Such compromises were common and often involved only mild penalties for strikers charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, assault of a police officer, vandalism, etc. For example, for a “disturbance” on Arnow Avenue in March 1932, precipitated because “tenants have unceremoniously been evicted from their homes on eviction orders,” three were jailed one day by the West Farms Municipal Court in lieu of paying a three-dollar fine.19 Allerton Avenue was next up with 50 mounted police and 50 foot police doing battle with 3,000 strikers and supporters to accomplish three evictions. On both Olinville and Allerton Avenues, women, relying on networks developed through childcare arrangements, took leadership roles and were in the midst of the fray.20 A five-building Longfellow Avenue strike led by a “prominent The Bronx in the Great Depression 5 �figure in recent weeks at Communist rallies,” a 34-year-old Party secretary named Oscar Landis, was the scene of a twoweek struggle. Bronx rent strikers formed strike committees that were guilty of intimidating tenants who did not want to join them. Accordingly, Landis was fined five dollars at the Morrisania Court for hitting a recalcitrant tenant on the head with a brief-case full of Communist literature. (The literature spilled out and was turned over to the NYPD “Radical Above: “Mounted Cops at Rent Strike,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 25, 1932. 6 EDWARD BELLER �Squad.”)21 On March 1, Landis used a tactic that seems to have been in vogue in the Party and painted in large red letters on the sidewalk in front of a “rent strike infested building”: “Don’t Pay Your Rent” and “Rent Strike.” He then splashed a policeman whose “shoes had taken on a red hue.” For these efforts, Landis was sentenced to two days by the Morrisania Court.22 On March 10, handbills were distributed demanding a 15% rent Above: “Communist Advertising,” Manhattan, March 3, 1932. The Home News, Bronx and The Bronx in the Great Depression 7 �reduction, no evictions of the unemployed, and curbs on the “special cops and gangsters who terrorized tenants.” The handbills urged tenants to take action against Tammany judges and marshals and exhorted passersby to “show your solidarity and come to 174th Street and Longfellow Avenue” to march to the 164th Street Court for a rally. “All out on Wednesday in front of Court.” On March 12, two were arrested for disorderly conduct, and “a mob swept down on a private guard and rescued a speaker who had been taken into custody.”23 Above: “Rent Strikers Keep Marching,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 13, 1932. 8 EDWARD BELLER �The turmoil continued on March 15 with again a crowd of 3,000 hurling stones and bottles at 50 foot police, fifteen mounted police, twelve detectives, and private guards who were evicting fifteen tenants. The battle spread several blocks before the crowd was dispersed and the evictions accomplished.24 The landlords’ associations responded with financial support for members who were experiencing strikes and by going to court to secure injunctions against picketing. Very early in the strike wave the Bronx Landlords Protective Association accused strike organizers of being racketeers who demanded 50% of any rent reductions obtained. This charge was never documented. In September 1932, the Association compiled a list of strikers to be blacklisted by its members and prepared legislation—never enacted—to make rent strikes a misdemeanor punishable by arrest and imprisonment.25 “We find that these agitators are mostly all Communists and are carrying on a war against all that law and order stand for.”26 Tenants countered by forming the City-Wide Tenants League, which provided legal help and advocacy for tenants faced with eviction. The League provided funds for moving expenses in Mott Haven, where about 100 tenements were condemned to make way for the Bronx approaches to the Triborough Bridge. Local tenant councils in rent-strike buildings fought evictions in the courts and raised money for evicted families.27 Things calmed down considerably by late 1932. The turmoil and financial losses encouraged some landlords to soften their attitudes, and Mayor John O’Brien provided rent support from New Deal relief funds. The injunctions were an effective anti-strike weapon and by late 1933, tenants, still under the influence of the neighborhood’s Communists, turned to the city’s Home Relief Bureau for income support to stay in their apartments rather The Bronx in the Great Depression 9 �than do battle in the courts and on the streets.28 III. Regulation, Mutual Support, Cooperation Of equal significance with the strikes, street disturbances, rallies, parades, and gatherings, which were ubiquitous during the Depression, were community-based efforts at mutual assistance, cooperation, and support. Much of this occurred informally—on street corners, in stores, taverns, living rooms, churches, synagogues, etc.—and has not been formally recorded. But efforts that were initiated by New Deal government agencies have left a clear record. Regulation, cooperation, and mutual support were essential elements of President Roosevelt’s plans to confront the Depression with aggressive federal programs of work relief and income maintenance The super-rich, old-wealth, upper-class president occasionally revealed his bedrock opinion of unregulated competitive capitalism. In a speech at Green Bay, Wisconsin in August 1934, he refers to “the forces which disregard cooperation and human rights seeking that kind of individual profit gained at the expense of his fellows.”29 The New Deal’s flagship effort to bring some regulation to the economy was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed by the 73rd U.S. Congress in 1933. This legislation established the National Recovery Administration (NRA) under the executive branch and included a mandate that businesses follow a code of fair competition, prices, wages, and labor rights. The chairman of the NRA’s Bronx Division, George F. Mand, launched a campaign to inform consumers of businesses that did not comply and so were not entitled to display the famous Blue Eagle insignia.30 10 EDWARD BELLER �Small businesses were not exempt. Soon after the act took effect, seven Bronx tailors and a pharmacy on East Tremont Avenue were fined for underpricing. In contrast, some small business owners not only complied with their codes but liked the idea of a regulated market. In May 1934, the Bronx Boss Barbers Association presented a petition to Mand demanding the prompt enactment of a code and decrying “unrestricted and unrestrained competition, price-cutting and unfair practices” that led to “loss of investment and inevitable bankruptcy” and the “inability to pay standard living wages of labor.”31 In 1935, the conservative Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional on the ground that Congress had exceeded its right to regulate interstate commerce and had improperly delegated legislative powers to the executive branch. But perhaps the core reason was that the law veered too far in the direction of a collective approach and a regulated economy.32 But even after the demise of the NIRA, the programs initiated by the CWA and the WPA supported cooperation and took firm root in The Bronx. Under the funding and supervision of the Federal Emergency Relief Bureau and the CWA, the unemployed planted community-accessible truck gardens and did park maintenance work. Twenty-four Bronx unemployed shoemakers repaired the shoes of 3,000 unemployed Bronx workers at the rate of 150 per day, working in the basement of the Claremont Park Manor, a large apartment building on Claremont Avenue. Shoppers were encouraged to drop off boxes of groceries in local stores.33 In the following and many other instances, Roosevelt used the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to press a cooperative ethic. In a February 1934 address at the 165th Street Artillery Armory, the president urged Bronx Boy Scouts to participate in a program, run by the Emergency Un- The Bronx in the Great Depression 11 �employment Relief Committee, to gather used but serviceable clothes, bedding, and furniture to aid the distressed.34 In 1934, the CWA developed a housekeeping aides project with 1,300 unemployed Bronx housekeepers working in 2,000 Bronx homes. They helped with domestic chores: cooking, washing, cleaning, ironing, and childcare in families where the homemaker was ill, had moved out, or was deceased.35 The Block Aid Program was another CWA community-based program. The Bronx was divided into 1,344 block communities, and in May 1932, 596 unemployed heads of families called “Block Aiders” were employed by the Bronx division of the Federal Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee to solicit weekly donations on their assigned blocks from housekeepers, store- Above: “Repairing Shoes for the Unemployed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932. 12 EDWARD BELLER �keepers, shop workers, other workers, government employees, etc. Police helped to recruit the block aiders, and teachers, especially at Theodore Roosevelt and Morris High Schools and Herman Ridder Junior High School, were generous contributors. By April 1932, $441,000 had been raised citywide (about $2,404,000 in 2024 value). Unfortunately, Bronx collections ranked only fourth in the city behind third-place Queens, which collected $18,722. The funds were directed to poverty relief and subsidized work programs.36 Supplementing this emphasis on cooperation, the concept of a regulated economy was not entirely vanquished by the Supreme Court’s 1935 ruling. In 1937, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act empowering a Labor Standards Board to set guidelines for minimum wages, maximum hours, and minimum age requirements.37 IV. Education and the Arts Getting people back to work was the New Deal’s first priority but “work” was by no means narrowly defined. Writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and visual artists received support from the WPA’s Federal Arts Project Fund, and the Adult Education Division employed teachers to offer a wide range of courses from domestic crafts like dressmaking and food preservation, to fine arts and English instruction for the foreign born. Libraries are an essential support to education, and Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons successfully intervened when in August 1937 the cash-strapped city planned to close eleven libraries, ten of them in The Bronx.38 Bronx high schools like DeWitt Clinton, Evander Childs, Walton, James Monroe, Samuel Gompers, and Bronx Vocational The Bronx in the Great Depression 13 �were graced with murals painted by CWA artists depicting the stages of human civilization, historic moments, scenes of nature, and advances in industrial technology. The murals are large, quite beautiful, and can be admired in these schools today. (Although there was a loud outcry in New York art circles when the mural “Constellations” by German artist Arthur Floegel was painted over in June 2018 during roof repairs at DeWitt Clinton.)39 A $28,000 WPA grant to schools for the support of the arts funded drama in the high schools to be performed for community audiences. In February 1934, Walton High School students presented a play called “The Show Off” under the direction of the Board of Education and the Actors Equity Association.40 There was an effort to bring high culture to Above: “Dressmaking Lures Many Women to WPA Class,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19, 1937. 14 EDWARD BELLER �Bronx neighborhoods, and other plays in the schools included Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “She Stoops to Conquer” by Oliver Goldsmith.41 Of course, not every performance was a vehicle for high culture. In August 1937, a WPA theater project variety show at the Beck Street Juvenile House featured “blackface comedians” and “Italian dialect comedians.”42 V. Infrastructure, Construction, Neighborhood Improvement The CWA and the WPA funded Bronx infrastructure and neighborhood improvement projects. In January 1934, the Bronx chapter of the State Society of Professional Engineers asked Bronx residents to suggest projects. “It does not make any difference whether it will provide work for one man for a day or 1000 men for a month.”43 The unemployed were put to work cleaning, painting, and making repairs to public buildings, repairing public vehicles, resurfacing and clearing snow-clogged roads, cleaning and enlarging sewers, draining swamps, restoring old and damaged maps, clearing safety hazards like cluttered and unsightly empty lots and car graveyards, and renovating the public baths on 156th Street. Eighteen hundred workers armed with steel traps, flashlights, and “jute bags” were assigned to exterminate rats. One of the WPA’s major projects, an immediate popular success, and one that Bronxites love to this day, was Orchard Beach. (The Bronx Home News cites the “usually large number of people who are desirous of visiting Orchard Beach entirely exceeding the accommodations of the beach and the transportation facilities.”) At this “summer resort,” designed by WPA architects and built by WPA workers, gangs of men cleared woodland, built new roads, bathrooms, and drainage systems, filled in swamps, and The Bronx in the Great Depression 15 �built sea walls encircling the entire waterfront. With poverty rampant and government-funded employment not always adequate, some “hustles” emerged. One resourceful group of squatters at a park site being filled in on Lacombe Avenue made some extra change outside the purview of the WPA by charging contractors 25 cents per load for the privilege of entering their encampment. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses declined to prosecute but did have their shacks pulled down.44 There were complaints that essential jobs were neglected but two letter writers to The Home News begged to differ: The terrace leading to and surrounding the steps ascending to Van Cortlandt Park South has been beautified. Look at the wall constructed at the southern edge of the golf links. Then glance at the vacant lots all over the city, especially along upper Broadway and see how emergency workers cleaned the lots and carted away the debris that used to cover them. Also how about the fine work the unemployed did in cleaning main thoroughfares of snow in a short time. I could go on almost indefinitely with a list of such examples.45 “Who is building the playgrounds, who is repairing all the roads; who built Orchard Beach, the stadium on Randall’s Island, baby health stations, and all the small neighborhood parks—oh, yes, and the swimming pools?” The answer is: the people on the WPA. And yet some people say WPA has accomplished nothing.46 During its short existence, from March 1933 to its replacement by the WPA in May 1934, the CWA was the anti-Depression government employer of first resort in The Bronx and the 16 EDWARD BELLER �nation. With the support of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce, the Bronx Board of Trade, and the Bronx chapter of the State Society of Professional Engineers, Borough President Lyons advocated for borough-based hiring to replace the CWA’s citywide, centralized system, in which people from other boroughs often worked in The Bronx and Bronxites in other boroughs. He pointed out that in the rest of the state hiring was on a county basis.47 Lyons wanted to “make the Bronx one of the real beauty spots of the metropolitan area,” and many aesthetically pleasing and valuable projects were completed during his tenure and the tenure of Bronx Democratic Party Boss Edward J. Flynn. Lyons supported ridding the Bronx of “old law,” “unfit for human habitation” tenements built prior to 1900 (and thus, before the 1901 Tenement House Law) and helped secure federal funds for the Hillside Housing Corporation’s building projects in the Above: “Unemployed Men Waiting for Jobs on Hillside Project,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934. The Bronx in the Great Depression 17 �northeast Bronx. These were The Bronx’s first governmentfunded affordable housing, delayed two years because of the opposition of local real estate interests. The corporation’s President Nathan Strauss said, “The firetraps, the lightless, airless antiquated buildings called ‘home’ by over 1.5 million New Yorkers must go.”48 Lyons was besieged by jobseekers (and complained that they were interfering with his official duties) under the mistaken belief that he was empowered to disperse jobs. He referred them to the New York State Reemployment Service working at the Kingsbridge Armory.49 Above: “Speed Drive to Put 10,000 to Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 6, 1934. 18 EDWARD BELLER �VI. The Demise of the CWA However, the question threatened to become moot. Republicans and conservative Democrats objected that the program was becoming too expensive (original estimates of $400,000,000 had reached $1,000,000,000) and was spawning a swollen federal bureaucracy and a perpetual burden of the unemployed on the public payroll. Employers agreed with this assessment and also objected to government-subsidized competition for labor and contracts. Competition for labor was probably difficult because the CWA paid standard wages and was a humane employer. (For example, on February 8, 1934, when the temperature dropped to 14 degrees below zero, Bronx workers were given the day off with no loss of pay.) Because of this opposition and perhaps because of budgetary concerns of his own, especially the duplication of effort after the establishment of the WPA, Roosevelt announced in January 1934 that the CWA would close on May 1, cutting 4,000,000 workers. He said the WPA and private employers would pick up the slack.50 To start, 10,000 New York City wokers were laid off in March. On April 1, the CWA turned over its projects to New York City, and the city immediately cut 30,000 more. The city’s plan was to retain 250,000 of its 1,500,000 workers until May 1, with the Department of Public Welfare rehiring many of those who were laid off. All retained workers absorbed a pay cut.51 VII. Demonstrations and Protests Protests began on March 25, 1934 with a rally of 7,000 at Madison Square Garden. On March 30 there was a one-hour citywide strike of CWA workers and a march to City Hall.52 The Bronx in the Great Depression 19 �The Department of Public Welfare was required by the CWA to retain only the most needy but there were complaints of favoritism, with heads of poor large families laid off while the less needy were retained. Fifty picketers protested outside the CWA office on Lafayette Street.53 On April 13, when 2500 Bronx workers were cut from the Parks Department, there was a tumultuous protest—the mainstream press called it a “riot”—outside an abandoned school building on 188th Street and Webster Avenue that was functioning as CWA District Headquarters. The protesters fought with police, waved American flags, and chanted, “We want work not charity.” Three were arrested.54 On April 15, there was a “near riot” outside the office of the Home Relief Bureau on East 149th Street. A crowd of 125 stormed the building when a supervisor denied a demand to hear a delegation of five who came to advocate on behalf of two destitute families about to be evicted. Police were summoned and when the crowd was under control the supervisor agreed to hear them and promised relief.55 Also on April 15, Mayor LaGuardia was heckled at a Board of Estimate meeting and warned “not to be sure we won’t have another Minneapolis here.” (On February 2, 1931, and November 21, 1932, there were violent food riots in Minneapolis.)56 VIII. The “Pauper’s Test” and Working‐Class Pride There were protests against policies that affronted the pride of working people in useful work. In its effort to retain only the neediest, the Department of Public Welfare issued a questionnaire with no less than 400 questions to establish the eligibility of each worker. Workers perceived it as implying that 20 EDWARD BELLER �CWA jobs were charity that required a “Pauper’s Test,” and the questionnaire was a target at demonstrations against layoffs.57 New Deal administrators and social workers agreed with them. They favored work relief for the unemployed over direct relief because it “restored his social prestige, raised him in the esteem of his family and friends, and revitalized his confidence.” They wanted the unemployed “to view themselves as productive members of society even though their work was supported by public funds.” “Work relief made public assistance something earned by work, not granted by charity.”58 Harry L. Hopkins, the head of the Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA) and the executive in charge of Roosevelt’s New Deal work relief programs, knew that the working- and middle-class jobless were uneasy dealing with relief agencies and avoided humiliating Above: “Ousted Workers Picket CWA Offices,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934. The Bronx in the Great Depression 21 �investigations into family budgets. His method was to hire the jobless as public employees, not charity cases.59 A striking validation—quite the opposite of a strike—of Roosevelt’s and Hopkins’s approach occurred in The Bronx on April 3, 1934, when Gang 45, Project 13 refused to quit after its project was cut and announced they would go back to their work site on Kingsland Avenue and Gun Hill Road on April 6. When told they would not be paid, they replied they would go back anyway.60 IX. Off‐the‐Streets Resistance The pushback against terminating the CWA was not confined to street action. Members of Congress were swamped with letters and telegrams demanding that the program continue. Voluntary, non-government groups like the Bronx chapter of the Charles V. Scanlan Association supported the extension of the program since “many Bronx workers had no other means of subsistence.” The officers of the State Society of Professional Engineers advocated for its continuance. In an appeal to President Roosevelt, Governor Lehman, and Mayor LaGuardia, Bronx building trades unions were especially emphatic. Their appeal includes a hint of something that deeply troubled political leaders—the fear of social disorder or even the dreaded “r” word. It might be seen as a not quite veiled threat. “The representatives of the building trades of Bronx County appeal to you on behalf of the 50,000 building trade mechanics that reside in Bronx County, 90% of whom are destitute and have been unemployed for the better part of the last four years, to use the power vested in you by the public to nullify the latest order of Harry L. Hopkins Federal Administrator of CWA Works. . . . You can fully realize the confusion and disorder that 22 EDWARD BELLER �will occur when no more men will be put to work by the CWA.”61 The City’s Public Welfare Commissioner William Hodson called shutting down the CWA “a tragedy” and added, “NYC would be faced with the worst unemployment crisis in the history of the Depression.”62 Parks Commissioner Moses called the idea a “monumental piece of stupidity.”63 Governor Lehman wrote to Hopkins, “The people have become accustomed to it and are now dependent upon it.”64 Citizens worried about the problems that abandoning CWA projects would cause. In the East Bronx, they said that stopping work on the drainage of a swampy area east of Eastchester Road and north of Pelham Parkway amounted to an “abject surrender to the mosquitoes” and left them “what appears to be a first rate breeding place.” The Bronx Home News noted, “East Bronx residents complain that this and other abandoned reclamation and drainage projects in their territory are health perils.”65 There were large gatherings in support of the CWA organized by influential establishment figures. On January 21, 1934, there was a mass meeting of 10,000 convened by Episcopalian Bishop William T. Manning at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In his talk at the meeting, Mayor LaGuardia was critical, bordering on radical. He agreed with State CWA Director Frederick I. Daniels that social disorder was likely, was puzzled and angry that in the newspapers “on one page we read of surplus of food and manufactured goods and plans to curtail production and on another page of relief agencies unable to provide for the hungry and needy.” Referring to the unprecedented carnage and expense of World War I, he said that when the public was informed of war costs of $1 million a minute, “everybody would give until it hurt in order to kill and destroy and you got up and cheered.” He wondered “whether or not our economic system is worth The Bronx in the Great Depression 23 �saving. I don’t know whether it is. . . . The situation has gotten beyond family relief—beyond the customary charitable work of the church—beyond the control of the municipality and even of the State. We are in the midst of a great national crisis.”66 He continued this theme in January 1934 when he addressed the 650 graduates of James Monroe High School in The Bronx, telling them that “the entire economic system has collapsed,” and “this generation owes you an apology for the mess they have made of things.”67 X. Internal Problems It is not surprising that the CWA and the WPA—massive government programs dispensing funds, jobs, and patronage— had internal problems of graft, political influence-peddling, Above: “Mayor [LaGuardia] Speaks at Monroe Graduation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 24 EDWARD BELLER �favoritism, and poor management. Although the consensus of scholarly opinion is that these phenomena were minimal, we will note several related problems that plagued The Bronx. In February 1934, amid rumors of “flagrant irregularities,” fourteen CWA officials supervising a project in Van Cortlandt Park, six of them Bronxites, were fired for soliciting payment for employment from workers and for putting “no-show” workers on the payroll. Ten of them were indicted for defrauding the U.S. government and for extortion.68 In May 1939, five Orchard Beach WPA workers were arrested for stealing four ornametal pine trees and 300 pounds of grass and taking the haul to the Third Avenue home of one of the workers.69 Also in May 1939, the officers of a Bronx bus company, 20th Century Bus Operators Inc., with a contract to take Bronx workers to their jobs, were convicted of submitting false claims. The WPA sometimes relied on outside contractors. The contractor who was hired to do maintenance work at Montefiore Hospital was warned against the common practice of skimming the non-WPA workers’ wages as payment for hiring them.70 Workers voiced complaints as well. The most serious and often heard was dismissal at the mere whim of supervisors with no reasons given. There were “quiet strikes” at Bronx worksites against this practice.71 In March 1934, the CWA Workers Organization, the Emergency Employees Association, lodged a charge of discrimination against William Keenan, the superintendent of a Bronx Park East Project, for firing all twelve Jews on the project and providing no reason. This caused an “uprising” so volatile that foreman James Connolly would not “risk life and limb” and refused an assignment to the project. Connolly was fired along with 26 supporters. In March 1936, the CWA workers union, the The Bronx in the Great Depression 25 �Project Workers Union, uncovered a scandal at the Crotona Park site. Timekeepers and a foreman were shorting each skilled worker five dollars per day and pocketing the proceeds.72 Some public officials, although generally supportive and among those who called the CWA’s termination a mistake, nevertheless had problems, including slack workmen; preferential treatment for relations, friends, and union members; rowdyism, radical agitation, loafing, theft, and even sabotage.73 Lyons thought that these problems could not be managed by supervision hired from the ranks and favored recruiting outside “adminstrative experts.” A letter writer to The Home News disagreed and blamed “ignorant petty officials who do not know how to handle unfortunate people.”74 XI. Fear of Social Disorder With the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy and the emergence of the Communist Soviet Union, the fear of social disorder sparked by the demise of a “lifeline” work relief program was a factor in the minds of establishment figures. In his letter to CWA Federal Administrator Hopkins, Governor Lehman wrote, “A termination [of the CWA] before beneficiaries have been absorbed into industry would result in social and economic reaction.”75 These fears were doubtless enhanced by the Communist Party’s high profile in the city, including, as we have seen, The Bronx. There were large rallies and parades with “fiery speeches” and singing of the “Internationale.” The socialist and communist uprising against fascism in Austria in 1934 was praised and presented as a dire warning. At one rally attended by 5,000 on 28th Street, it was proclaimed that CWA workers would not “take layoffs lying down and you [Hopkins] will be responsible for the consequences and the 26 EDWARD BELLER �bloodshed.” The depth and persistence of Communist strength are illustrated by a 1940 rally that drew 20,000 to Madison Square Garden in support of Party secretary Earl Broder after his conviction for using a fake passport.76 Communist strength provoked laws that extended their reach into The Bronx. In 1919, the state legislature made it a misdemeanor to wave a red flag. In January 1934, two young men ages 18 and 28—the younger, a City College student—were arrested for waving a red flag (actually not a flag but a square piece of red cloth) near the new War Memorial Grove in Pelham Bay Park. They were arrested on the complaint of two American Legion members who were preparing for the dedication ceremonies of the memorial. The young men’s lawyer remarked that the officers of the Harvard Club should be arrested for displaying a crimson banner at the Harvard Club building on 44th Street. The two young men said they were not Communists but members of the Young People’s Socialist League and opposed to violent revolution. But that did not prevent their conviction at Bronx Special Sessions Court. (In May 1934, the State Court of Appeals ruled the law unconstitutional and overturned the conviction.) This incident is a reminder that socialists also had a strong presence in the city as evidenced by their turnouts at May Day festivities. Bronx socialists celebrated May Day 1934 with a dinner-dance at the Burnside Manor.77 In this context, even conventional, conservative politicians like Lyons felt obliged to meet with and try to placate Communist delegations. In January 1934, he hosted a meeting with Communists who demanded that construction of incinerators near the Bronx Terminal Market stop and the funds be used for unemployment relief. Lyons pointed out that in May 1933 the The Bronx in the Great Depression 27 �Supreme Court directed the city to stop dumping garbage at sea. But he patiently listened to a list of demands that included reduced salaries for city officials, increased property taxes, reduced rents, and reduced interest rates on bank loans.78 XII. Conclusion As planned, the CWA closed shop on May 1, 1934. The WPA shut down during World War II in December 1943. Their legacy is impressive. They provided work for 15 million individuals abandoned by the private economy and provided the nation with hospitals, health centers, community centers, schools, colleges, college dormitories, gymnasiums, city halls, highways, sidewalks, railroads, zoos, bridges, botanical gardens, fairgrounds, fire houses, auditoriums, airports, reservoirs, incinerators, post offices, affordable housing, art, literature, theater, education, parks, sports stadiums, garbage- and swamp-free landscapes, museums, libraries, sewers, swimming pools, beaches, tennis courts, playgrounds, rodeo grounds, horseshoe pits, ski jumps, golf courses, handball courts, and skating rinks (a very partial listing).79 In The Bronx, we have these programs to thank for neighborhood parks and playgrounds, Orchard Beach, Crotona Pool and Park, Ferry Point Park, the Triborough Bridge (RFK) and Whitestone Bridge, the Bronx County Supreme Court building, the Bronx Central Post Office, beautiful murals in Bronx high schools, Lehman College (formerly Hunter), SUNY Maritime College, the Bronx Terminal Market, Pelham Bay Park and Rice Stadium, Split Rock Golf Course, Pelham Bay Golf Course, Joyce Kilmer Park, St. Mary’s Park, and Claremont Park (a very partial listing).80 Forgotten and unexplored by most historians is the cooperative ethic that Roosevelt and Hopkins believed in and did much to 28 EDWARD BELLER �foster. The Bronx Block Aiders, shoe repair craftsmen, housekeeping aides, shoppers who left bags of groceries in grocery stores, and Boy Scouts who collected used clothing and household items embodied this ethic. The concept of a regulated economy has become part of the mindset of some US policymakers and citizens ever since, even if continuously challenged by conservative politicians and corporate interests. The Bronx barbers who demanded that the NRA develop a code for their business illustrates the concept’s broader support while the Bronx tailors and pharmacists who were fined for underpricing illustrate that such a code is eminently enforceable. Finally, cooperation, regulation, mutual aid, and collective responsibility for the victims of economic and social dislocation were pillars of the New Deal and have become embedded in US social and political discourse. These values met with solid support in the Depression-era Bronx. NOTES 1. “City Relief Crisis Studied by Taylor,” New York Times, May 14, 1933; “81,000 Families Must Have Aid at Once, Welfare Officials Warn,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 16, 1932; Evelyn Gonzalez, The Bronx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 96; “Home Owners Relief Officials Seek to Save Residence for Bronx Family,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934; Elaine Landau, The Great Depression (New York: Children’s Press, 2007), 4. 2. “Bronx Zoo Loses Leadership Due to Lack of Funds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 25, 1939; “Hospital Lacks Funds; Faces a Shut Down,” New York Times, January 23, 1932; “Mrs. P. Murphy Hits Dismissal of Nurses,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 25, 1934. 3. “Mrs. P. Murphy Hits Dismissal of Nurses.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 29 �4. William Dudley, ed., The Great Depression: Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 16; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; “Rent Strikers Keep Marching,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 13, 1932. 5. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “LaGuardia Acts to Create Jobs as City Wins Huge Federal Loan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 17, 1934; Landau, The Great Depression, 34; “Williamsbridge Reservoir Playground Opens,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, December 10, 1939; “WPA Altering Eight Schools,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 26, 1940. 6. Dudley, The Great Depression, 69; “Civil Works Administration (CWA) | Definition & Purpose | Britannica,” Brittanica, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Civil-Works-Administration. 7. “Casa Amadeo, NY (U.S. National Park Service),” National Parks Service, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/places/casa-amadeo.htm; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 1, 5, 102, 103, 109, 111, 130–140. 8. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96. 9. “Bronx Landlords Adopt Resolution Urging Speedier Action in Dispossess Cases,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 24, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory Calms 80 Rent Strikers in Municipal Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1932; “Survey of Vacant Bronx Apartments Shows But Slight Increase Over 1927,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 26, 1932; “25 Percent Bronx Apartments Are Empty James W. Brown Assn. Is Told by Deegan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 18, 1932. 10. Mark Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression: The Great Rent Strike War of 1932 in the Bronx,” International Socialist Review 103 (2016–2017), accessed December 1, 2025, https://isreview.org/issue/103. 11. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Steven Payne, “The Allerton Coops: An Interracial Utopia?” (lecture at Van Cortlandt House Museum, December 12, 2024); Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of the Bronx (New York: Bronx County Historical Society, 2009), 231, 239. 12. Payne, “The Allerton Coops.” 13. “Clerks Will Handle Evictions Under New Procedures in Municipal Courts,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 27, 1932; Ultan, The Northern Borough, 231, 239. 14. “Bronx Landlords Adopt Resolution,” 3; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Payne, “The Allerton Coops”; “25 Percent Bronx Apartments Are Empty”; “Survey of Vacant Bronx Apartments.” 30 EDWARD BELLER �15. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Ultan, The Northern Borough, 240. 16. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 17. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Irving Howe, “A Memoir of The Thirties,” in Steady Work: Essays in the Politics of Democratic Radicalism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 354; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough (New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2006), 119. 18. “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 19. “Bronx Rent Strikes Fade After 11 Families Are Evicted From Building on Arnow Avenue,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; “Three Jailed for Participating in Rent Strike Riots,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 25, 1932. 20. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 21. “Communist Party Secretary Fined for Intimidation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory.” 22. “Communist Advertising,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 11, 1932; “Rent Strike Agitator Is Given Two Days for Voicing Opinions in Red Paint on Sidewalk,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 3, 1932, 6. 23. “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; “Rent Strikers Keep Marching.” 24. “Crowd of 3000 Battle Police After 15 are Evicted on Longfellow Avenue,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 15, 1932; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 25. “Landlords to Fight Rent Strike ‘Racket,’” New York Times, February 10, 1932; “Rent Strike Curb is Sought in Bronx,” New York Times, September 18, 1932. 26. “Rent Strike Curb.” 27. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 119. 28. “Depression is Over in Bronx, Court Figures Reveal as Dispossess Suits Drop in January,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 31 �29. James Holt, “The New Deal and the American Anti-Statist Tradition,” in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 36. 30. “Bronx NRA Division to Launch Campaign Against Merchants Rebuffing New Eagle,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 8, 1934; Dudley, The Great Depression, 16, 56–57. 31. “Bronx Boss Barbers Assn. Petitions for Quick Enactment and Enforcement of Code,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 23, 1934; “Bronx Cut Rate Drug Store Owner Faces Court Today on Code Charge,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 24, 1934; “Five Tailors to Stand Trial for NRA Violations,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 18, 1934; “Two Tailors are Fined $25 Each for NRA Offenses,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 26, 1934. 32. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16, 68. 33. “Relief Group Plans to Place 4,000 Baskets in Stores for Food Donations for Jobless,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Repairing Shoes for the Unemployed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Unemployed Will Operate Truck Gardens Under New Plan of State Relief Organization,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 6, 1932. 34. “Bronx Boy Scouts Hear President Roosevelt Call on National Order for Aid to Distressed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 11, 1936; “Relief Group Plans.” 35. “2,000 Families Have Received Assistance from WPA Housekeeping Aides Project,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 28, 1934. 36. “Inflation Calculator,” amortization.org, accessed December 1, 2025, https:// www.amortization.org/inflation/; “Bronx Loses Third Place in Block Aid Drive as Queens Reports $18,722 Total Collection,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 21, 1932; “Chairman of ‘Block Aid’ Campaign Will Perfect Plans at Dinner Tonight,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1932; “596 Unemployed Heads of Bronx Families Given Jobs Supported by Block Aid Funds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 4, 1932; “Join the Block Aiders,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1932; “Projected Bronx ‘Block Aid’ Drive Outlined by Relief Group Chairman,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 3, 1932. 37. Dudley, The Great Depression, 70; “Senate Passes Wages-Hours Bill by 56 to 28 After Heated Debate,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 1, 1937. 38. “Dressmaking Lures Many Women to WPA Class,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19 1937, 9; Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “Lyons 32 EDWARD BELLER �Will Ask for $35,000 from City to Keep Ten Uptown Libraries Open,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 23, 1934; “Senate Passes WagesHours Bill”; “WPA to Continue Classes in English to Foreign Born,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 12, 1939. 39. “400 Art Works Given to Bronx Institution by WPA Federal Project Officials Announced,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19, 1937; Alex Mitchell, “DeWitt Clinton High School painters destroy major art piece,” Bronx Times, June 24, 2018; “Sketches for CWA’s Art Program Murals at DeWitt Clinton High Planned by Officials,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 18, 1934. 40. “CWA Play to be Staged at Two Uptown Schools,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934, 2. 41. “CWA Plays in Uptown Section Begin Tuesday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 31, 1934, 44. 42. “New WPA Variety Show Due in Bronx on Friday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 18, 1937, 3. 43. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “Engineers Ask Bronxites to Suggest Projects Suitable for CWA Program,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 12, 1934. 44. Samuel Bierman, “The Congestion is Under Control,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 3, 1937; “CWA Workers Join Forces with City in Speeding Work of Snow Removal,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 23, 1934; “1800 CWA Workers to Open War on Rat Army,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 12, 1934; “Huge Unemployment Aid Programs Seen as Lyons Assumes New Duties,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 2, 1934; “Lyons Predicts 11,000 CWA Jobs in Week; Lack of Tools Causes Delay,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 9, 1934; “Making a Real Summer Resort of Orchard Beach,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 24, 1934; “Moses Halts Filling In of East Bronx Park Site After Halting Dump Rackets,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, October 3, 1937; “Plans are Rushed to Put 10,000 Bronx Jobless to Work in 10 days,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 6, 1934; “Swamps Eliminated by CWA Men,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 45. Frank P. Coyle, “Praise for CWA Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 20, 1934. 46. Stephen G. Flynn, “A Boost for the WPA,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 26, 1937. 47. “Bronx Jobs for Bronx People,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 11, 1934; “Demand Bronx Workers in CWA Jobs; Riot of 500 at City College is Averted,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 16, 1934; The Bronx in the Great Depression 33 �“Engineers Ask Bronxites to Suggest Projects”; “Plans Are Rushed”; “Three Civic Groups Endorse Lyons’ Plan to Put Bronxites on Bronx Jobs,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 10, 1934. 48. Frank Da Cruz, “Notable New Deal Projects in New York City,” accessed December 1, 2025, https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96; “LaGuardia and Lyons Praise Hillside Housing Project at Ground Breaking,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934; “Three Civic Groups”; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 107; “WPA in City Publishes Its Record for 1938; Lists Uptown Jobs as Accomplishments,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 12, 1939. 49. “1,000 Go To Work in Bronx Today Under CWA Plan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 16, 1934; “Speed Drive to Put 10,000 to Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 8, 1934, 1. 50. “Curtain Closes Tonight on CWA Plan, City Will Re-employ 125,000 Monday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 31, 1934; “Civil Works Administration”; “Mercury Drops to 14° Below Zero; CWA Work Halted for Cold Spell,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 9, 1934; Bonnie Fox Schwartz, “The Civil Works Administration, 1933–1934; The Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1978), vol. 2, 377; Peo Snyder, “Suggestions for the WPA,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 8, 1934; “Washington Firm on Cutting Ranks of CWA Despite Flood of Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934. 51. William W. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way’: The New Deal’s Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed,” Journal of American History 62/3 (1975): 642; “Civil Works Administration”; “Disgusted ‘Work versus Home Relief,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 1, 1934; “WPA Walkouts End as Contractors Hear Warning Against ‘Kickbacks,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 29, 1937. 52. “Curtain Closes Tonight”; “CWA Workers Vote One-Hour Strike on Thursday to Protest Disbanding,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 26, 1934. 53. “Hundreds are Returned to Relief Roll as Department of Welfare Investigates Cases,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1934; “Pickets in CWA Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934. 54. “Three Arrested as Former CWA Workers Battle Police in Protest Over Ousting of 2,500,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 15, 1934. 55. “Radio Cops Quell Crowd in Protest at Relief Bureau,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 17, 1934. 56. “Food Riots in Minneapolis, February, 1931,” PBS, accessed December 1, 34 EDWARD BELLER �2025, https://www.pbs.org/americanexperience/features/rails-timeline/; “Mayor Scores Jobless for Heckling But Agrees to Re-hire, 500 Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934; James K. Hosmer, “National Hunger March of 1932: The Minneapolis Demonstration,” Hennepin County Library Tumblr, accessed December 1, 2025, https:// www.tumblr.com/hclib/142528192775/national-hunger-march-of-1932-theminneapolis. 57. “CWA Prepares to Drop 10,000 Workers Here,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 9, 1934; “CWA Workers Protesting Questionnaires and Job Slashes, Plan Public Demonstration,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1934; “Hundreds Are Returned to Relief Rolls as Department Investigates,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1934. 58. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way,’” 647. 59. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way,’” 637, 641, 643; Schwartz, “The Civil Works Administration,” vol. 2, 377. 60. “Ousted Workers Picket CWA Offices,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934. 61. “Drive For Extension of CWA Projects Continue Despite Roosevelt Deadline,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1934; “Extension of CWA Plan Urged by Scanlan Association,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 9, 1934. 62. “Extension of CWA Plan”; “Washington Firm on Cutting Ranks of CWA Despite Flood of Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934. 63. “Hundreds are Returned”; “Washington Firm.” 64. “Drive for Extension of CWA Projects.” 65. “Mosquito Peril Feared in East Bronx with Ending of CWA Drainage Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 7, 1934. 66. “CWA Must Continue to Help City’s Destitute LaGuardia Tells 10,000,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 22, 1934. 67. “Mayor Speaks at Monroe Graduation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 68. “Civil Works Administration”; “City CWA Methods Attacked by LaGuardia, Deutsch and 5,000 Radical Demonstrators,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 16, 1934; “14 Ousted in Uptown CWA Job Racket Inquiry: Grand Jury to Get Charges,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 13, 1934; “950,000,000 Appropriation for CWA and The Bronx in the Great Depression 35 �Direct Aid to be signed by President Today,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 15, 1934. 69. “Five Seized at Orchard Beach After WPA Prober Charges Tree Thefts,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 17, 1939, 1. 70. “Bronx WPA Fraud Convictions Are Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 3, 1939; “WPA Walkouts End.” 71. “Complaints of ‘Discrimination’ in Discharge of Workers to Be Aired Before CWA Official,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 6, 1934. 72. “Complaints of ‘Discrimination’”; “Hopkins Denies Pleas to Oust Ridder; Says WPA Head Is Doing ‘Fine Job,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 12, 1936. 73. “Borough President Lyons Has Equipment to Engage 11,000 Men on Bronx CWA Projects,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 7, 1934; “City CWA Methods Attacked”; “CWA Workers Did More Harm In Parks Than Good, Architect Tells Women’s Club,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934; “Drive for Extension of CWA Projects”; Elizabeth Deegan, “On Ousting CWA Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 11, 1934; “Firing of CWA Workers Will Continue Until All the Trouble Makers Are Out, Moses Says,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 2, 1934; “WPA Truck Ruling at Orchard Beach Called Swindle Before House Inquiry,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 6, 1930. 74. Anthony Fusci, “Suggestions by CWA Worker,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 8, 1934. 75. “Borough President Lyons Has Equipment”; “Drive For Extension of CWA Projects.” 76. “City CWA Methods Attacked”; “20,000 Reds at Rally Hail Browder After Conviction,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1940; “Uptown Schools Under Siege as Students Stage Anti-War Strike,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934. 77. “Appellate Court Legalizes Red Flag Display, Reversing Bronx Ruling Against Socialists,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 19, 1934; “115,000 Rally in Quietest May Day: Union Square Choked by 75,000 Reds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 2, 1934; “Pair Convicted of Waving Red Flag of Bronx Memorial Rites Push Case to Highest Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 3, 1934; “Young Socialist League Plans to Defy Police and Distribute Anti-War Meeting Circulars,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 17, 1934. 78. “Lyons Gets Incinerator Site Protest; also Hears Demands by Communists,” 36 EDWARD BELLER �79. The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1934. “Great Depression | Definition, History, Dates, Causes, Effects, & Facts,” Britannica, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/ Great-Depression. 80. Da Cruz, “Notable New Deal Projects”; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96; “The New Deal in New York City, 1933–1943,” accessed December 1, 2025, https:// kermitproject.org/newdeal/; Landau, The Great Depression, 34; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 107; “WPA in City Publishes Its Record.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 37 ��DUTCH TILES IN THE BRONX BY PAUL HERTHER* WITH VICTORIA KELLER The year 2025 marks the 400th Anniversary of the Dutch establishing the trading outpost that grew to be New York City. It was a very different world then, of course. We do not know that those early Dutch traders brought any tiles with them but even by 1625 the industry in the Netherlands was well developed. A study found evidence that Dutch delftware tiles decorated fireplaces at Jamestown (the early English colony in Virginia), tiles showing “happy children at play.”1 So perhaps some tiles were on the ships that entered the Narrows back in 1625. By then, tiles were an essential part of Dutch domestic life. But we will likely never know for sure. The Van Cortlandt family dates to New York’s Dutch period, and they left a pair of homes that are now historic house museums. Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton, New York, is run by Historic Hudson Valley. The Van Cortlandt House Museum, dated 1748 by the corner stone still visible on the house, is run by the National Society of Colonial Dames. The latter is in The Bronx, in Van Cortlandt Park, just a few steps from the end of the 1 train. Among the many Dutch treasures on display at the *n.b.: Paul Herther has not been affiliated with Van Cortlandt House Museum since September 2024. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 39 �Van Cortlandt House Museum are delftware tiles. More than 30 years ago, still relatively new to the Kingsbridge neighborhood, I responded to a volunteer recruitment day at the Van Cortlandt House Museum and started to give tours of the house. After several years giving general tours of the house, I suggested developing a special tour focused on the Dutch tiles. They have always been a favorite of museum visitors, and museums are always looking for things to attract visitors— especially then, as we were coming out of the pandemic lockdown. Permission was given, and the first task was to learn more about the Dutch tile industry. That was the start of a fun ride. While tiles had been made in the Netherlands long before independence, in the early years of the Dutch Republic, they quickly became part of the national identity. In 1602 and 1603, Dutch pirates brought booty back to Amsterdam, including blue-on-white Ming pottery.2 That settled the basic color scheme. The Dutch delftware would mimic the beautiful Chinese porcelain. Also, the practical Dutch needed a color that would not be “burnt up” in the kilns that reached 1000 degrees Celsius. The cobalt was the logical choice, producing the signature Dutch blue-on-white scheme. A smaller number of purple-on-white tiles were produced using magnesium. The less common multi-color Dutch tiles required an extra kiln firing at a lower temperature.3 The white base found on the Dutch tile is a tin glaze. While the Dutch sold all-white tiles, the focus in this article is on the signature decorated tiles. (There are examples of such “blank” Dutch tiles in the Van Cortlandt House Museum collection.) In some installations, tiles with designs and blank tiles were arranged in a checkerboard manner. This was more common for walls rather than fireplaces or mopboards (or skirting boards); 40 PAUL HERTHER �there is no example of it at the Van Cortlandt House Museum. The Van Cortlandt House Museum has a fine Dutch tile collection, even if it is not huge (there are about 700 tiles in the collection) or comprehensive (there are many kinds of tiles made by the Dutch that are not represented in the collection). There are, however, many common Dutch tile themes that are covered by the Van Cortlandt collection. These themes include daily life, pastoral scenes, landscapes, historic events, soldiers, children at play, and angels. And there are more intricate themes as well: still-life, mythological, and natural history scenes. Dutch tiles reflected the love of knowledge and the newly discovered flora and fauna that characterized the Enlightenment period. People visiting the museum love to see the tiles and sometimes ask if the collection includes any with windmills—yes, certainly. Or angels—yes, many, doing all sorts of different things like playing musical instruments and walking their dog. (Who knew angels had dogs? Well, the Dutch knew.) To respond to these requests, we started a catalog of the tiles. It became clear that to describe the tiles correctly, and to assess their condition, they would need to be cleaned. What started as an academic project quickly became a “roll up your sleeves” project. With help from my friend Victoria Keller, decades of grime were removed form the tiles—many might not have been cleaned since they were installed in 1917. The museum originally opened in 1897, but in 1917, after 20 years of being closed for reinterpretation, the tiles were, over time, mounted in the fireplaces of three separate rooms: the West Parlor is a homey room but was the most important room in the house when built. The tiles in the fireplace include many religious topics and some still-life tiles. Other themes are included in smaller Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 41 �numbers. The Dining Room is set up to reflect the Federal period, c.1820. The fireplace in this room has some of the finest tiles in the collection—and some very unique ones. It is important to note that by the 1820s, the Dutch tile industry was in decline: they were viewed as old-fashioned and modern styles were becoming more popular. Indeed, by the 1840s, Charles Dickens referred to the Dutch tiles in Scrooge’s home as “quaint.”4 The Dutch Room has tiles in both the fireplace and along the mopboard. This one room has about half of the tiles in the museum’s collection. It is believed they were installed in 1917, when the room was set up to show schoolchildren a oneroom house in New Amsterdam, c.1630. Finally, the collection at the museum includes a tile picture and a display panel of a few dozen tiles. And there are a few dozen “unmounted” tiles that are shown only on special exhibits and for the tile tours. It was while cleaning the tiles that we truly fell for their abundant charm. As we cleaned tiles on opposite sides of a fireplace, I would call out when I found a “good one” or Victoria would call me over to see one that had particularly fine details. It did not take long to learn, when the call went out: drop everything and look. Under decades of dirt and grime, true treasures emerged. Those were good hours indeed. Sometimes we would regret that we did not take a “before” shot of a tile. After the tile was cleaned, the image might appear very different. We often uncovered more details in the image. Indeed, in some cases the cleaned image would be labeled completely different than the “before” image would have been described. While the cleaning of the tiles allowed us to deal with the tiles individually, the real purpose was to catalog the collection. We took photographs of each tile and measured them and described their condition. Measuring the tiles was not always simple; 42 PAUL HERTHER �many, especially in the West Parlor, were broken and pieced back together. They are no longer square. Many were trimmed at some point in the last 300 to 400 years. Special note was made of the presence of the corner designs—the two most common in this collection are “oxhead” and “spider head.” Other notes were made regarding the presence of tack holes and other features unique to the Dutch tile industry. (Tack holes appear in older tiles when the nearly dry clay was trimmed to size: the tacks helped keep the clay in place during this step.) Looking back in history, we may well see patterns that were not intended at the time. That may be the case here as well. Much of our analysis of the tiles likely reflects our own interests and perspectives. Nevertheless, after the Dutch gained independence from Spain in 1581, the new republic was proud of its achievements and was looking to define a new national identity. The tiles were part of it. It was not only the Dutch who made tiles. Certainly, tiles were made for centuries in many, if not most, countries. But the Dutch were becoming a trading nation, and they wanted to make unique tiles for sale. They wanted to make better tiles. They wanted to make tiles that would be in demand. And they did just that. The Dutch tiles were handmade works of art. The tiles were handmade—this was an important part of the industry. While the Dutch produced hundreds of millions of the tiles, each was hand painted. They used a template or stencil called a “spons.” It was made of thick paper and had the image drawn on it, with pin holes that allowed ink or charcoal to pass through, resulting in an outline on the tile. The artist would “connect the dots” and fill in the image and provide shading. (The charcoal or ink used with the spons would not survive the 1000-degree Celsus kiln firing, leaving only the “filled in” Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 43 �image.) While the spons might be used by many artists over extended periods of time, sometimes for more than a hundred years, each tile was indeed unique. (There is a surviving example of a spons dating to 1685.)5 This was a very important feature of the Dutch tiles. They remained popular even after the English developed a mechanized method of printing an image on their tiles. While there may have been tile factories, many, if not most, tiles were made in factories and workshop that made other items: bowls and plates, etc. The tiles filled in the available space in kilns and on the show room shelves—and also in the holds of Dutch trading ships. We can respect the hard work involved. We can respect the concern for quality. But what we really love is the art and the charm of the tiles. A historian of the period has noted that while the tiles were sold internationally, different markets “liked” different subjects. For example, farming communities favored Biblical subject tiles.6 Whether this is true or not, living far from the Netherlands, centuries after the tiles were made, we can enjoy the tiles showing everyday life, children at play, little cupids flying by, and animals, real or imagined. Why assume it was different back then? Provided below are images of a few of the Dutch tiles in the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Keep in mind that these examples are just a taste of the tiles in this local collection. But they can bring a smile to your face. Please remember, the tiles are 300 or more years old, and some had a hard existence in a Dutch farmhouse before coming to the museum. You will see surface damage on many of them. 44 PAUL HERTHER �Animals were popular subjects for tiles. This was a time of exploration and learning, so even animals exotic to Europeans were included on tiles. Indeed, such new themes might have been sought after in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the Enlightenment took form. The artist produced a charming giraffe, and the vegetation is also of interest. Note the “dots” below the animal: such ornamentation appears on several of the tiles in the museum. The corners of this tile were cut, and it rests in a display panel of a few dozen tiles of various subjects. The corner design on this tile is known as oxhead. Above: Tile DP-A-03-C, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 45 �The Dutch Landscape was a popular topic, and it took many forms, but they were largely rural settings. This landscape exhibits a characteristic orientalizing style. As noted above, scholars trace the Dutch preference for blue-on-white tiles to the Ming pottery from China that became popular in the Netherlands shortly after independence. Note what looks to be a well next to the tower. Given the low-lying position of the country, this is more likely a cistern than a well. The corner designs on this tile are an example of spider head. Above: Tile DU-FP-02-V, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. 46 PAUL HERTHER �Angels were another popular subject for Dutch tiles. In the collection, there are dozens of them, and they range from playful cupids to dutiful angels walking their dog, or even shooting their gun, with others playing musical instruments (the heavenly choir?). The collection includes two tiles with this specific image, a sad little angel. The tile reminds us of the endearing charm of the Dutch tiles. Few people could see the tile and not feel sorry for the little angel. This tile is in the Dining Room fireplace, and another one is in the mopboard of the Dutch Room. Above: Tile DI-FP-09-A, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 47 �Religious tiles were popular, and many were made for the pious Dutch farmers.7 They were also exported to many nations. Indeed, churches in Spain and Portugal ordered and installed large tile mosaics, some with hundreds of tiles, depicting religious iconography. Here we have the Dutch image of the Annunciation. Note the angel used a tulip rather than the standard lily. Many of the religious tiles are framed in a circle like this one. At the Van Cortlandt House Museum, most of the religious tiles are found in the West Parlor, the most important room in the house when built. Above: Tile WP-FP-02-D, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. 48 PAUL HERTHER �Another popular subject for Dutch tiles was Still Life. This one has especially fine details. Note the two birds perched on the flowers, and the insect about to land. This tile is in the Dutch Room fireplace and has been trimmed: note the corner designs on the left are missing. Originally, of course, the tile was square and had the spider head motifs in each corner. Above: Tile DU-FP-01-K, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 49 �Children at Play was a popular subject for tiles. Scholars do not always agree on the “market” for these tiles.8 Some feel they were for the domestic market, but I do not agree. They are charming and engaging. Why assume that the English or the Italians or other people of the time did not also enjoy them, as we do more than 300 years later? This particular tile caused us much confusion. We wondered what the children were doing. In the end, we assumed they were playing what we used to call “leapfrog.” Note the detail in the face of the child who is jumping over the other. Even the small tiles (those measuring about five-inches square) have a great degree of detail. Also note that this tile has damage to the tin glaze (the white surface), which might not have been clear until after the firing. Likewise, note that on the right side of the tile, the blue has started to bleed. This too, was probably only discovered when the tiles were removed from the kiln. Other damage to the tile might be the result of hard use in the fireplace of a Dutch farmhouse. Tile-making was not an easy effort, and many things could and did go wrong. In the literature, a figure is often cited: as few as 15% of the tiles coming out of the kiln were “firsts.”9 50 PAUL HERTHER �Above: Tile DU-FP-06-C, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. . Conclusion This overview does not do justice to the Dutch tiles at the Van Cortlandt House Museum. We did not include examples of all the different subjects of the tiles in the collection. There are so many. Other themes include daily life, pastoral scenes, fashion images, and more. There is an incredible wealth of variation in the Dutch tiles, even in this small collection. Now we hope you will go to the museum to see these and other tiles in person: it is the only way to experience them! Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 51 �NOTES 1. Josslyn Kay Stimer, “Piecing it Together: The Introduction of Delftware Tiles to North America and Their Enduring Legacy in Charleston, South Carolina” (MA thesis, Clemson University, 2010), 18; J. Paul Hudson, “The Importance of Archaeology at Jamestown, Virginia: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in the New World,” in Stanley South, ed., The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers, 1967 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1967), 27–28. 2. Hans van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1997), 46. 3. C. H. de Jonge, Dutch Tiles, translated by P. S. Falla (New York: Praeger, 1971), 9–13. 4. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (Chapman & Hall, 1843). 5. “Delft Blue Tiles — Not Always Blue, Not Always from Delft,” HomeThingsPast, January 7, 2012, https://homethingspast.com/2012/01/07/ delft-blue-tiles/. 6. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12; and Ella Schaap, Dutch Tiles in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), 28–32. 7. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12. 8. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12. 9. Schaap, Dutch Tiles, 42. 52 PAUL HERTHER �ISABELLE HERMALYN BOOK AWARD IN NEW YORK URBAN HISTORY Presented annually to an author of a distinguished work in New York urban history. 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 Baseball and Other Matters in 2013 1941, Robert Creamer, University of Nebraska Press In Levittown’s Shadow, 2012 Tim Keogh, University of Chicago Press Geography of The Bronx, G. 2011 Hermalyn, The Bronx County Historical Society Annotated Primary Source 2010 Documents, vol. 2, Roger McCormack, The Bronx 2009 County Historical Society BASEBALL The New York 2008 Game, Anthony Morante Hudson’s River, Gary Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, The Bronx County Historical 2007 Society Concrete Jungle, Niles Eldrige and Sidney Horenstein, 2006 University of California Press Digging The Bronx, Alan Gilbert, The Bronx County 2005 Historical Society The New York Botanical 2004 Garden, Gregory Long and Todd A. Forest, Abrams Books The Bronx Artist Documentary 2003 Project, Judith C. Lane and Daniel Hauben 2002 An Irrepressible Conflict, Jennifer A. Lemak et al., SUNY 2001 Press Supreme City, Donald Miller, Simon & Schuster 2000 Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton, St. Martin's Press The Impeachment of Governor Salzer, Matthew L. Lifflander, SUNY Press Freedomland, Robert McLaughlin and Frank Adamo, Arcadia Publishers Band of Union, Gerard T. Koppel, Da Capa Press Manahatta, Eric W. Sanderson, Abrams Books The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway, Herbert Harwood, Indiana University Press Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler, Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux The Devil’s Own Work, Barnett Schecter, Walker & Co. The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto, Doubleday Capital City, Thomas Kessner, Simon & Schuster Tunneling to the Future, Peter Derrick, NYU Press The Monied Metropolis, Sven Beckert, Cambridge University Press Bronx Accent, Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Rutgers Press ��THE MOTT HAVEN HISTORY KEEPERS: TAKING CARE OF THE PEOPLE WHO TAKE CARE OF OUR HISTORIES BY SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AND AMY STARECHESKI I. Introduction We all know them. People who love to tell stories, who remember the family trees, who keep photo albums or record collections or boxes of files. These are the people who hold onto our valuable histories and pass them on to the next generation. We created Mott Haven History Keepers to support and build community among the people in our neighborhood who care for our history. The project was created by a team consisting of an oral historian and longtime neighborhood resident (Amy Starecheski) as well as the director of The Bronx County Historical Society (Steven Payne). With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Cultural and Community Resilience Program, we were able to provide financial support for ten history keepers. During December 2023–May 2025, our crew of History Keepers met once a month. After this first phase of work, we paused to reflect on what we learned. In this article, we will share some of what we did Mott Haven History Keepers 55 �together, what we learned about how to build programming for history keepers, and what we will be up to next. II. Putting Together the Team We tried to do outreach in as many ways as possible and invite people to express interest in as many ways as possible. We flyered in English and Spanish all around the neighborhood—outdoors as well as at the library, schools, senior centers, stores, etc. We did personal outreach to people we thought of as history keepers and people who might be able to recommend others. We created a short form that allowed people to apply or suggest someone else.1 We also allowed people to express interest by phone or text. We followed up with everyone who reached out to us and made a short list of potential participants. We met with each of these people in person or virtually, to hear more from them and explain what we were up to. Our original plan was to select five history keepers and five apprentices and pair each History Keeper with an apprentice, but we found that this was not the best fit for the people who we were connecting with, so we ended up selecting ten history keepers, and making a few intergenerational pairings within that group for specific projects and skill-sharing. We looked for people with deep lived experience in Mott Haven, openness to learning and making new connections, passion for history, and a range of skills and knowledge. The group ranged in age from early 20s to late 70s, and was ethnically, linguistically, racially, culturally, and politically diverse. 56 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �It was hard work to build relationships across these differences but because we all shared a love of our neighborhood and its stories, we were able to get to know and care for people we might never otherwise have connected with. For many participants, connecting across lines of political difference during this hyper-polarized time was especially valuable, and everyone appreciated the intergenerational friendships fostered in the group. Today, after two years of spending time together, many of us feel like family to each other. III. Monthly Meetings Over an eighteen-month period, we met once a month for three hours, always sharing a meal and updates on our work. We used these meetings in lots of different ways, mixing up these three basic kinds of meetings: Community-building, sharing what we know examples: —Introduction, orientation —Neighborhood walk, sharing favorite places and memories —Oral history share: History Keepers take turns being interviewed, sharing some life history —Object share: History Keepers bring in objects to share and discuss —Potluck picnic outing —Boat ride around The Bronx —Holiday potluck Workshops and skill-shares examples: —Oral history workshop —Workshop on archiving at home on a budget —Workshop on fundraising and grant-writing —Skill-share on recording video and photography Mott Haven History Keepers 57 �—Workshop on documentary film Introductions to resources examples: —Tour of The Bronx County Historical Society archives and library —Trip to NYC Municipal Archives —Visit to BronxNet, our local public access TV studio, tour and introduction to resources —Visit to Pregones, our local community theater company —Visit to local museums The project was designed specifically to support the existing work these lifelong history keepers are doing, with a minimum of additional requirements. Each history keeper got a stipend just for participating in the program. We were wary of making a passion or a hobby feel like work, or enforcing a non-profit or NGO-style model on community-based work that does not necessarily need any improvement or formalization.2 That said, most history keepers were energized by the support, encouragement, and funding, and created new projects or pushed their existing work forward in new ways during the time that we worked together. In order to bring our work to life, we’d like to share a few stories about what the history keepers did together. IV. Creating New Channels to Pass Along History: Walter, Les‐lie, and Charlie Walter Bosque has a story to tell. A former Young Lord, the first Puerto Rican to be certified as an acupuncturist, and a lifelong teacher, healer, and radical, he was already dedicating much of his time to sharing what he has learned with new generations of 58 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �activists and healers. As a Mott Haven History Keeper, he developed a few new relationships through which to do that work. Walter got to know Les-lie Lopez, another History Keeper, more than fifty years younger than he. Les-lie is a Mott Haven native, a child of immigrants from Mexico, an artist and activist, and a recent college graduate. Les-lie recorded an oral history with Walter, as a way of learning his story and helping him think about how to write his memoirs. Walter taught Leslie tai chi and auricular therapy. While part of the History Keepers project, Les-lie got a job at one of our local New York Public Library branches and had the opportunity to organize public programming for adults. Her first event was a book talk with a former Young Lord Mickey Melendez, with whom Walter connected her, and a historian, Joanna Fernandez, who wrote a book about the Young Lords. Les-lie was nervous—it was her first time hosting an event like this—and set up a few rows of chairs at first. But people kept coming, and she kept adding more chairs until the room was full. Some people were even standing. And of course, a bunch of History Keepers came to support. The event was a success, the first of many to come. Walter also connected with DJ Charlie Hustle, another History Keeper who started taking Walter’s weekly tai chi classes. Walter was teaching in the offices of a community group right across the street from Charlie’s building, and in nice weather they started having class on Charlie’s roof. Some people dropped in from time to time, but Charlie came every single week. He is that kind of guy. He also hosts a sidewalk swap meet every single Saturday afternoon, rain or shine, sharing old photos from his growing online Mott Haven Photo Museum and collecting stories from passersby. Charlie shows up. After weeks of classes with Walter, he noticed he was dealing better with the Mott Haven History Keepers 59 �stress of being a stay-at-home parent to a child with disabilities. He was calmer, more grounded, and he lost weight. Soon he was assisting Walter: managing technology, demonstrating techniques, staying in touch with students. When Walter did screenings of the documentary that tells his story, or workshops for community groups, Charlie was there helping him. Charlie’s son loved Walter. When a new South Bronx community center opens in the building where Walter and his fellow Young Lords pioneered the use of acupuncture for treating addiction, Walter hopes that Charlie will be ready to teach there, continuing his legacy. V. Getting the Story Out: Oscar, Willie, and The Bronx County Historical Society Oscar Rivera and Willie Estrada both already had their first books out when they became History Keepers, and they were ready to take it to the next level. Both were already collaborating with The Bronx County Historical Society. During the eighteen months he was part of the Mott Haven History Keepers project, Willie drafted a second volume of his memoirs, consulted on an exhibit on urban dance at the Museum of the City of New York (he is a pioneer of the Latin Hustle), and worked with BCHS to digitize his family’s rare archive of Bronx Puerto Rican home movies from the 1960s and ’70s. Some of that film appeared in the Museum, and some will be part of a documentary he is developing. In the meantime, people are loving seeing his home movies on Instagram. Oscar is a graphic artist and photographer. The photos he took of his friends in the 1970s are the basis for his self-published book, Off the Rim, reviewed in this Journal in 2021. As a History 60 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �Keeper, he knew just what story he wanted to tell. He can tell you about it himself: A True South Bronx Tale isn’t just a story—it’s a collision of grit, glory, and the unbreakable spirit of a bunch of kids from Mott Haven. Set in the heart of the 1970s South Bronx, this raw, unfiltered memoir dives deep into the frozen fields of St. Mary’s Park, where a band of street-smart kids turned football into a brotherhood and chaos into community. Oscar Rivera and his crew aren’t just telling a story— they’re resurrecting an era. If it were not for the Mott Haven History Keepers experience and the help of Amy Starecheski and Steven Payne this story would not have been presented so professionally. Both individuals gave me the courage to dig deeper into our past, interview relatives and friends, find lost 8mm films, and convert them to digital visuals. A treasure trove of information suddenly appeared which I thought was lost in time. From makeshift gear and freezing locker room stories in abandoned buildings to battles that felt like NFL Super Bowls, these memories are laced with the kind of authenticity you can’t fake. This is football laced with soul, attitude, and the kind of raw pride that only the South Bronx could breed. You’ll read us laugh, flinch, hurt, and cry every heartbreak like you were right there wearing cleats and feeling cold with us. If you grew up South Bronx tough, love underdog stories, or just crave something real—then get ready to experience SBFC, A True South Bronx Tale. My research, thanks to the Mott Haven History Keepers program, will grab you by the collar and never let go. This story isn’t just about football. It’s about what it means to fight for your place in the world . . . and win. This is a Bronx Tale like no other, Mott Haven History Keepers 61 �and I am so proud to present it to my fellow Keepers as well as to the world.3 VI. History Repeats Itself—Intergenerational Struggle, Solidarity, and Activism: Nieves and Sonyi Nieves Ayress is fascinating. Her personal anecdotes, her journey, and the history that lives in her memory and now, in the Mott Haven History Keepers archives, are incredible and nearly unbelievable. Among the personal tales she recounts are her exile from Chile, where she was an activist, bravely defying the Pinochet dictatorship. She became a political prisoner, subject of torture and crimes of the Chilean state. A long way from home, after bouncing around several countries in exile, Nieves ended up here, in Mott Haven. Sitting at her colorful skirt side, listening and documenting her story is me, Sonyi Lopez, a young activist, organizer, and community journalist who grew up in Mott Haven. Together, we’ve been sorting through her archives from Movimiento La Peña del Bronx, a grassroots organization she helped found alongside her husband Victor back in the ’80s. La Peña was a place for community. Nieves and Victor may be Chilean but they welcomed everyone—Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, the Garifuna people, and the growing immigrant community at the time. They provided resources such as citizenship workshops and orientations on rights and defense. They led marches and protests to defend the people’s demands around housing, immigrant rights, against war, against police brutality, the fight against AIDS and asthma, and for decent health for all and without discrimination. 62 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �Nieves’s activism and organizing is a living example for Bronx and Mott Haven youth organizers to follow and learn from. Archiving this history, sifting through and digitizing all of her photographs of the time, comparing the rent strikes, environmental justice movements and actions, and the advocacy for immigrants in our community then and now show that history not only repeats itself. Those who have lived it in the past are still here. As Nieves says, when speaking to the youth: “Todo lo que tenemos hoy no ha sido gratis, es producto de la unidad del pueblo. Si la historia se repite, entonces tienen que escuchar. Le guste o no a los viejos.” (Everything we have today hasn’t come for free; it’s a product of the unity of the people. If history repeats itself, then they have to listen. Whether they like their elders or not.) I suppose it’s a good thing I like my elders. VII. Lessons Learned Altogether, we consider this program to have been successful in that it created a close-knit cohort of those undertaking ongoing local historical work outside of professional academic and museum settings. History Keepers noted the great value of the program’s uplifting of their often-unrecognized historical work in the context of providing a robust framework for skills training, supplies, friendship, and support. Some History Keepers expressed a desire for more structure in the deliverables phase of the project. While we were trying not to impose too much structure on the team and their work, we may have erred on the side of not providing enough. In the future, we plan to integrate project management into the skills-sharing phase of Mott Haven History Keepers 63 �the project and think through ways to incorporate project benchmarks in organic, non-stress-inducing ways in the deliverables phase of the project. VIII. Conclusion In September 2025, the History Keepers gathered at the Mott Haven Public Library to present their work and share their stories. We hadn’t gotten together over the summer, and it felt like a family reunion, with people exclaiming over how much each other’s children and hair had grown, all over a backdrop of music from Mott Haven. All we were missing were the casseroles. DJ Charlie Hustle MCed for us, shouting out the History Keepers as we danced into the room. With Sonyi Lopez interpreting for her, Nieves Ayress told the story of how a group of three activists, herself included, shut down Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue protesting against the eviction of a homesteaded building on Cypress Avenue. The story was illustrated with photos from Nieves’s archive, which Sonyi had digitized. Patti Morris told about how she got to know Geechi Sumo, one of Mott Haven’s favorite chefs, famous in the neighborhood for his banana puddings, and told his story on Instagram. Geechi was there in the audience, beaming as we watched Patti’s video tour of his back-of-the-bodega pop-up. Charlie Hustle shared the history of our neighborhood’s many names—from Lenapehoking to Bronck’s to Morrisania to Mott Haven—with illustrations from his online Mott Haven Photo Archive project. He told us about how he is learning and sharing local history every Saturday by talking with people who come by the swap meet he runs outside Maria Sola Green Space. Olivia Glover shared her hot-off-the-press zine of Mott Haven 64 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �public housing oral histories, amplifying stories from three different archives. She encouraged everyone to learn how to make a zine—it was hard, but not too hard. Oscar Rivera showed up with autographed copies of his brand-new book about the South Bronx Football Conference, and we mourned one of his narrators who passed the week before. Walter Bosque told us the story of how the Young Lords became acupuncturists. He invited everyone to practice tai chi with him on Saturday mornings at Brook Park. There was recent history and deep history, live storytelling and recorded oral histories, laughter and tears. It was powerfully clear how the younger members of our group were taking responsibility for continuing to learn and tell the stories of our elders, and for continuing their work. That event was the kickoff for our next phase of work. We are expanding from Mott Haven History Keepers to South Bronx History Keepers. We’ll be meeting once a month at the Mott Haven NYPL Branch to share stories, hone our history-keeping skills, see old friends and make new relationships. We invite anyone who cares about South Bronx History to join us. And we invite anyone anywhere to use our toolkit to build strong networks of History Keepers in the places that matter to you. Scan the QR code to the right with the camera on your cell phone to access the English and Spanish versions of our History Keepers Toolkit. Mott Haven History Keepers 65 �NOTES 1. “Mott Haven History Keepers Interest Form,” accessed November 26, 2025, https://bronxhistory.org/motthavenform. 2. INCITE!, ed., The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non‐Profit Industrial Complex (Boston, MA: South End Press, 2007). 3. Oscar Rivera, SBFC South Bronx Football Conference: A True South Bronx Tale (The Bronx, NY: Oscar Rivera, 2025). 66 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI �NOTES ON BRONX GEOGRAPHY BY G. HERMALYN After a webinar last year on the “Geography of The Bronx,” based on my book of the same title, I was asked, “Exactly how big is The Bronx?” I realized that here we have an essential question by people not understanding measurements, maps, directions, and where they are on the earth. With the cessation of public-school classes on geography and civics, there has opened a large chasm in the knowledge base that didn’t exist 40 years ago. In the hope to aid interested people, let us start with the basics: The Bronx is 42.47 square miles of land, which is 27,600 acres. A square mile is 640 acres, and one acre is 208.7 feet by 208.7 feet, or 43,530 square feet. Another way to look at this example is to compare it to land uses that everyone knows. A professional football field is 1.32 acres, a soccer field 1.78 acres, and Yankee Stadium’s playing field is 3.5 acres. To figure the number of acres in a piece of land, divide the area in square feet into the number of square feet in an acre (43,560). One hundred and sixty acres, which was the amount of land given to individuals by the federal government as free land Notes on Bronx Geography 67 �grants after the Homestead Act was passed by Congress in 1862, is 1/4 square mile, or 2,640 by 2,640 feet. The Bronx is the fourth largest of the city’s boroughs in land. Yonkers to our north is 18.1 square miles, Manhattan 22 square miles, Queens 109 square miles, Brooklyn 71 square miles, Staten Island 58.5 square miles, all of New York City 300 square miles, and Nassau County 284.7 square miles. Examining a full-sized map is very helpful when considering places. With the advent of small maps on one’s cell phone, everything seems to have shrunk, which is obviously not true. There is nothing like an atlas to help understand the world, your city, town, or neighborhood. A Hagstrom Map of New York City includes street maps for The Bronx that clearly delineate sizes and directions and names of the roadways and attractions in a larger scale. More importantly, maps show the compass rose, which is a critical tool in understanding directions. It allows a map reader to orient themselves and indicate direction. For example, The Bronx is not a straight south-to-north orientation. It bends to the northeast, which is not discernible on many flat maps. Additional Bronx Information Renowned as the Borough of parks and universities, The Bronx has eleven colleges and universities and the largest amount of parkland in the city, with over 24% of its land set aside as parks and open space. This land includes the largest park, Pelham Bay 68 G. HERMALYN �Park, with over 2,772 acres, and three major cemeteries: Woodlawn, with 400 acres; St. Raymond’s, with 280 acres; and Potter’s Field on Hart Island, with thirteen acres. Currently, The Bronx has 401 parks across 7,220 acres. The Bronx borders the East River, the Harlem River, and the Hudson River. On its east is found the Hutchinson River, Eastchester Bay, and Long Island Sound. In the north it shares boundaries with the cities of Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, and the Village of Pelham Manor. The Bronx is the northern borough of New York City, and it is part of the mainland and not one of the islands that make up the rest of the city. It is why many of the first bridges, roadways, and train lines were built to connect the city to The Bronx, and thus to the northeast of the country. Geology greatly affected the development of The Bronx. From the ending of the last ice age, the contours of the borough were shaped and reformed. In the west, the borough has several ridges running north and south, each with a valley of softer Inwood Marble such as found on Jerome and Webster Avenues. The Grand Concourse section was built on a high plateau of hard Manhattan Schist, which helps explain the prevalence of stair streets. The Bronx has 64 of the 102 stair streets in New York City. East of The Bronx River, which was always a dividing line from the colonial period, there is flat land and sandy soil, some excellent for farming and pastureland. Golf courses in The Bronx make up 689 acres across five courses. Plus, The Bronx has six waterfalls, eleven ponds and lakes, 24 islands, and nineteen rivers, streams, creeks, and springs. The islands range from Riker’s Island with 413 acres and City Island Notes on Bronx Geography 69 �with 295 acres to small rock outcroppings that only show up at low tide in Long Island Sound. Most of the waterfalls are the result of dams to hold water to power mills and factories or to create vistas. Yes, The Bronx is a most unusual place to know as it even has mountains—well, “mounts”—as well as necks, points, ridges, and heights. Its highest natural point is 280 feet, with a longitude and latitude 73°54'14''W, 40°53'54''N in the Fieldston neighborhood. For further information on this topic, pick up a copy of Geography of The Bronx (The Bronx: The Bronx County Historical Society, 2023) and The Bronx Geography Workbook (The Bronx: The Bronx County Historical Society, 2024) from The Society’s bookstore. 70 G. HERMALYN �ABOUT THE AUTHORS ED BELLER is a life-time Bronx resident and retired public school teacher. He is a graduate of PS 106, JHS 125, Christopher Columbus High School, Hunter College (now Lehman), and CUNY Graduate Center where he received a doctorate in Sociology in 1983. PAUL HERTHER moved to The Bronx in 1979 to enter a graduate program, and he never left. For over 30 years he volunteered at the Van Cortlandt House Museum giving tours. VICTORIA KELLER is an art historian who has assisted with the Van Cortlandt House Museum tile project. SONYI LOPEZ is an activist, organizer, community journalist, and Mott Haven History Keeper. STEVEN PAYNE is Director of The Bronx County Historical Society and holds a doctorate from Fordham University. OSCAR RIVERA is a photographer and Mott Haven History Keeper. AMY STARECHESKI is a longtime Mott Haven resident, founder of the Mott Haven Oral History Project, director of Columbia University’s Oral History Center, and was the Anthropologistin-Residence at the Bronx County Historical Society in 2024–25. G. HERMALYN is CEO of The Bronx County Historical Society, a historian, Poe scholar, author of over 30 published works, and editor of 176 books for The Bronx County Historical Society Press, with a doctorate from Columbia University. �THE GOUVERNEUR MORRIS VISITING SCHOLAR PROGRAM The Bronx County Historical Society names a visiting scholar annually in honor of Gouverneur Morris, signer and penman of the U.S. Constitution. 2025 2024 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 Amy Starecheski “Mott Haven History Keepers” Roger McCormack “Edgar Allan Poe” Pastor Crespo, Jr. “Bronx Veterans” Steven Payne “Bronx Latino History Project” Roger McCormack “Poe Cottage” Lloyd Ultan “Bronx Parks” Coline Jenkins “Elizabeth Cady Stanton” Vivian E. Davis “Celebrating 175 Years of St. Ann’s Church” Edward Schneider “Abraham Lincoln” Gary Hermalyn “The Erie Canal” Tony Morante “Baseball” Daniel Hauben “The Bronx Through the Eyes of an Artist” Gary Hermalyn “Bronx Homemakers Club of Daniel, Wyoming” Angel Hernández “Bronx Latinos” Russell Currie “The Cask of Amontillado, An Opera” Gary Hermalyn “Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham” Lloyd Rogler “The Story of the Hispanic Research Center” 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 Jim Wunsch “Bronx Radio History” Brian Purnell “The Bronx is a Bomb, and It Is Ready to Explode” Evelyn Gonzalez “The South Bronx” Mark Naison “From Doo Wop to Hip Hop” Joseph Cunningham “New York Power” Elizabeth Beirne “The Good Life in the 19th Century Bronx” Allan S. Gilbert “Archaeology in The Bronx” Roger Wines “The Bronx River Parkway” Peter Derrick “Centennial of The Bronx” Edward Schneider “Newspapers of The Bronx” Gary Hermalyn “Morris High School” Lloyd Ultan “Gouverneur Morris and the Constitution” Thomas A. King “50th Anniversary of the Normany Invasion” George Lankevich “Creation of the U.S. Supreme Court” Lloyd Ultan “Gouverneur Morris Through Word and Speech” Dominic Massaro “Gouverneur Morris” �BRONX BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE YEAR AWARD Presented to Bronx business leaders who support the humanities and the arts. 2025 2024 2023 2022 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 James Slattery, Slattery Energy 2001 Houlihan Family Joseph Mawad, Tekniverse, Inc. 2000 Ram Gupta, Chatam 1999 Management Co., Inc. Michael Max Knobbe, BronxNet 1998 Richard Legnini, Bronx Ad Group John Calvelli, Bronx Zoo James H. Alston, McCalls Bronxwood Funeral Home Steve Baktidy, S&T Auto Body Shop Matthew Engel, Langsam Property Services Greg Gonzalez, Manhattan Parking Group Steve Tisso, Teddy Nissan Joseph Kelleher, Hutchinson Metro Center Adam Green, Rocking the Boat Anthony Mormile, Hudson Valley Bank Lenny Caro, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Katherine Gleeson, Goldman Sachs Sandra Erickson, Erickson Real Estate Cecil P. Joseph, McDonald’s Frank Cassano, New Bronx Chamber of Commerce Dart Westphal, Norwood News James J. Houlihan, HoulihanParnes David Greco, Mike’s Deli & Caterers 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 Peter Madonia, Madonia Brothers Bakery John Reilly, Fordham-Bedford Housing Corp. Mario Procida, Procida Construction Corp. Veronica M. White, NYC Housing Partnership Dr. Spencer Foreman, Montefiore Medical Center Monroe Lovinger, CPA Gil and Jerry Beautus, Walton Press William O’Meara, Greentree Restaurant Larry Barazzotto, Soundview Discount Muffler Gail McMillan, Con Edison Susan E. Goldy, ERA Susan Goldy & Co. Mike Nuñez, Bronx Venture Group Mark Engel, Langsam Property Services Carlos Nazario, Metro Beer & Soda Joel Fishman, Nehring Brother Realty Co. Michael Durso, Dollar Dry Dock Savings Bank Elias Karmon, EMK Enterprises �THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESIDENTS Jacqueline Kutner, 1993– Robert R. Hall, 1986–1993 Raymond F. Crapo, 1976–1986 Robert Farkas, 1976 Lloyd Ultan, 1971–1976 Ronald Schliessman, 1969–1971 Roger Arcara 1967–1969 Thomas J. Mullins, 1964–1967 George J. Fluhr, 1963–1964 Ray D. Kelly, 1963 Fred E. J. Kracke, 1960–1963 Joseph Duffy, 1958–1960 Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff, 1955–1958 LIFE MEMBERS Steve Baktidy Dr. Elizabeth Beirne Louis H. Blumengarten Adolfo Carrión, Jr. Thomas X. Casey Sam Chernin James Conroy John Dillon Dan Eisenstein Mark Engel Natalie and Robert Esnard Ken Fisher Fordham Hill Owner’s Co. Katherine Gleeson Greg Gonzalez David Greco Daniel Hauben Dr. Gary Hermalyn James Houlihan Marsha Horenstein Cecil P. Joseph March Lampell Douglas Lazarus Maralyn May Kathleen A. McAuley Anthony Paolercio Alan Parisse Jane Mead Peter Joel Podgor Marilyn and Morris Sopher Elizabeth Stone Henry G. Stroobants Susan Tane Lloyd Ultan Van Courtlandt Village CC Gil Walton Jac Zadrima HONORARY MEMBERS Robert Abrams Jorge L. Batista Hon. Michael Benedetto Lenny Caro William Castro Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez Gloria Davis Nino DeSimone Hector Diaz Rubén Díaz, Jr. Hon. Eric Dinowitz Hon. Jeffrey Dinowitz Hon. Oswald Feliz Fernando Ferrer Robert Fox Hon. Vanessa Gibson Hon. Carl E. Heastie Hon. Robert T. Johnson Stephen Kaufman Jeff Klein Michael Max Knobbe G. Oliver Koppell Jeffrey Korman Lawrence Levine Dr. Joseph A. Fernandez James J. Periconi Ricardo Oquendo Roberto Ramírez Hon. Gustavo Rivera José Rivera Joel Rivera José Rivera José E. Serrano Stanley Simon �SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND GIFTS OF THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY The below items, and additional publications and gifts, are available for purchase in-person at any of our locations; by mail, through writing to The Bronx County Historical Society at 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, NY 10467; or online, at www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/store. Life in The Bronx Series Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Birth of The Bronx: 1609–1900 $30 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: $25 1890–1925 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, $25 1935–1965 Lloyd Ultan, The Beautiful Bronx: 1920–1950 $25 Life in The Bronx, four-volume set $90 History of The Bronx Nicholas DiBrino, History of Morris Park Racecourse $10 Allan S. Gilbert (ed.), Digging The Bronx $25 G. Hermalyn, Geography of The Bronx $25 G. Hermalyn, Steven Payne, A Historical Sketch of The Bronx $15 G. Hermalyn and Thomas X. Casey, Bronx Views [Postcards] $12 G. Hermalyn and Anthony Greene, Yankee Stadium: 1923–2008 $22 G. Hermalyn and Robert Kornfeld, Landmarks of The Bronx $15 Kathleen A. McAuley, Westchester Town: Bronx Beginnings $15 Kathleen A. McAuley and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: Then and Now $22 John McNamara, History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (encyclopedia), 3rd edition $30 John McNamara, McNamara’s Old Bronx $20 Rubio P. Mendez, A History of the Riverdale Yacht Club $20 �Michael Miller, Theatres of The Bronx $5 Lloyd Ultan, Blacks in the Colonial Bronx: A Documentary History $18 Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx in the Frontier Era $20 Lloyd Ultan, Legacy of the Revolution $15 Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of The Bronx $28 George Zoebelein, The Bronx: A Struggle for County Government $15 History of New York City Elizabeth Beirne, The Greater New York Centennial $20 Peter Derrick, Tunneling to the Future $20 G. Hermalyn, Morris High School and the Creation of the New York City Public High School System George Lankevich, New York City: A Short History $34 $20 History of New York State G. Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, Hudson’s River $20 Elizabeth Beirne, The Hudson River $20 Douglas Lazarus et al., Re‐inspired: The Erie Canal $20 Roots of the Republic Series George Lankevich, Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court $20 George Lankevich, The First House of Representatives and $20 the Bill of Rights Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Constitution of the United States $20 Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Declaration of Independence $20 Richard Streb, The First Senate of the United States $20 Lloyd Ultan, Presidents of the United States $20 Roots of the Republic Series, six-volume set $99 Educational Material Roger McCormack, The Bronx Geography Workbook $22 Anthony Greene, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 1 $20 Roger McCormack, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 2 $22 �Dan Eisenstein, Local History Classroom Resource Guide $15 Lisa Garrison, The South Bronx and the Founding of America $15 G. Hermalyn, The Study and Writing of History $20 Samuel Hopkins, West Farms Local History Curriculum Guide $15 Alonso Serrano, Latin Bicentennial, comic book $5 The Bronx County Historical Society Journal Back issues of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1963–2022, are available for purchase for $15 per issue, excepting special issues like the Centennial of The Bronx issue, available for purchase for $20. Research Center Dominick Caldiero et al., Newspaper Titles of The Bronx $15 G. Hermalyn, Publications and Other Media of The Bronx County Historical Society Since 1955 $5 G. Hermalyn et al., The Bronx in Print $10 G. Hermalyn et al., Education and Culture in The Bronx $20 G. Hermalyn and Laura Tosi, Genealogy of The Bronx $10 Kathleen A. McAuley, A Guide to the Collections of The Bronx County Archives $20 Laura Tosi et al., Ethnic Groups in The Bronx $20 Laura Tosi et al., Index to The Sheet Map Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $20 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898 $15 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Atlas Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Microfilm/Microfiche Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Media Collection $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Video Collection $10 �Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, a documentary on DVD $20 Elizabeth Beirne, Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $20 Kathleen A. McAuley, Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $15 Special Interest Peter Derrick and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx Cookbook $15 Remember The Bronx, Bronx history calendar for 2024 $12 Gifts The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $8 The Bronx Afghan, washable cotton blanket, 50" x 65" $50 The Bronx River Parkway, c. 1915, poster, 20.5" x 29.5" $20 Edgar Allan Poe coffee mug $8 The Grand Concourse, 1892, poster, 25" x 12" $20 The Bronx Comfort gift set, includes The Bronx Cookbook, The Bronx Afghan, and The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $60 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx County Historical Society Journal Description An account of the resource The repository for digital editions of the full run of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1962–present, the premier publication on Bronx history and culture. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx County Historical Society Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Bronx County Historical Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966–present Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © The Bronx County Historical Society Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Periodical Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BCHSJOUR Periodical Text Any textual data included in the document The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL Volume LXII Spring/Fall 2025 EDITORIAL BOARD G. Hermalyn Elizabeth Beirne Jacqueline Kutner Patrick Logan Steven Payne Gil Walton Roger Wines © 2025 by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. The Bronx County Historical Society Journal is published by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. All correspondence should be addressed to 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, New York, 10467. Articles appearing in this Journal are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Periodical Source Index, and Recent Scholarship Online. Articles in The Bronx County Historical Journal can also be found on EBSCO host research databases and on our website, which will soon contain an online index, sponsored in part by the first editor-in-chief of the Journal Professor Lloyd Ultan. ISSN 0007-2249 The Journal and its editors disclaim responsibility for statements made by the contributors. www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY TRUSTEES Jacqueline Kutner, President Patrick Logan, Treasurer Steve Baktidy, Trustee Mei Sei Fong, Trustee Joel Podgor, Trustee Jac Zadrima, Trustee Hon. Eric Adams Mayor of New York City Hon. Iris Rodriguez-Rosa Commissioner, New York City Dept. of Parks & Recreation Dr. G. Hermalyn, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Steven Payne, Director Teresa Brown, Chief Administrative Officer Pastor Crespo Jr., Research Librarian/Archivist Roger McCormack, Director of Education Maeve McGroary, Museum Educator Chris Padilla, Bookstore Manager Serena Velasquez, Museum Educator Kathleen A. McAuley, Curator Emerita Dr. Mark Naison, Bronx African American History Project Consultant Anthony Morante, Vice President Gil Walton, Secretary Robert Esnard, Trustee Dr. G. Hermalyn, Trustee Lloyd Ultan, Trustee EX-OFFICIO Hon. Vanessa Gibson The Bronx Borough President Hon. Laurie Cumbo Commissioner, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs STAFF ii Volume LXII Spring/Fall 2025 CONTENTS ARTICLES The Bronx in the Great Depression......................................................................1 By Ed Beller Dutch Tiles in The Bronx.........................................................................................39 By Paul Herther with Victoria Keller The Mott Haven History Keepers.....................................................................55 By Sonyi Lopez, Steven Payne, Oscar Rivera, and Amy Starecheski Notes on Bronx Geography.....................................................................................67 By G. Hermalyn About the Authors.........................................................................................................71 iii LEAVE A LEGACY Many generous members and friends choose to give to The Bronx County Historical Society through bequests and life income gifts. Their donations represent an important source of support for the future of The Society. Charitable gift annuities and individual charitable trusts are merely two of the ways you can support your Society. Bequests Bequests may be stipulated at the time a new will is executed or may be added as a codicil to an existing will. Bequests to The Society are exempt from federal estate taxes and may be unrestricted or for a specific purpose. Charitable Gift Annuities Charitable gift annuities are a simple way to provide both a gift to The Society and an annuity for the donor. Some of the benefits include guaranteed lifetime income, a federal income tax deduction for a portion of the gift, partially tax-exempt income, and most importantly, the satisfaction of making a significant gift to The Society. Individual Charitable Trusts A charitable remainder trust is an excellent way to make a generous gift to The Bronx County Historical Society today and still retain the use of the income from your capital, stock, or other assets. Donors also enjoy current tax benefits. Charitable remainder trusts can be designed to accomplish a variety of goals depending upon your needs. For more information on making a bequest or life income gift, please contact Mr. Joel Podgor, CPA, Treasurer Emeritus, 718-881- 8900, or write to our main office. THE BRONX IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION: STRUGGLE, CONFLICT, RESILIENCE, AND THE NEW DEAL BY ED BELLER I. Introduction The Bronx, a working- and middle-class community with a large immigrant and first-generation population, took its lumps during the Great Depression (c.1930–1941).1 Bronxites, like the rest of the nation, suffered unemployment, foreclosures, evic- tions, homelessness, hunger harsh enough to force scavenging for food in garbage dumps, the need to relocate to unfamiliar environments, family breakups, and mental health problems. Not as drastic but nonetheless troubling was the loss of local, close-to-the-ground resources like small hospitals and neighbor- hood health stations and the cutting of public services and amenities.2 One letter writer to The Home News said: “God help us poor people if the city will close the health stations and turn away the Civil Service workers who have been so kind to the poor mothers and children.”3 There were vehement reactions like rent strikes that ignited confrontations with the police, marshals, and the private guards that landlords hired (“thugs” according to the strikers); and raucous public demonstrations and strikes against terminating The Bronx in the Great Depression 1 the Civil Works Administration (CWA; November 1933–May 1934), the first federal work relief program.4 Meanwhile the CWA and its successor the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as federal loans and grants, funded construction, infrastructure, beautification, and arts projects that put people back to work.5 By 1941, after the “speed bump” of a severe recession in 1937 and before the industrial and military stimulus of World War II took full effect, the United States economy had inched within 10% of pre-Depression levels.6 The Bronx survived, albeit with a massive loss of industrial jobs. (In 1940, the unemployment rate in The Bronx was 18%). The jobs that remained were in Mott Haven, Morrisania, and Hunts Point—mostly at piano, garment, and machine tools factories. Compounding the employment problem, starting even during the Depression, many new res- idents had settled in The Bronx: Blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans from the island and East Harlem arrived.7 This essay, however, will focus on the Depression years, a period when a still primarily Irish, Jewish, Italian, German, and Polish population faced the economic crisis and social turmoil of the 1930s and lived to talk about it.8 II. Rent Strikes Rent strikes were an expression of working- and middle-class anger and activism during the Depression. They often became violent and chaotic, although the strikers’ demands usually went no further than a reduction in rent and no evictions of the unemployed, and Bronx landlords did nothing especially provocative except try to collect rents. But the sight of families and their belongings on the sidewalk could not help but be 2 EDWARD BELLER provocative. To safeguard their interests in a hostile environment, landlords formed the Bronx Landlords Protective Association and the Greater New York Taxpayers Association. Both advocated for quicker processing of dispossession notices in Bronx municipal courts and relief from high real estate taxes. They claimed that delinquent rents, a high vacancy rate, and high taxes were making it difficult for them to pay their mortgages.9 However, to tenants, landlords were the personification and symbol of an economic system that working people perceived as not working for them. Some rent strikers were politically motivated (the Communist Party was a force behind the strikes). Others simply could not pay. Of course, these motives were often mixed.10 The Bronx of the 1930s had a strong radical tradition dating back to the arrival in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen- turies of German, Russian Jewish, and Italian immigrants, many with socialist, trade union roots. This tradition was the soil from which Bronx Depression-era rent strikes, resistance to evictions, labor activism, and protest grew. In 1926, for instance, the United Workers Co-operative Association (UWCA), found- ed in 1910 by Yiddish-speaking Jewish garment workers from Eastern Europe, bought a three-block plot along Bronx Park East north of Allerton Avenue. The goal was to establish co- operative housing as authorized by the state legislature in the same year. The legislation provided that apartment dwellers were to be shareholders and decision makers in non-profit corporations that owned one or several buildings. The Allerton “Coops,” as they were affectionately known, consisted of three ornate courts on Bronx Park East.11 Members of the UWCA had ties to the Communist Party and the International Workers of The Bronx in the Great Depression 3 the World, the infamous “Wobblies.” Some of these also be- longed to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and the International Ladies Garment Workers.12 The year 1932 saw a sharp increase in Bronx dispossession cases (11,903) over 1931 (7,207). In April, court clerks were enlisted to take over the proceedings that were overwhelming the four justices who staffed the two Bronx Municipal Courts (162nd Street and Westchester Avenue). This was especially necessary since an increase in rent strikes was expected in May, with many Bronx apartment dwellers leaving with rents unpaid and landlords filing recovery papers.13 Indeed, during the Depression, Bronx landlords were hard pressed to find enough paying tenants to make their mortgage payments. Raising rents and cutting services was the alternative, and the rent strikes that erupted in the Allerton Avenue neighborhood in 1932 were aided, organized, and encouraged (some might say instigated) by the residents of the Allerton Coops (“Coopniks”), who brought a perspective and an energy formed by left-wing union and radical traditions to the struggle that could not help but add to its spirit and vehemence.14 Thus, from early 1932 to the end of that year the northeast Bronx was the scene of intense rent strike activity, so intense that it is called “The Great Rent Strike War of 1932 in the Bronx.”15 The mostly Jewish skilled workers and small business owners who lived on Allerton Avenue, Unionport Road, Longfellow Avenue, and Olinville Avenue were at the center of the conflict. As historian Evelyn Gonzalez notes, “It was Jewish tenants versus Jewish landlords.”16 Windows in rent-strike buildings were painted red, and when furniture, bedding, domestic accou- trements, clothing, and keepsakes were on the street, crowds 4 EDWARD BELLER gathered and confronted police, marshals, and private guards, physically preventing their removal.17 (East Bronx native, City College graduate, and distinguished scholar Irving Howe remembers “the piles of furniture on top of which sat the children of evicted tenants.”) Olinville Avenue saw the first large strike. The strikers withheld rent, demanded a 15% rent reduction, repairs, no evictions, and recognition of the tenants committee as an official bargaining agent. When the inevitable evictions approved by pro-landlord judges began, and the belongings of seventeen families were on the street, there ensued what The Bronx Home News called a “rent strike riot.” A crowd of 4,000 gathered and attacked the police with fists, stones, fingernails, and sticks. Police reinforcements quelled the violence and eventually the strikers agreed to a two-dollar or three-dollar rent reduction and returned to their apartments.18 Such compromises were common and often involved only mild penalties for strikers charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, assault of a police officer, vandalism, etc. For example, for a “disturbance” on Arnow Avenue in March 1932, precipitated because “tenants have uncer- emoniously been evicted from their homes on eviction orders,” three were jailed one day by the West Farms Municipal Court in lieu of paying a three-dollar fine.19 Allerton Avenue was next up with 50 mounted police and 50 foot police doing battle with 3,000 strikers and supporters to accomplish three evictions. On both Olinville and Allerton Avenues, women, relying on networks developed through child- care arrangements, took leadership roles and were in the midst of the fray.20 A five-building Longfellow Avenue strike led by a “prominent The Bronx in the Great Depression 5 figure in recent weeks at Communist rallies,” a 34-year-old Party secretary named Oscar Landis, was the scene of a two- week struggle. Bronx rent strikers formed strike committees that were guilty of intimidating tenants who did not want to join them. Accordingly, Landis was fined five dollars at the Morrisania Court for hitting a recalcitrant tenant on the head with a brief-case full of Communist literature. (The literature spilled out and was turned over to the NYPD “Radical Above: “Mounted Cops at Rent Strike,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 25, 1932. 6 EDWARD BELLER Squad.”)21 On March 1, Landis used a tactic that seems to have been in vogue in the Party and painted in large red letters on the sidewalk in front of a “rent strike infested building”: “Don’t Pay Your Rent” and “Rent Strike.” He then splashed a police- man whose “shoes had taken on a red hue.” For these efforts, Landis was sentenced to two days by the Morrisania Court.22 On March 10, handbills were distributed demanding a 15% rent Above: “Communist Advertising,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 3, 1932. The Bronx in the Great Depression 7 reduction, no evictions of the unemployed, and curbs on the “special cops and gangsters who terrorized tenants.” The hand- bills urged tenants to take action against Tammany judges and marshals and exhorted passersby to “show your solidarity and come to 174th Street and Longfellow Avenue” to march to the 164th Street Court for a rally. “All out on Wednesday in front of Court.” On March 12, two were arrested for disorderly conduct, and “a mob swept down on a private guard and rescued a speaker who had been taken into custody.”23 Above: “Rent Strikers Keep Marching,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 13, 1932. 8 EDWARD BELLER The turmoil continued on March 15 with again a crowd of 3,000 hurling stones and bottles at 50 foot police, fifteen mounted police, twelve detectives, and private guards who were evicting fifteen tenants. The battle spread several blocks before the crowd was dispersed and the evictions accomplished.24 The landlords’ associations responded with financial support for members who were experiencing strikes and by going to court to secure injunctions against picketing. Very early in the strike wave the Bronx Landlords Protective Association accused strike organizers of being racketeers who demanded 50% of any rent reductions obtained. This charge was never documented. In September 1932, the Association compiled a list of strikers to be blacklisted by its members and prepared legislation—never enact- ed—to make rent strikes a misdemeanor punishable by arrest and imprisonment.25 “We find that these agitators are mostly all Communists and are carrying on a war against all that law and order stand for.”26 Tenants countered by forming the City-Wide Tenants League, which provided legal help and advocacy for tenants faced with eviction. The League provided funds for moving expenses in Mott Haven, where about 100 tenements were condemned to make way for the Bronx approaches to the Triborough Bridge. Local tenant councils in rent-strike buildings fought evictions in the courts and raised money for evicted families.27 Things calmed down considerably by late 1932. The turmoil and finan- cial losses encouraged some landlords to soften their attitudes, and Mayor John O’Brien provided rent support from New Deal relief funds. The injunctions were an effective anti-strike weapon and by late 1933, tenants, still under the influence of the neighborhood’s Communists, turned to the city’s Home Relief Bureau for income support to stay in their apartments rather The Bronx in the Great Depression 9 than do battle in the courts and on the streets.28 III. Regulation, Mutual Support, Cooperation Of equal significance with the strikes, street disturbances, ral- lies, parades, and gatherings, which were ubiquitous during the Depression, were community-based efforts at mutual assistance, cooperation, and support. Much of this occurred informally—on street corners, in stores, taverns, living rooms, churches, syna- gogues, etc.—and has not been formally recorded. But efforts that were initiated by New Deal government agencies have left a clear record. Regulation, cooperation, and mutual support were essential elements of President Roosevelt’s plans to confront the Depression with aggressive federal programs of work relief and income maintenance The super-rich, old-wealth, upper-class president occasionally revealed his bedrock opinion of unregulated competitive capitalism. In a speech at Green Bay, Wisconsin in August 1934, he refers to “the forces which dis- regard cooperation and human rights seeking that kind of individual profit gained at the expense of his fellows.”29 The New Deal’s flagship effort to bring some regulation to the economy was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed by the 73rd U.S. Congress in 1933. This legislation estab- lished the National Recovery Administration (NRA) under the executive branch and included a mandate that businesses follow a code of fair competition, prices, wages, and labor rights. The chairman of the NRA’s Bronx Division, George F. Mand, launched a campaign to inform consumers of businesses that did not comply and so were not entitled to display the famous Blue Eagle insignia.30 10 EDWARD BELLER Small businesses were not exempt. Soon after the act took effect, seven Bronx tailors and a pharmacy on East Tremont Avenue were fined for underpricing. In contrast, some small business owners not only complied with their codes but liked the idea of a regulated market. In May 1934, the Bronx Boss Barbers Association presented a petition to Mand demanding the prompt enactment of a code and decrying “unrestricted and un- restrained competition, price-cutting and unfair practices” that led to “loss of investment and inevitable bankruptcy” and the “inability to pay standard living wages of labor.”31 In 1935, the conservative Supreme Court ruled the NIRA uncon- stitutional on the ground that Congress had exceeded its right to regulate interstate commerce and had improperly delegated legislative powers to the executive branch. But perhaps the core reason was that the law veered too far in the direction of a collective approach and a regulated economy.32 But even after the demise of the NIRA, the programs initiated by the CWA and the WPA supported cooperation and took firm root in The Bronx. Under the funding and supervision of the Federal Emergency Relief Bureau and the CWA, the un- employed planted community-accessible truck gardens and did park maintenance work. Twenty-four Bronx unemployed shoemakers repaired the shoes of 3,000 unemployed Bronx workers at the rate of 150 per day, working in the basement of the Claremont Park Manor, a large apartment building on Claremont Avenue. Shoppers were encouraged to drop off boxes of groceries in local stores.33 In the following and many other instances, Roosevelt used the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to press a cooperative ethic. In a February 1934 address at the 165th Street Artillery Armory, the president urged Bronx Boy Scouts to participate in a program, run by the Emergency Un- The Bronx in the Great Depression 11 employment Relief Committee, to gather used but serviceable clothes, bedding, and furniture to aid the distressed.34 In 1934, the CWA developed a housekeeping aides project with 1,300 unemployed Bronx housekeepers working in 2,000 Bronx homes. They helped with domestic chores: cooking, washing, cleaning, ironing, and childcare in families where the home- maker was ill, had moved out, or was deceased.35 The Block Aid Program was another CWA community-based program. The Bronx was divided into 1,344 block communities, and in May 1932, 596 unemployed heads of families called “Block Aiders” were employed by the Bronx division of the Federal Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee to solicit weekly donations on their assigned blocks from housekeepers, store- Above: “Repairing Shoes for the Unemployed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932. 12 EDWARD BELLER keepers, shop workers, other workers, government employees, etc. Police helped to recruit the block aiders, and teachers, especially at Theodore Roosevelt and Morris High Schools and Herman Ridder Junior High School, were generous contrib- utors. By April 1932, $441,000 had been raised citywide (about $2,404,000 in 2024 value). Unfortunately, Bronx collections ranked only fourth in the city behind third-place Queens, which collected $18,722. The funds were directed to poverty relief and subsidized work programs.36 Supplementing this emphasis on cooperation, the concept of a regulated economy was not entirely vanquished by the Supreme Court’s 1935 ruling. In 1937, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act empowering a Labor Standards Board to set guidelines for minimum wages, maximum hours, and minimum age requirements.37 IV. Education and the Arts Getting people back to work was the New Deal’s first priority but “work” was by no means narrowly defined. Writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and visual artists received support from the WPA’s Federal Arts Project Fund, and the Adult Education Division employed teachers to offer a wide range of courses from domestic crafts like dressmaking and food preser- vation, to fine arts and English instruction for the foreign born. Libraries are an essential support to education, and Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons successfully intervened when in August 1937 the cash-strapped city planned to close eleven libraries, ten of them in The Bronx.38 Bronx high schools like DeWitt Clinton, Evander Childs, Wal- ton, James Monroe, Samuel Gompers, and Bronx Vocational The Bronx in the Great Depression 13 were graced with murals painted by CWA artists depicting the stages of human civilization, historic moments, scenes of nature, and advances in industrial technology. The murals are large, quite beautiful, and can be admired in these schools today. (Although there was a loud outcry in New York art circles when the mural “Constellations” by German artist Arthur Floegel was painted over in June 2018 during roof repairs at DeWitt Clinton.)39 A $28,000 WPA grant to schools for the support of the arts funded drama in the high schools to be performed for community audiences. In February 1934, Walton High School students presented a play called “The Show Off” under the direction of the Board of Education and the Actors Equity Association.40 There was an effort to bring high culture to Above: “Dressmaking Lures Many Women to WPA Class,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19, 1937. 14 EDWARD BELLER Bronx neighborhoods, and other plays in the schools included Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “She Stoops to Conquer” by Oliver Goldsmith.41 Of course, not every performance was a vehicle for high culture. In August 1937, a WPA theater project variety show at the Beck Street Juvenile House featured “blackface comedians” and “Italian dialect comedians.”42 V. Infrastructure, Construction, Neighborhood Improvement The CWA and the WPA funded Bronx infrastructure and neighborhood improvement projects. In January 1934, the Bronx chapter of the State Society of Professional Engineers asked Bronx residents to suggest projects. “It does not make any difference whether it will provide work for one man for a day or 1000 men for a month.”43 The unemployed were put to work cleaning, painting, and making repairs to public buildings, repairing public vehicles, resurfacing and clearing snow-clogged roads, cleaning and enlarging sewers, draining swamps, restoring old and damaged maps, clearing safety hazards like cluttered and unsightly empty lots and car graveyards, and renovating the public baths on 156th Street. Eighteen hundred workers armed with steel traps, flashlights, and “jute bags” were assigned to exterminate rats. One of the WPA’s major projects, an immediate popular success, and one that Bronxites love to this day, was Orchard Beach. (The Bronx Home News cites the “usually large number of people who are desirous of visiting Orchard Beach entirely exceeding the accommodations of the beach and the transportation facilities.”) At this “summer resort,” designed by WPA architects and built by WPA workers, gangs of men cleared woodland, built new roads, bathrooms, and drainage systems, filled in swamps, and The Bronx in the Great Depression 15 built sea walls encircling the entire waterfront. With poverty rampant and government-funded employment not always adequate, some “hustles” emerged. One resourceful group of squatters at a park site being filled in on Lacombe Avenue made some extra change outside the purview of the WPA by charging contractors 25 cents per load for the privilege of entering their encampment. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses declined to prosecute but did have their shacks pulled down.44 There were complaints that essential jobs were neglected but two letter writers to The Home News begged to differ: The terrace leading to and surrounding the steps ascending to Van Cortlandt Park South has been beautified. Look at the wall constructed at the southern edge of the golf links. Then glance at the vacant lots all over the city, especially along upper Broadway and see how emergency workers cleaned the lots and carted away the debris that used to cover them. Also how about the fine work the unemployed did in cleaning main thoroughfares of snow in a short time. I could go on almost indefinitely with a list of such examples.45 “Who is building the playgrounds, who is repairing all the roads; who built Orchard Beach, the stadium on Randall’s Island, baby health stations, and all the small neighborhood parks—oh, yes, and the swimming pools?” The answer is: the people on the WPA. And yet some people say WPA has ac- complished nothing.46 During its short existence, from March 1933 to its replacement by the WPA in May 1934, the CWA was the anti-Depression government employer of first resort in The Bronx and the 16 EDWARD BELLER nation. With the support of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce, the Bronx Board of Trade, and the Bronx chapter of the State Society of Professional Engineers, Borough President Lyons advocated for borough-based hiring to replace the CWA’s citywide, centralized system, in which people from other boroughs often worked in The Bronx and Bronxites in other boroughs. He pointed out that in the rest of the state hiring was on a county basis.47 Lyons wanted to “make the Bronx one of the real beauty spots of the metropolitan area,” and many aesthetically pleasing and valuable projects were completed during his tenure and the tenure of Bronx Democratic Party Boss Edward J. Flynn. Lyons supported ridding the Bronx of “old law,” “unfit for human habitation” tenements built prior to 1900 (and thus, before the 1901 Tenement House Law) and helped secure federal funds for the Hillside Housing Corporation’s building projects in the Above: “Unemployed Men Waiting for Jobs on Hillside Project,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934. The Bronx in the Great Depression 17 northeast Bronx. These were The Bronx’s first government- funded affordable housing, delayed two years because of the opposition of local real estate interests. The corporation’s President Nathan Strauss said, “The firetraps, the lightless, airless antiquated buildings called ‘home’ by over 1.5 million New Yorkers must go.”48 Lyons was besieged by jobseekers (and complained that they were interfering with his official duties) under the mistaken belief that he was empowered to disperse jobs. He referred them to the New York State Reemployment Service working at the Kingsbridge Armory.49 Above: “Speed Drive to Put 10,000 to Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 6, 1934. 18 EDWARD BELLER VI. The Demise of the CWA However, the question threatened to become moot. Republicans and conservative Democrats objected that the program was becoming too expensive (original estimates of $400,000,000 had reached $1,000,000,000) and was spawning a swollen federal bureaucracy and a perpetual burden of the unemployed on the public payroll. Employers agreed with this assessment and also objected to government-subsidized competition for labor and contracts. Competition for labor was probably difficult because the CWA paid standard wages and was a humane employer. (For example, on February 8, 1934, when the temperature dropped to 14 degrees below zero, Bronx workers were given the day off with no loss of pay.) Because of this opposition and perhaps because of budgetary concerns of his own, especially the duplication of effort after the establishment of the WPA, Roosevelt announced in January 1934 that the CWA would close on May 1, cutting 4,000,000 workers. He said the WPA and private employers would pick up the slack.50 To start, 10,000 New York City wokers were laid off in March. On April 1, the CWA turned over its projects to New York City, and the city immediately cut 30,000 more. The city’s plan was to retain 250,000 of its 1,500,000 workers until May 1, with the Department of Public Welfare rehiring many of those who were laid off. All retained workers absorbed a pay cut.51 VII. Demonstrations and Protests Protests began on March 25, 1934 with a rally of 7,000 at Madison Square Garden. On March 30 there was a one-hour citywide strike of CWA workers and a march to City Hall.52 The Bronx in the Great Depression 19 The Department of Public Welfare was required by the CWA to retain only the most needy but there were complaints of favoritism, with heads of poor large families laid off while the less needy were retained. Fifty picketers protested outside the CWA office on Lafayette Street.53 On April 13, when 2500 Bronx workers were cut from the Parks Department, there was a tumultuous protest—the mainstream press called it a “riot”—outside an abandoned school building on 188th Street and Webster Avenue that was functioning as CWA District Headquarters. The protesters fought with police, waved American flags, and chanted, “We want work not charity.” Three were arrested.54 On April 15, there was a “near riot” outside the office of the Home Relief Bureau on East 149th Street. A crowd of 125 stormed the building when a supervisor denied a demand to hear a delegation of five who came to advocate on behalf of two destitute families about to be evicted. Police were sum- moned and when the crowd was under control the supervisor agreed to hear them and promised relief.55 Also on April 15, Mayor LaGuardia was heckled at a Board of Estimate meeting and warned “not to be sure we won’t have another Minneapolis here.” (On February 2, 1931, and November 21, 1932, there were violent food riots in Minneapolis.)56 VIII. The “Pauper’s Test” and Working‐Class Pride There were protests against policies that affronted the pride of working people in useful work. In its effort to retain only the neediest, the Department of Public Welfare issued a ques- tionnaire with no less than 400 questions to establish the eligi- bility of each worker. Workers perceived it as implying that 20 EDWARD BELLER CWA jobs were charity that required a “Pauper’s Test,” and the questionnaire was a target at demonstrations against layoffs.57 New Deal administrators and social workers agreed with them. They favored work relief for the unemployed over direct relief because it “restored his social prestige, raised him in the esteem of his family and friends, and revitalized his confidence.” They wanted the unemployed “to view themselves as productive members of society even though their work was supported by public funds.” “Work relief made public assistance something earned by work, not granted by charity.”58 Harry L. Hopkins, the head of the Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA) and the executive in charge of Roosevelt’s New Deal work relief programs, knew that the working- and middle-class jobless were uneasy dealing with relief agencies and avoided humiliating Above: “Ousted Workers Picket CWA Offices,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934. The Bronx in the Great Depression 21 investigations into family budgets. His method was to hire the jobless as public employees, not charity cases.59 A striking validation—quite the opposite of a strike—of Roo- sevelt’s and Hopkins’s approach occurred in The Bronx on April 3, 1934, when Gang 45, Project 13 refused to quit after its project was cut and announced they would go back to their work site on Kingsland Avenue and Gun Hill Road on April 6. When told they would not be paid, they replied they would go back anyway.60 IX. Off‐the‐Streets Resistance The pushback against terminating the CWA was not confined to street action. Members of Congress were swamped with letters and telegrams demanding that the program continue. Voluntary, non-government groups like the Bronx chapter of the Charles V. Scanlan Association supported the extension of the program since “many Bronx workers had no other means of subsistence.” The officers of the State Society of Professional Engineers advocated for its continuance. In an appeal to President Roosevelt, Governor Lehman, and Mayor LaGuardia, Bronx building trades unions were especially emphatic. Their appeal includes a hint of something that deeply troubled political leaders—the fear of social disorder or even the dreaded “r” word. It might be seen as a not quite veiled threat. “The representatives of the building trades of Bronx County appeal to you on behalf of the 50,000 building trade mechanics that reside in Bronx County, 90% of whom are destitute and have been unemployed for the better part of the last four years, to use the power vested in you by the public to nullify the latest order of Harry L. Hopkins Federal Administrator of CWA Works. . . . You can fully realize the confusion and disorder that 22 EDWARD BELLER will occur when no more men will be put to work by the CWA.”61 The City’s Public Welfare Commissioner William Hodson called shutting down the CWA “a tragedy” and added, “NYC would be faced with the worst unemployment crisis in the history of the Depression.”62 Parks Commissioner Moses called the idea a “monumental piece of stupidity.”63 Governor Lehman wrote to Hopkins, “The people have become ac- customed to it and are now dependent upon it.”64 Citizens worried about the problems that abandoning CWA projects would cause. In the East Bronx, they said that stopping work on the drainage of a swampy area east of Eastchester Road and north of Pelham Parkway amounted to an “abject surrender to the mosquitoes” and left them “what appears to be a first rate breeding place.” The Bronx Home News noted, “East Bronx residents complain that this and other abandoned reclamation and drainage projects in their territory are health perils.”65 There were large gatherings in support of the CWA organized by influential establishment figures. On January 21, 1934, there was a mass meeting of 10,000 convened by Episcopalian Bishop William T. Manning at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In his talk at the meeting, Mayor LaGuardia was critical, bordering on radical. He agreed with State CWA Director Frederick I. Daniels that social disorder was likely, was puzzled and angry that in the newspapers “on one page we read of surplus of food and manufactured goods and plans to curtail production and on another page of relief agencies unable to provide for the hungry and needy.” Referring to the unprecedented carnage and expense of World War I, he said that when the public was informed of war costs of $1 million a minute, “everybody would give until it hurt in order to kill and destroy and you got up and cheered.” He wondered “whether or not our economic system is worth The Bronx in the Great Depression 23 saving. I don’t know whether it is. . . . The situation has gotten beyond family relief—beyond the customary charitable work of the church—beyond the control of the municipality and even of the State. We are in the midst of a great national crisis.”66 He continued this theme in January 1934 when he addressed the 650 graduates of James Monroe High School in The Bronx, telling them that “the entire economic system has collapsed,” and “this generation owes you an apology for the mess they have made of things.”67 X. Internal Problems It is not surprising that the CWA and the WPA—massive government programs dispensing funds, jobs, and patronage— had internal problems of graft, political influence-peddling, Above: “Mayor [LaGuardia] Speaks at Monroe Graduation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 24 EDWARD BELLER favoritism, and poor management. Although the consensus of scholarly opinion is that these phenomena were minimal, we will note several related problems that plagued The Bronx. In February 1934, amid rumors of “flagrant irregularities,” four- teen CWA officials supervising a project in Van Cortlandt Park, six of them Bronxites, were fired for soliciting payment for employment from workers and for putting “no-show” workers on the payroll. Ten of them were indicted for defrauding the U.S. government and for extortion.68 In May 1939, five Orchard Beach WPA workers were arrested for stealing four ornametal pine trees and 300 pounds of grass and taking the haul to the Third Avenue home of one of the workers.69 Also in May 1939, the officers of a Bronx bus company, 20th Century Bus Operators Inc., with a contract to take Bronx workers to their jobs, were convicted of submitting false claims. The WPA some- times relied on outside contractors. The contractor who was hired to do maintenance work at Montefiore Hospital was warned against the common practice of skimming the non-WPA workers’ wages as payment for hiring them.70 Workers voiced complaints as well. The most serious and often heard was dismissal at the mere whim of supervisors with no reasons given. There were “quiet strikes” at Bronx worksites against this practice.71 In March 1934, the CWA Workers Organization, the Emergency Employees Association, lodged a charge of discrimination against William Keenan, the superintendent of a Bronx Park East Project, for firing all twelve Jews on the project and providing no reason. This caused an “uprising” so volatile that foreman James Connolly would not “risk life and limb” and refused an assignment to the project. Connolly was fired along with 26 supporters. In March 1936, the CWA workers union, the The Bronx in the Great Depression 25 Project Workers Union, uncovered a scandal at the Crotona Park site. Timekeepers and a foreman were shorting each skilled worker five dollars per day and pocketing the proceeds.72 Some public officials, although generally supportive and among those who called the CWA’s termination a mistake, nevertheless had problems, including slack workmen; preferential treatment for relations, friends, and union members; rowdyism, radical agitation, loafing, theft, and even sabotage.73 Lyons thought that these problems could not be managed by supervision hired from the ranks and favored recruiting outside “adminstrative experts.” A letter writer to The Home News disagreed and blamed “ignorant petty officials who do not know how to handle unfortunate people.”74 XI. Fear of Social Disorder With the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy and the emergence of the Communist Soviet Union, the fear of social disorder sparked by the demise of a “lifeline” work relief program was a factor in the minds of establishment figures. In his letter to CWA Federal Administrator Hopkins, Governor Lehman wrote, “A termination [of the CWA] before beneficiaries have been absorbed into industry would result in social and economic reaction.”75 These fears were doubtless enhanced by the Communist Party’s high profile in the city, including, as we have seen, The Bronx. There were large rallies and parades with “fiery speeches” and singing of the “Inter- nationale.” The socialist and communist uprising against fascism in Austria in 1934 was praised and presented as a dire warning. At one rally attended by 5,000 on 28th Street, it was proclaimed that CWA workers would not “take layoffs lying down and you [Hopkins] will be responsible for the consequences and the 26 EDWARD BELLER bloodshed.” The depth and persistence of Communist strength are illustrated by a 1940 rally that drew 20,000 to Madison Square Garden in support of Party secretary Earl Broder after his conviction for using a fake passport.76 Communist strength provoked laws that extended their reach into The Bronx. In 1919, the state legislature made it a misdemeanor to wave a red flag. In January 1934, two young men ages 18 and 28—the younger, a City College student—were arrested for waving a red flag (actually not a flag but a square piece of red cloth) near the new War Memorial Grove in Pelham Bay Park. They were arrested on the complaint of two American Legion members who were preparing for the dedication ceremonies of the memorial. The young men’s lawyer remarked that the officers of the Harvard Club should be arrested for displaying a crimson banner at the Harvard Club building on 44th Street. The two young men said they were not Communists but members of the Young People’s Socialist League and opposed to violent revolution. But that did not prevent their conviction at Bronx Special Sessions Court. (In May 1934, the State Court of Appeals ruled the law uncon- stitutional and overturned the conviction.) This incident is a reminder that socialists also had a strong presence in the city as evidenced by their turnouts at May Day festivities. Bronx socialists celebrated May Day 1934 with a dinner-dance at the Burnside Manor.77 In this context, even conventional, conservative politicians like Lyons felt obliged to meet with and try to placate Communist delegations. In January 1934, he hosted a meeting with Commu- nists who demanded that construction of incinerators near the Bronx Terminal Market stop and the funds be used for unemployment relief. Lyons pointed out that in May 1933 the The Bronx in the Great Depression 27 Supreme Court directed the city to stop dumping garbage at sea. But he patiently listened to a list of demands that included reduced salaries for city officials, increased property taxes, reduced rents, and reduced interest rates on bank loans.78 XII. Conclusion As planned, the CWA closed shop on May 1, 1934. The WPA shut down during World War II in December 1943. Their legacy is impressive. They provided work for 15 million individuals abandoned by the private economy and provided the nation with hospitals, health centers, community centers, schools, colleges, college dormitories, gymnasiums, city halls, highways, sidewalks, railroads, zoos, bridges, botanical gardens, fair- grounds, fire houses, auditoriums, airports, reservoirs, incin- erators, post offices, affordable housing, art, literature, theater, education, parks, sports stadiums, garbage- and swamp-free landscapes, museums, libraries, sewers, swimming pools, beaches, tennis courts, playgrounds, rodeo grounds, horseshoe pits, ski jumps, golf courses, handball courts, and skating rinks (a very partial listing).79 In The Bronx, we have these programs to thank for neighborhood parks and playgrounds, Orchard Beach, Crotona Pool and Park, Ferry Point Park, the Triborough Bridge (RFK) and Whitestone Bridge, the Bronx County Supreme Court building, the Bronx Central Post Office, beautiful murals in Bronx high schools, Lehman College (formerly Hunter), SUNY Maritime College, the Bronx Terminal Market, Pelham Bay Park and Rice Stadium, Split Rock Golf Course, Pelham Bay Golf Course, Joyce Kilmer Park, St. Mary’s Park, and Claremont Park (a very partial listing).80 Forgotten and unexplored by most historians is the cooperative ethic that Roosevelt and Hopkins believed in and did much to 28 EDWARD BELLER foster. The Bronx Block Aiders, shoe repair craftsmen, house- keeping aides, shoppers who left bags of groceries in grocery stores, and Boy Scouts who collected used clothing and house- hold items embodied this ethic. The concept of a regulated economy has become part of the mindset of some US policymakers and citizens ever since, even if continuously challenged by conservative politicians and cor- porate interests. The Bronx barbers who demanded that the NRA develop a code for their business illustrates the concept’s broader support while the Bronx tailors and pharmacists who were fined for underpricing illustrate that such a code is eminently enforceable. Finally, cooperation, regulation, mutual aid, and collective responsibility for the victims of economic and social dislocation were pillars of the New Deal and have become embedded in US social and political discourse. These values met with solid support in the Depression-era Bronx. NOTES 1. “City Relief Crisis Studied by Taylor,” New York Times, May 14, 1933; “81,000 Families Must Have Aid at Once, Welfare Officials Warn,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 16, 1932; Evelyn Gonzalez, The Bronx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 96; “Home Owners Relief Officials Seek to Save Residence for Bronx Family,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934; Elaine Landau, The Great Depression (New York: Children’s Press, 2007), 4. 2. “Bronx Zoo Loses Leadership Due to Lack of Funds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 25, 1939; “Hospital Lacks Funds; Faces a Shut Down,” New York Times, January 23, 1932; “Mrs. P. Murphy Hits Dismissal of Nurses,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 25, 1934. 3. “Mrs. P. Murphy Hits Dismissal of Nurses.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 29 4. William Dudley, ed., The Great Depression: Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 16; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; “Rent Strikers Keep Marching,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 13, 1932. 5. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “LaGuardia Acts to Create Jobs as City Wins Huge Federal Loan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 17, 1934; Landau, The Great Depression, 34; “Williamsbridge Reservoir Playground Opens,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, December 10, 1939; “WPA Altering Eight Schools,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 26, 1940. 6. Dudley, The Great Depression, 69; “Civil Works Administration (CWA) | Definition & Purpose | Britannica,” Brittanica, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Civil-Works-Administration. 7. “Casa Amadeo, NY (U.S. National Park Service),” National Parks Service, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/places/casa-amadeo.htm; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 1, 5, 102, 103, 109, 111, 130–140. 8. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96. 9. “Bronx Landlords Adopt Resolution Urging Speedier Action in Dispossess Cases,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 24, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory Calms 80 Rent Strikers in Municipal Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1932; “Survey of Vacant Bronx Apartments Shows But Slight Increase Over 1927,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 26, 1932; “25 Percent Bronx Apartments Are Empty James W. Brown Assn. Is Told by Deegan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 18, 1932. 10. Mark Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression: The Great Rent Strike War of 1932 in the Bronx,” International Socialist Review 103 (2016–2017), accessed December 1, 2025, https://isreview.org/issue/103. 11. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Steven Payne, “The Allerton Coops: An Interracial Utopia?” (lecture at Van Cortlandt House Museum, December 12, 2024); Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of the Bronx (New York: Bronx County Historical Society, 2009), 231, 239. 12. Payne, “The Allerton Coops.” 13. “Clerks Will Handle Evictions Under New Procedures in Municipal Courts,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 27, 1932; Ultan, The Northern Borough, 231, 239. 14. “Bronx Landlords Adopt Resolution,” 3; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Payne, “The Allerton Coops”; “25 Percent Bronx Apartments Are Empty”; “Survey of Vacant Bronx Apartments.” 30 EDWARD BELLER 15. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Ultan, The Northern Borough, 240. 16. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 17. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Irving Howe, “A Memoir of The Thirties,” in Steady Work: Essays in the Politics of Democratic Radicalism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 354; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough (New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2006), 119. 18. “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 19. “Bronx Rent Strikes Fade After 11 Families Are Evicted From Building on Arnow Avenue,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression”; “Three Jailed for Participating in Rent Strike Riots,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 25, 1932. 20. Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 21. “Communist Party Secretary Fined for Intimidation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1932; “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory.” 22. “Communist Advertising,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 11, 1932; “Rent Strike Agitator Is Given Two Days for Voicing Opinions in Red Paint on Sidewalk,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 3, 1932, 6. 23. “Justice Fitzgerald’s Oratory”; “Rent Strikers Keep Marching.” 24. “Crowd of 3000 Battle Police After 15 are Evicted on Longfellow Avenue,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 15, 1932; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” 25. “Landlords to Fight Rent Strike ‘Racket,’” New York Times, February 10, 1932; “Rent Strike Curb is Sought in Bronx,” New York Times, September 18, 1932. 26. “RentStrikeCurb.” 27. Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 119. 28. “Depression is Over in Bronx, Court Figures Reveal as Dispossess Suits Drop in January,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 102–103; Naison, “Fighting Evictions During the Great Depression.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 31 29. James Holt, “The New Deal and the American Anti-Statist Tradition,” in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 36. 30. “Bronx NRA Division to Launch Campaign Against Merchants Rebuffing New Eagle,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 8, 1934; Dudley, The Great Depression, 16, 56–57. 31. “Bronx Boss Barbers Assn. Petitions for Quick Enactment and Enforcement of Code,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 23, 1934; “Bronx Cut Rate Drug Store Owner Faces Court Today on Code Charge,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 24, 1934; “Five Tailors to Stand Trial for NRA Violations,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 18, 1934; “Two Tailors are Fined $25 Each for NRA Offenses,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 26, 1934. 32. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16, 68. 33. “Relief Group Plans to Place 4,000 Baskets in Stores for Food Donations for Jobless,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Repairing Shoes for the Unemployed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 2, 1932; “Unemployed Will Operate Truck Gardens Under New Plan of State Relief Organization,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 6, 1932. 34. “Bronx Boy Scouts Hear President Roosevelt Call on National Order for Aid to Distressed,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 11, 1936; “Relief Group Plans.” 35. “2,000 Families Have Received Assistance from WPA Housekeeping Aides Project,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 28, 1934. 36. “Inflation Calculator,” amortization.org, accessed December 1, 2025, https:// www.amortization.org/inflation/; “Bronx Loses Third Place in Block Aid Drive as Queens Reports $18,722 Total Collection,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 21, 1932; “Chairman of ‘Block Aid’ Campaign Will Perfect Plans at Dinner Tonight,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1932; “596 Unemployed Heads of Bronx Families Given Jobs Supported by Block Aid Funds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 4, 1932; “Join the Block Aiders,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1932; “Projected Bronx ‘Block Aid’ Drive Outlined by Relief Group Chairman,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 3, 1932. 37. Dudley, The Great Depression, 70; “Senate Passes Wages-Hours Bill by 56 to 28 After Heated Debate,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 1, 1937. 38. “Dressmaking Lures Many Women to WPA Class,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19 1937, 9; Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “Lyons 32 EDWARD BELLER Will Ask for $35,000 from City to Keep Ten Uptown Libraries Open,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 23, 1934; “Senate Passes Wages- Hours Bill”; “WPA to Continue Classes in English to Foreign Born,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 12, 1939. 39. “400 Art Works Given to Bronx Institution by WPA Federal Project Officials Announced,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 19, 1937; Alex Mitchell, “DeWitt Clinton High School painters destroy major art piece,” Bronx Times, June 24, 2018; “Sketches for CWA’s Art Program Murals at DeWitt Clinton High Planned by Officials,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 18, 1934. 40. “CWA Play to be Staged at Two Uptown Schools,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934, 2. 41. “CWA Plays in Uptown Section Begin Tuesday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 31, 1934, 44. 42. “New WPA Variety Show Due in Bronx on Friday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 18, 1937, 3. 43. Dudley, The Great Depression, 16; “Engineers Ask Bronxites to Suggest Projects Suitable for CWA Program,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 12, 1934. 44. Samuel Bierman, “The Congestion is Under Control,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 3, 1937; “CWA Workers Join Forces with City in Speeding Work of Snow Removal,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 23, 1934; “1800 CWA Workers to Open War on Rat Army,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 12, 1934; “Huge Unemployment Aid Programs Seen as Lyons Assumes New Duties,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 2, 1934; “Lyons Predicts 11,000 CWA Jobs in Week; Lack of Tools Causes Delay,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 9, 1934; “Making a Real Summer Resort of Orchard Beach,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 24, 1934; “Moses Halts Filling In of East Bronx Park Site After Halting Dump Rackets,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, October 3, 1937; “Plans are Rushed to Put 10,000 Bronx Jobless to Work in 10 days,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 6, 1934; “Swamps Eliminated by CWA Men,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 45. Frank P. Coyle, “Praise for CWA Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 20, 1934. 46. Stephen G. Flynn, “A Boost for the WPA,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, August 26, 1937. 47. “Bronx Jobs for Bronx People,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 11, 1934; “Demand Bronx Workers in CWA Jobs; Riot of 500 at City College is Averted,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 16, 1934; The Bronx in the Great Depression 33 “Engineers Ask Bronxites to Suggest Projects”; “Plans Are Rushed”; “Three Civic Groups Endorse Lyons’ Plan to Put Bronxites on Bronx Jobs,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 10, 1934. 48. Frank Da Cruz, “Notable New Deal Projects in New York City,” accessed December 1, 2025, https://kermitproject.org/newdeal/; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96; “LaGuardia and Lyons Praise Hillside Housing Project at Ground Breaking,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 20, 1934; “Three Civic Groups”; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 107; “WPA in City Publishes Its Record for 1938; Lists Uptown Jobs as Accomplishments,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 12, 1939. 49. “1,000 Go To Work in Bronx Today Under CWA Plan,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 16, 1934; “Speed Drive to Put 10,000 to Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 8, 1934, 1. 50. “Curtain Closes Tonight on CWA Plan, City Will Re-employ 125,000 Monday,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 31, 1934; “Civil Works Administration”; “Mercury Drops to 14° Below Zero; CWA Work Halted for Cold Spell,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 9, 1934; Bonnie Fox Schwartz, “The Civil Works Administration, 1933–1934; The Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1978), vol. 2, 377; Peo Snyder, “Suggestions for the WPA,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 8, 1934; “Washington Firm on Cutting Ranks of CWA Despite Flood of Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934. 51. William W. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way’: The New Deal’s Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed,” Journal of American History 62/3 (1975): 642; “Civil Works Administration”; “Disgusted ‘Work versus Home Relief,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 1, 1934; “WPA Walkouts End as Contractors Hear Warning Against ‘Kickbacks,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 29, 1937. 52. “Curtain Closes Tonight”; “CWA Workers Vote One-Hour Strike on Thursday to Protest Disbanding,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 26, 1934. 53. “Hundreds are Returned to Relief Roll as Department of Welfare Investigates Cases,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1934; “Pickets in CWA Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934. 54. “Three Arrested as Former CWA Workers Battle Police in Protest Over Ousting of 2,500,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 15, 1934. 55. “Radio Cops Quell Crowd in Protest at Relief Bureau,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 17, 1934. 56. “Food Riots in Minneapolis, February, 1931,” PBS, accessed December 1, 34 EDWARD BELLER 2025, https://www.pbs.org/americanexperience/features/rails-timeline/; “Mayor Scores Jobless for Heckling But Agrees to Re-hire, 500 Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934; James K. Hosmer, “National Hunger March of 1932: The Minneapolis Demonstration,” Hennepin County Library Tumblr, accessed December 1, 2025, https:// www.tumblr.com/hclib/142528192775/national-hunger-march-of-1932-the- minneapolis. 57. “CWA Prepares to Drop 10,000 Workers Here,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 9, 1934; “CWA Workers Protesting Questionnaires and Job Slashes, Plan Public Demonstration,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 10, 1934; “Hundreds Are Returned to Relief Rolls as Department Investigates,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 11, 1934. 58. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way,’” 647. 59. Bremer, “Along the ‘American Way,’” 637, 641, 643; Schwartz, “The Civil Works Administration,” vol. 2, 377. 60. “Ousted Workers Picket CWA Offices,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 14, 1934. 61. “Drive For Extension of CWA Projects Continue Despite Roosevelt Deadline,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1934; “Extension of CWA Plan Urged by Scanlan Association,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 9, 1934. 62. “Extension of CWA Plan”; “Washington Firm on Cutting Ranks of CWA Despite Flood of Protests,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 21, 1934. 63. “Hundreds are Returned”; “Washington Firm.” 64. “Drive for Extension of CWA Projects.” 65. “Mosquito Peril Feared in East Bronx with Ending of CWA Drainage Work,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 7, 1934. 66. “CWA Must Continue to Help City’s Destitute LaGuardia Tells 10,000,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 22, 1934. 67. “Mayor Speaks at Monroe Graduation,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 1, 1934. 68. “Civil Works Administration”; “City CWA Methods Attacked by LaGuardia, Deutsch and 5,000 Radical Demonstrators,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 16, 1934; “14 Ousted in Uptown CWA Job Racket Inquiry: Grand Jury to Get Charges,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 13, 1934; “950,000,000 Appropriation for CWA and The Bronx in the Great Depression 35 Direct Aid to be signed by President Today,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 15, 1934. 69. “Five Seized at Orchard Beach After WPA Prober Charges Tree Thefts,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 17, 1939, 1. 70. “Bronx WPA Fraud Convictions Are Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 3, 1939; “WPA Walkouts End.” 71. “Complaints of ‘Discrimination’ in Discharge of Workers to Be Aired Before CWA Official,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 6, 1934. 72. “Complaints of ‘Discrimination’”; “Hopkins Denies Pleas to Oust Ridder; Says WPA Head Is Doing ‘Fine Job,’” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, March 12, 1936. 73. “Borough President Lyons Has Equipment to Engage 11,000 Men on Bronx CWA Projects,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 7, 1934; “City CWA Methods Attacked”; “CWA Workers Did More Harm In Parks Than Good, Architect Tells Women’s Club,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934; “Drive for Extension of CWA Projects”; Elizabeth Deegan, “On Ousting CWA Workers,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 11, 1934; “Firing of CWA Workers Will Continue Until All the Trouble Makers Are Out, Moses Says,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 2, 1934; “WPA Truck Ruling at Orchard Beach Called Swindle Before House Inquiry,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, June 6, 1930. 74. Anthony Fusci, “Suggestions by CWA Worker,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, February 8, 1934. 75. “Borough President Lyons Has Equipment”; “Drive For Extension of CWA Projects.” 76. “City CWA Methods Attacked”; “20,000 Reds at Rally Hail Browder After Conviction,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1940; “Uptown Schools Under Siege as Students Stage Anti-War Strike,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 13, 1934. 77. “Appellate Court Legalizes Red Flag Display, Reversing Bronx Ruling Against Socialists,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 19, 1934; “115,000 Rally in Quietest May Day: Union Square Choked by 75,000 Reds,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, May 2, 1934; “Pair Convicted of Waving Red Flag of Bronx Memorial Rites Push Case to Highest Court,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 3, 1934; “Young Socialist League Plans to Defy Police and Distribute Anti-War Meeting Circulars,” The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, April 17, 1934. 78. “Lyons Gets Incinerator Site Protest; also Hears Demands by Communists,” 36 EDWARD BELLER 79. The Home News, Bronx and Manhattan, January 23, 1934. “Great Depression | Definition, History, Dates, Causes, Effects, & Facts,” Britannica, accessed December 1, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/ Great-Depression. 80. Da Cruz, “Notable New Deal Projects”; Gonzalez, The Bronx, 96; “The New Deal in New York City, 1933–1943,” accessed December 1, 2025, https:// kermitproject.org/newdeal/; Landau, The Great Depression, 34; Ultan and Unger, Bronx Accent, 107; “WPA in City Publishes Its Record.” The Bronx in the Great Depression 37 DUTCH TILES IN THE BRONX BY PAUL HERTHER* WITH VICTORIA KELLER The year 2025 marks the 400th Anniversary of the Dutch estab- lishing the trading outpost that grew to be New York City. It was a very different world then, of course. We do not know that those early Dutch traders brought any tiles with them but even by 1625 the industry in the Netherlands was well developed. A study found evidence that Dutch delftware tiles decorated fireplaces at Jamestown (the early English colony in Virginia), tiles showing “happy children at play.”1 So perhaps some tiles were on the ships that entered the Narrows back in 1625. By then, tiles were an essential part of Dutch domestic life. But we will likely never know for sure. The Van Cortlandt family dates to New York’s Dutch period, and they left a pair of homes that are now historic house museums. Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton, New York, is run by Historic Hudson Valley. The Van Cortlandt House Museum, dated 1748 by the corner stone still visible on the house, is run by the National Society of Colonial Dames. The latter is in The Bronx, in Van Cortlandt Park, just a few steps from the end of the 1 train. Among the many Dutch treasures on display at the *n.b.: Paul Herther has not been affiliated with Van Cortlandt House Museum since September 2024. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 39 Van Cortlandt House Museum are delftware tiles. More than 30 years ago, still relatively new to the Kingsbridge neighborhood, I responded to a volunteer recruitment day at the Van Cortlandt House Museum and started to give tours of the house. After several years giving general tours of the house, I suggested developing a special tour focused on the Dutch tiles. They have always been a favorite of museum visitors, and museums are always looking for things to attract visitors— especially then, as we were coming out of the pandemic lock- down. Permission was given, and the first task was to learn more about the Dutch tile industry. That was the start of a fun ride. While tiles had been made in the Netherlands long before independence, in the early years of the Dutch Republic, they quickly became part of the national identity. In 1602 and 1603, Dutch pirates brought booty back to Amsterdam, including blue-on-white Ming pottery.2 That settled the basic color scheme. The Dutch delftware would mimic the beautiful Chinese porcelain. Also, the practical Dutch needed a color that would not be “burnt up” in the kilns that reached 1000 degrees Celsius. The cobalt was the logical choice, producing the signature Dutch blue-on-white scheme. A smaller number of purple-on-white tiles were produced using magnesium. The less common multi-color Dutch tiles required an extra kiln firing at a lower temperature.3 The white base found on the Dutch tile is a tin glaze. While the Dutch sold all-white tiles, the focus in this article is on the signature decorated tiles. (There are examples of such “blank” Dutch tiles in the Van Cortlandt House Museum collection.) In some installations, tiles with designs and blank tiles were arranged in a checkerboard manner. This was more common for walls rather than fireplaces or mopboards (or skirting boards); 40 PAUL HERTHER there is no example of it at the Van Cortlandt House Museum. The Van Cortlandt House Museum has a fine Dutch tile col- lection, even if it is not huge (there are about 700 tiles in the collection) or comprehensive (there are many kinds of tiles made by the Dutch that are not represented in the collection). There are, however, many common Dutch tile themes that are covered by the Van Cortlandt collection. These themes include daily life, pastoral scenes, landscapes, historic events, soldiers, children at play, and angels. And there are more intricate themes as well: still-life, mythological, and natural history scenes. Dutch tiles reflected the love of knowledge and the newly discovered flora and fauna that characterized the Enlightenment period. People visiting the museum love to see the tiles and sometimes ask if the collection includes any with windmills—yes, certainly. Or angels—yes, many, doing all sorts of different things like playing musical instruments and walking their dog. (Who knew angels had dogs? Well, the Dutch knew.) To respond to these requests, we started a catalog of the tiles. It became clear that to describe the tiles correctly, and to assess their condition, they would need to be cleaned. What started as an academic project quickly became a “roll up your sleeves” project. With help from my friend Victoria Keller, decades of grime were removed form the tiles—many might not have been cleaned since they were installed in 1917. The museum originally opened in 1897, but in 1917, after 20 years of being closed for re- interpretation, the tiles were, over time, mounted in the fireplaces of three separate rooms: the West Parlor is a homey room but was the most important room in the house when built. The tiles in the fireplace include many religious topics and some still-life tiles. Other themes are included in smaller Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 41 numbers. The Dining Room is set up to reflect the Federal period, c.1820. The fireplace in this room has some of the finest tiles in the collection—and some very unique ones. It is im- portant to note that by the 1820s, the Dutch tile industry was in decline: they were viewed as old-fashioned and modern styles were becoming more popular. Indeed, by the 1840s, Charles Dickens referred to the Dutch tiles in Scrooge’s home as “quaint.”4 The Dutch Room has tiles in both the fireplace and along the mopboard. This one room has about half of the tiles in the museum’s collection. It is believed they were installed in 1917, when the room was set up to show schoolchildren a one- room house in New Amsterdam, c.1630. Finally, the collection at the museum includes a tile picture and a display panel of a few dozen tiles. And there are a few dozen “unmounted” tiles that are shown only on special exhibits and for the tile tours. It was while cleaning the tiles that we truly fell for their abundant charm. As we cleaned tiles on opposite sides of a fireplace, I would call out when I found a “good one” or Victoria would call me over to see one that had particularly fine details. It did not take long to learn, when the call went out: drop everything and look. Under decades of dirt and grime, true treasures emerged. Those were good hours indeed. Sometimes we would regret that we did not take a “before” shot of a tile. After the tile was cleaned, the image might appear very different. We often uncovered more details in the image. Indeed, in some cases the cleaned image would be labeled completely different than the “before” image would have been described. While the cleaning of the tiles allowed us to deal with the tiles individually, the real purpose was to catalog the collection. We took photographs of each tile and measured them and described their condition. Measuring the tiles was not always simple; 42 PAUL HERTHER many, especially in the West Parlor, were broken and pieced back together. They are no longer square. Many were trimmed at some point in the last 300 to 400 years. Special note was made of the presence of the corner designs—the two most common in this collection are “oxhead” and “spider head.” Other notes were made regarding the presence of tack holes and other features unique to the Dutch tile industry. (Tack holes appear in older tiles when the nearly dry clay was trimmed to size: the tacks helped keep the clay in place during this step.) Looking back in history, we may well see patterns that were not intended at the time. That may be the case here as well. Much of our analysis of the tiles likely reflects our own interests and perspectives. Nevertheless, after the Dutch gained independence from Spain in 1581, the new republic was proud of its achievements and was looking to define a new national identity. The tiles were part of it. It was not only the Dutch who made tiles. Certainly, tiles were made for centuries in many, if not most, countries. But the Dutch were becoming a trading nation, and they wanted to make unique tiles for sale. They wanted to make better tiles. They wanted to make tiles that would be in demand. And they did just that. The Dutch tiles were handmade works of art. The tiles were handmade—this was an important part of the industry. While the Dutch produced hundreds of millions of the tiles, each was hand painted. They used a template or stencil called a “spons.” It was made of thick paper and had the image drawn on it, with pin holes that allowed ink or charcoal to pass through, resulting in an outline on the tile. The artist would “connect the dots” and fill in the image and provide shading. (The charcoal or ink used with the spons would not survive the 1000-degree Celsus kiln firing, leaving only the “filled in” Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 43 image.) While the spons might be used by many artists over extended periods of time, sometimes for more than a hundred years, each tile was indeed unique. (There is a surviving example of a spons dating to 1685.)5 This was a very important feature of the Dutch tiles. They remained popular even after the English developed a mechanized method of printing an image on their tiles. While there may have been tile factories, many, if not most, tiles were made in factories and workshop that made other items: bowls and plates, etc. The tiles filled in the available space in kilns and on the show room shelves—and also in the holds of Dutch trading ships. We can respect the hard work involved. We can respect the concern for quality. But what we really love is the art and the charm of the tiles. A historian of the period has noted that while the tiles were sold internationally, different markets “liked” different subjects. For example, farming communities favored Biblical subject tiles.6 Whether this is true or not, living far from the Netherlands, centuries after the tiles were made, we can enjoy the tiles showing everyday life, children at play, little cupids flying by, and animals, real or imagined. Why assume it was different back then? Provided below are images of a few of the Dutch tiles in the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Keep in mind that these examples are just a taste of the tiles in this local collection. But they can bring a smile to your face. Please remember, the tiles are 300 or more years old, and some had a hard existence in a Dutch farmhouse before coming to the museum. You will see surface damage on many of them. 44 PAUL HERTHER Animals were popular subjects for tiles. This was a time of exploration and learning, so even animals exotic to Europeans were included on tiles. Indeed, such new themes might have been sought after in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the Enlightenment took form. The artist produced a charming giraffe, and the vegetation is also of interest. Note the “dots” below the animal: such orna- mentation appears on several of the tiles in the museum. The corners of this tile were cut, and it rests in a display panel of a few dozen tiles of various subjects. The corner design on this tile is known as oxhead. Above: Tile DP-A-03-C, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 45 The Dutch Landscape was a popular topic, and it took many forms, but they were largely rural settings. This landscape exhibits a characteristic orientalizing style. As noted above, scholars trace the Dutch preference for blue-on-white tiles to the Ming pottery from China that became popular in the Netherlands shortly after independence. Note what looks to be a well next to the tower. Given the low-lying position of the country, this is more likely a cistern than a well. The corner designs on this tile are an example of spider head. Above: Tile DU-FP-02-V, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. 46 PAUL HERTHER Angels were another popular subject for Dutch tiles. In the collection, there are dozens of them, and they range from playful cupids to dutiful angels walking their dog, or even shooting their gun, with others playing musical instruments (the heavenly choir?). The collection includes two tiles with this specific image, a sad little angel. The tile reminds us of the endearing charm of the Dutch tiles. Few people could see the tile and not feel sorry for the little angel. This tile is in the Dining Room fireplace, and another one is in the mopboard of the Dutch Room. Above: Tile DI-FP-09-A, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 47 Religious tiles were popular, and many were made for the pious Dutch farmers.7 They were also exported to many nations. Indeed, churches in Spain and Portugal ordered and installed large tile mosaics, some with hundreds of tiles, depicting reli- gious iconography. Here we have the Dutch image of the Annunciation. Note the angel used a tulip rather than the stan- dard lily. Many of the religious tiles are framed in a circle like this one. At the Van Cortlandt House Museum, most of the religious tiles are found in the West Parlor, the most important room in the house when built. Above: Tile WP-FP-02-D, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. 48 PAUL HERTHER Another popular subject for Dutch tiles was Still Life. This one has especially fine details. Note the two birds perched on the flowers, and the insect about to land. This tile is in the Dutch Room fireplace and has been trimmed: note the corner designs on the left are missing. Originally, of course, the tile was square and had the spider head motifs in each corner. Above: Tile DU-FP-01-K, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 49 Children at Play was a popular subject for tiles. Scholars do not always agree on the “market” for these tiles.8 Some feel they were for the domestic market, but I do not agree. They are charming and engaging. Why assume that the English or the Italians or other people of the time did not also enjoy them, as we do more than 300 years later? This particular tile caused us much confusion. We wondered what the children were doing. In the end, we assumed they were playing what we used to call “leapfrog.” Note the detail in the face of the child who is jumping over the other. Even the small tiles (those measuring about five-inches square) have a great degree of detail. Also note that this tile has damage to the tin glaze (the white surface), which might not have been clear until after the firing. Likewise, note that on the right side of the tile, the blue has started to bleed. This too, was probably only discovered when the tiles were removed from the kiln. Other damage to the tile might be the result of hard use in the fireplace of a Dutch farmhouse. Tile-making was not an easy effort, and many things could and did go wrong. In the literature, a figure is often cited: as few as 15% of the tiles coming out of the kiln were “firsts.”9 50 PAUL HERTHER Above: Tile DU-FP-06-C, Dutch tile collection of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. . Conclusion This overview does not do justice to the Dutch tiles at the Van Cortlandt House Museum. We did not include examples of all the different subjects of the tiles in the collection. There are so many. Other themes include daily life, pastoral scenes, fashion images, and more. There is an incredible wealth of variation in the Dutch tiles, even in this small collection. Now we hope you will go to the museum to see these and other tiles in person: it is the only way to experience them! Dutch Tiles in The Bronx 51 NOTES 1. Josslyn Kay Stimer, “Piecing it Together: The Introduction of Delftware Tiles to North America and Their Enduring Legacy in Charleston, South Carolina” (MA thesis, Clemson University, 2010), 18; J. Paul Hudson, “The Importance of Archaeology at Jamestown, Virginia: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in the New World,” in Stanley South, ed., The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers, 1967 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1967), 27–28. 2. Hans van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1997), 46. 3. C. H. de Jonge, Dutch Tiles, translated by P. S. Falla (New York: Praeger, 1971), 9–13. 4. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (Chapman & Hall, 1843). 5. “Delft Blue Tiles — Not Always Blue, Not Always from Delft,” HomeThingsPast, January 7, 2012, https://homethingspast.com/2012/01/07/ delft-blue-tiles/. 6. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12; and Ella Schaap, Dutch Tiles in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), 28–32. 7. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12. 8. Van Lemmen, Delftware Tiles, 12. 9. Schaap, Dutch Tiles, 42. 52 PAUL HERTHER ISABELLE HERMALYN BOOK AWARD IN NEW YORK URBAN HISTORY Presented annually to an author of a distinguished work in New York urban history. 2025 Baseball and Other Matters in 2013 1941, Robert Creamer, University of Nebraska Press 2024 In Levittown’s Shadow, 2012 Tim Keogh, University of Chicago Press 2023 Geography of The Bronx, G. 2011 Hermalyn, The Bronx County Historical Society 2022 Annotated Primary Source 2010 Documents, vol. 2, Roger McCormack, The Bronx 2009 County Historical Society 2021 BASEBALL The New York 2008 Game, Anthony Morante 2020 Hudson’s River, Gary Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, The Bronx County Historical 2007 Society 2019 Concrete Jungle, Niles Eldrige and Sidney Horenstein, 2006 University of California Press 2018 Digging The Bronx, Alan Gilbert, The Bronx County 2005 Historical Society 2017 The New York Botanical 2004 Garden, Gregory Long and Todd A. Forest, Abrams Books 2016 The Bronx Artist Documentary 2003 Project, Judith C. Lane and Daniel Hauben 2002 2015 An Irrepressible Conflict, Jennifer A. Lemak et al., SUNY 2001 Press 2014 Supreme City, Donald Miller, Simon & Schuster 2000 Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton, St. Martin's Press The Impeachment of Governor Salzer, Matthew L. Lifflander, SUNY Press Freedomland, Robert McLaughlin and Frank Adamo, Arcadia Publishers Band of Union, Gerard T. Koppel, Da Capa Press Manahatta, Eric W. Sanderson, Abrams Books The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway, Herbert Harwood, Indiana University Press Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler, Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux The Devil’s Own Work, Barnett Schecter, Walker & Co. The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto, Doubleday Capital City, Thomas Kessner, Simon & Schuster Tunneling to the Future, Peter Derrick, NYU Press The Monied Metropolis, Sven Beckert, Cambridge University Press Bronx Accent, Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Rutgers Press THE MOTT HAVEN HISTORY KEEPERS: TAKING CARE OF THE PEOPLE WHO TAKE CARE OF OUR HISTORIES BY SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AND AMY STARECHESKI I. Introduction We all know them. People who love to tell stories, who re- member the family trees, who keep photo albums or record collections or boxes of files. These are the people who hold onto our valuable histories and pass them on to the next generation. We created Mott Haven History Keepers to support and build community among the people in our neighborhood who care for our history. The project was created by a team consisting of an oral historian and longtime neighborhood resident (Amy Starecheski) as well as the director of The Bronx County Historical Society (Steven Payne). With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Cultural and Community Resilience Program, we were able to provide financial support for ten history keepers. During December 2023–May 2025, our crew of History Keepers met once a month. After this first phase of work, we paused to reflect on what we learned. In this article, we will share some of what we did Mott Haven History Keepers 55 together, what we learned about how to build programming for history keepers, and what we will be up to next. II. Putting Together the Team We tried to do outreach in as many ways as possible and invite people to express interest in as many ways as possible. We flyered in English and Spanish all around the neighborhood—outdoors as well as at the library, schools, senior centers, stores, etc. We did personal outreach to people we thought of as history keepers and people who might be able to recommend others. We created a short form that allowed people to apply or suggest someone else.1 We also allowed people to express interest by phone or text. We followed up with everyone who reached out to us and made a short list of potential participants. We met with each of these people in person or virtually, to hear more from them and explain what we were up to. Our original plan was to select five history keepers and five apprentices and pair each History Keeper with an apprentice, but we found that this was not the best fit for the people who we were connecting with, so we ended up selecting ten history keepers, and making a few intergenerational pairings within that group for specific projects and skill-sharing. We looked for people with deep lived experience in Mott Haven, openness to learning and making new connections, passion for history, and a range of skills and knowledge. The group ranged in age from early 20s to late 70s, and was ethnically, linguistically, racially, culturally, and politically diverse. 56 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI It was hard work to build relationships across these differences but because we all shared a love of our neighborhood and its stories, we were able to get to know and care for people we might never otherwise have connected with. For many partic- ipants, connecting across lines of political difference during this hyper-polarized time was especially valuable, and everyone appreciated the intergenerational friendships fostered in the group. Today, after two years of spending time together, many of us feel like family to each other. III. Monthly Meetings Over an eighteen-month period, we met once a month for three hours, always sharing a meal and updates on our work. We used these meetings in lots of different ways, mixing up these three basic kinds of meetings: Community-building, sharing what we know examples: —Introduction, orientation —Neighborhood walk, sharing favorite places and memories —Oral history share: History Keepers take turns being interviewed, sharing some life history —Object share: History Keepers bring in objects to share and discuss —Potluck picnic outing —Boat ride around The Bronx —Holiday potluck Workshops and skill-shares examples: —Oral history workshop —Workshop on archiving at home on a budget —Workshop on fundraising and grant-writing —Skill-share on recording video and photography Mott Haven History Keepers 57 —Workshop on documentary film Introductions to resources examples: —Tour of The Bronx County Historical Society archives and library —Trip to NYC Municipal Archives —Visit to BronxNet, our local public access TV studio, tour and introduction to resources —Visit to Pregones, our local community theater company —Visit to local museums The project was designed specifically to support the existing work these lifelong history keepers are doing, with a minimum of additional requirements. Each history keeper got a stipend just for participating in the program. We were wary of making a passion or a hobby feel like work, or enforcing a non-profit or NGO-style model on community-based work that does not necessarily need any improvement or formalization.2 That said, most history keepers were energized by the support, encour- agement, and funding, and created new projects or pushed their existing work forward in new ways during the time that we worked together. In order to bring our work to life, we’d like to share a few stories about what the history keepers did together. IV. Creating New Channels to Pass Along History: Walter, Les‐lie, and Charlie Walter Bosque has a story to tell. A former Young Lord, the first Puerto Rican to be certified as an acupuncturist, and a lifelong teacher, healer, and radical, he was already dedicating much of his time to sharing what he has learned with new generations of 58 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI activists and healers. As a Mott Haven History Keeper, he developed a few new relationships through which to do that work. Walter got to know Les-lie Lopez, another History Keeper, more than fifty years younger than he. Les-lie is a Mott Haven native, a child of immigrants from Mexico, an artist and activist, and a recent college graduate. Les-lie recorded an oral history with Walter, as a way of learning his story and helping him think about how to write his memoirs. Walter taught Les- lie tai chi and auricular therapy. While part of the History Keepers project, Les-lie got a job at one of our local New York Public Library branches and had the opportunity to organize public programming for adults. Her first event was a book talk with a former Young Lord Mickey Melendez, with whom Walter connected her, and a historian, Joanna Fernandez, who wrote a book about the Young Lords. Les-lie was nervous—it was her first time hosting an event like this—and set up a few rows of chairs at first. But people kept coming, and she kept adding more chairs until the room was full. Some people were even standing. And of course, a bunch of History Keepers came to support. The event was a success, the first of many to come. Walter also connected with DJ Charlie Hustle, another History Keeper who started taking Walter’s weekly tai chi classes. Walter was teaching in the offices of a community group right across the street from Charlie’s building, and in nice weather they started having class on Charlie’s roof. Some people dropped in from time to time, but Charlie came every single week. He is that kind of guy. He also hosts a sidewalk swap meet every single Saturday afternoon, rain or shine, sharing old photos from his growing online Mott Haven Photo Museum and collecting stories from passersby. Charlie shows up. After weeks of classes with Walter, he noticed he was dealing better with the Mott Haven History Keepers 59 stress of being a stay-at-home parent to a child with disabilities. He was calmer, more grounded, and he lost weight. Soon he was assisting Walter: managing technology, demonstrating tech- niques, staying in touch with students. When Walter did screenings of the documentary that tells his story, or workshops for community groups, Charlie was there helping him. Charlie’s son loved Walter. When a new South Bronx community center opens in the building where Walter and his fellow Young Lords pioneered the use of acupuncture for treating addiction, Walter hopes that Charlie will be ready to teach there, continuing his legacy. V. Getting the Story Out: Oscar, Willie, and The Bronx County Historical Society Oscar Rivera and Willie Estrada both already had their first books out when they became History Keepers, and they were ready to take it to the next level. Both were already collab- orating with The Bronx County Historical Society. During the eighteen months he was part of the Mott Haven History Keepers project, Willie drafted a second volume of his memoirs, consulted on an exhibit on urban dance at the Museum of the City of New York (he is a pioneer of the Latin Hustle), and worked with BCHS to digitize his family’s rare archive of Bronx Puerto Rican home movies from the 1960s and ’70s. Some of that film appeared in the Museum, and some will be part of a documentary he is developing. In the meantime, people are loving seeing his home movies on Instagram. Oscar is a graphic artist and photographer. The photos he took of his friends in the 1970s are the basis for his self-published book, Off the Rim, reviewed in this Journal in 2021. As a History 60 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI Keeper, he knew just what story he wanted to tell. He can tell you about it himself: A True South Bronx Tale isn’t just a story—it’s a collision of grit, glory, and the unbreakable spirit of a bunch of kids from Mott Haven. Set in the heart of the 1970s South Bronx, this raw, unfiltered memoir dives deep into the frozen fields of St. Mary’s Park, where a band of street-smart kids turned football into a brotherhood and chaos into community. Oscar Rivera and his crew aren’t just telling a story— they’re resurrecting an era. If it were not for the Mott Haven History Keepers experience and the help of Amy Starecheski and Steven Payne this story would not have been presented so professionally. Both individuals gave me the courage to dig deeper into our past, interview relatives and friends, find lost 8mm films, and convert them to digital visuals. A treasure trove of information suddenly appeared which I thought was lost in time. From makeshift gear and freezing locker room stories in abandoned buildings to battles that felt like NFL Super Bowls, these memories are laced with the kind of authenticity you can’t fake. This is football laced with soul, attitude, and the kind of raw pride that only the South Bronx could breed. You’ll read us laugh, flinch, hurt, and cry every heartbreak like you were right there wearing cleats and feeling cold with us. If you grew up South Bronx tough, love underdog stories, or just crave something real—then get ready to experience SBFC, A True South Bronx Tale. My research, thanks to the Mott Haven History Keepers program, will grab you by the collar and never let go. This story isn’t just about football. It’s about what it means to fight for your place in the world . . . and win. This is a Bronx Tale like no other, Mott Haven History Keepers 61 and I am so proud to present it to my fellow Keepers as well as to the world.3 VI. History Repeats Itself—Intergenerational Struggle, Solidarity, and Activism: Nieves and Sonyi Nieves Ayress is fascinating. Her personal anecdotes, her journey, and the history that lives in her memory and now, in the Mott Haven History Keepers archives, are incredible and nearly unbelievable. Among the personal tales she recounts are her exile from Chile, where she was an activist, bravely defying the Pinochet dictatorship. She became a political prisoner, subject of torture and crimes of the Chilean state. A long way from home, after bouncing around several countries in exile, Nieves ended up here, in Mott Haven. Sitting at her colorful skirt side, listening and documenting her story is me, Sonyi Lopez, a young activist, organizer, and community journalist who grew up in Mott Haven. Together, we’ve been sorting through her archives from Movimiento La Peña del Bronx, a grassroots organization she helped found alongside her husband Victor back in the ’80s. La Peña was a place for community. Nieves and Victor may be Chilean but they welcomed everyone—Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, the Garifuna people, and the growing immigrant community at the time. They provided resources such as citizenship workshops and orientations on rights and defense. They led marches and protests to defend the people’s demands around housing, immigrant rights, against war, against police brutality, the fight against AIDS and asthma, and for decent health for all and without discrimination. 62 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI Nieves’s activism and organizing is a living example for Bronx and Mott Haven youth organizers to follow and learn from. Archiving this history, sifting through and digitizing all of her photographs of the time, comparing the rent strikes, environ- mental justice movements and actions, and the advocacy for immigrants in our community then and now show that history not only repeats itself. Those who have lived it in the past are still here. As Nieves says, when speaking to the youth: “Todo lo que tenemos hoy no ha sido gratis, es producto de la unidad del pueblo. Si la historia se repite, entonces tienen que escuchar. Le guste o no a los viejos.” (Everything we have today hasn’t come for free; it’s a product of the unity of the people. If history repeats itself, then they have to listen. Whether they like their elders or not.) I suppose it’s a good thing I like my elders. VII. Lessons Learned Altogether, we consider this program to have been successful in that it created a close-knit cohort of those undertaking ongoing local historical work outside of professional academic and museum settings. History Keepers noted the great value of the program’s uplifting of their often-unrecognized historical work in the context of providing a robust framework for skills training, supplies, friendship, and support. Some History Keepers expressed a desire for more structure in the deliverables phase of the project. While we were trying not to impose too much structure on the team and their work, we may have erred on the side of not providing enough. In the future, we plan to integrate project management into the skills-sharing phase of Mott Haven History Keepers 63 the project and think through ways to incorporate project benchmarks in organic, non-stress-inducing ways in the deliv- erables phase of the project. VIII. Conclusion In September 2025, the History Keepers gathered at the Mott Haven Public Library to present their work and share their stories. We hadn’t gotten together over the summer, and it felt like a family reunion, with people exclaiming over how much each other’s children and hair had grown, all over a backdrop of music from Mott Haven. All we were missing were the casseroles. DJ Charlie Hustle MCed for us, shouting out the History Keepers as we danced into the room. With Sonyi Lopez interpreting for her, Nieves Ayress told the story of how a group of three activists, herself included, shut down Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue protesting against the eviction of a homesteaded building on Cypress Avenue. The story was illustrated with photos from Nieves’s archive, which Sonyi had digitized. Patti Morris told about how she got to know Geechi Sumo, one of Mott Haven’s favorite chefs, famous in the neighborhood for his banana puddings, and told his story on Instagram. Geechi was there in the audience, beaming as we watched Patti’s video tour of his back-of-the-bodega pop-up. Charlie Hustle shared the history of our neighborhood’s many names—from Lenapehoking to Bronck’s to Morrisania to Mott Haven—with illustrations from his online Mott Haven Photo Archive project. He told us about how he is learning and sharing local history every Saturday by talking with people who come by the swap meet he runs outside Maria Sola Green Space. Olivia Glover shared her hot-off-the-press zine of Mott Haven 64 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI public housing oral histories, amplifying stories from three different archives. She encouraged everyone to learn how to make a zine—it was hard, but not too hard. Oscar Rivera showed up with autographed copies of his brand-new book about the South Bronx Football Conference, and we mourned one of his narrators who passed the week before. Walter Bosque told us the story of how the Young Lords became acupuncturists. He invited everyone to practice tai chi with him on Saturday mornings at Brook Park. There was recent history and deep history, live storytelling and recorded oral histories, laughter and tears. It was powerfully clear how the younger members of our group were taking responsibility for continuing to learn and tell the stories of our elders, and for continuing their work. That event was the kickoff for our next phase of work. We are expanding from Mott Haven History Keepers to South Bronx History Keepers. We’ll be meeting once a month at the Mott Haven NYPL Branch to share stories, hone our history-keeping skills, see old friends and make new relationships. We invite anyone who cares about South Bronx History to join us. And we invite anyone anywhere to use our toolkit to build strong networks of History Keepers in the places that matter to you. Scan the QR code to the right with the camera on your cell phone to access the English and Spanish versions of our History Keepers Toolkit. Mott Haven History Keepers 65 NOTES 1. “Mott Haven History Keepers Interest Form,” accessed November 26, 2025, https://bronxhistory.org/motthavenform. 2. INCITE!, ed., The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non‐Profit Industrial Complex (Boston, MA: South End Press, 2007). 3. Oscar Rivera, SBFC South Bronx Football Conference: A True South Bronx Tale (The Bronx, NY: Oscar Rivera, 2025). 66 SONYI LOPEZ, STEVEN PAYNE, OSCAR RIVERA, AMY STARECHESKI NOTES ON BRONX GEOGRAPHY BY G. HERMALYN After a webinar last year on the “Geography of The Bronx,” based on my book of the same title, I was asked, “Exactly how big is The Bronx?” I realized that here we have an essential question by people not understanding measurements, maps, directions, and where they are on the earth. With the cessation of public-school classes on geography and civics, there has opened a large chasm in the knowledge base that didn’t exist 40 years ago. In the hope to aid interested people, let us start with the basics: The Bronx is 42.47 square miles of land, which is 27,600 acres. A square mile is 640 acres, and one acre is 208.7 feet by 208.7 feet, or 43,530 square feet. Another way to look at this example is to compare it to land uses that everyone knows. A professional football field is 1.32 acres, a soccer field 1.78 acres, and Yankee Stadium’s playing field is 3.5 acres. To figure the number of acres in a piece of land, divide the area in square feet into the number of square feet in an acre (43,560). One hundred and sixty acres, which was the amount of land given to individuals by the federal government as free land Notes on Bronx Geography 67 grants after the Homestead Act was passed by Congress in 1862, is 1/4 square mile, or 2,640 by 2,640 feet. The Bronx is the fourth largest of the city’s boroughs in land. Yonkers to our north is 18.1 square miles, Manhattan 22 square miles, Queens 109 square miles, Brooklyn 71 square miles, Staten Island 58.5 square miles, all of New York City 300 square miles, and Nassau County 284.7 square miles. Examining a full-sized map is very helpful when considering places. With the advent of small maps on one’s cell phone, everything seems to have shrunk, which is obviously not true. There is nothing like an atlas to help understand the world, your city, town, or neighborhood. A Hagstrom Map of New York City includes street maps for The Bronx that clearly delineate sizes and directions and names of the roadways and attractions in a larger scale. More impor- tantly, maps show the compass rose, which is a critical tool in understanding directions. It allows a map reader to orient them- selves and indicate direction. For example, The Bronx is not a straight south-to-north orientation. It bends to the northeast, which is not discernible on many flat maps. Additional Bronx Information Renowned as the Borough of parks and universities, The Bronx has eleven colleges and universities and the largest amount of parkland in the city, with over 24% of its land set aside as parks and open space. This land includes the largest park, Pelham Bay 68 G. HERMALYN Park, with over 2,772 acres, and three major cemeteries: Woodlawn, with 400 acres; St. Raymond’s, with 280 acres; and Potter’s Field on Hart Island, with thirteen acres. Currently, The Bronx has 401 parks across 7,220 acres. The Bronx borders the East River, the Harlem River, and the Hudson River. On its east is found the Hutchinson River, Eastchester Bay, and Long Island Sound. In the north it shares boundaries with the cities of Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, and the Village of Pelham Manor. The Bronx is the northern borough of New York City, and it is part of the mainland and not one of the islands that make up the rest of the city. It is why many of the first bridges, roadways, and train lines were built to connect the city to The Bronx, and thus to the northeast of the country. Geology greatly affected the development of The Bronx. From the ending of the last ice age, the contours of the borough were shaped and reformed. In the west, the borough has several ridges running north and south, each with a valley of softer Inwood Marble such as found on Jerome and Webster Avenues. The Grand Concourse section was built on a high plateau of hard Manhattan Schist, which helps explain the prevalence of stair streets. The Bronx has 64 of the 102 stair streets in New York City. East of The Bronx River, which was always a dividing line from the colonial period, there is flat land and sandy soil, some excellent for farming and pastureland. Golf courses in The Bronx make up 689 acres across five courses. Plus, The Bronx has six waterfalls, eleven ponds and lakes, 24 islands, and nineteen rivers, streams, creeks, and springs. The islands range from Riker’s Island with 413 acres and City Island Notes on Bronx Geography 69 with 295 acres to small rock outcroppings that only show up at low tide in Long Island Sound. Most of the waterfalls are the result of dams to hold water to power mills and factories or to create vistas. Yes, The Bronx is a most unusual place to know as it even has mountains—well, “mounts”—as well as necks, points, ridges, and heights. Its highest natural point is 280 feet, with a longitude and latitude 73°54'14''W, 40°53'54''N in the Fieldston neighborhood. For further information on this topic, pick up a copy of Geography of The Bronx (The Bronx: The Bronx County Historical Society, 2023) and The Bronx Geography Workbook (The Bronx: The Bronx County Historical Society, 2024) from The Society’s bookstore. 70 G. HERMALYN ABOUT THE AUTHORS ED BELLER is a life-time Bronx resident and retired public school teacher. He is a graduate of PS 106, JHS 125, Christopher Columbus High School, Hunter College (now Lehman), and CUNY Graduate Center where he received a doctorate in Sociology in 1983. PAUL HERTHER moved to The Bronx in 1979 to enter a graduate program, and he never left. For over 30 years he volunteered at the Van Cortlandt House Museum giving tours. VICTORIA KELLER is an art historian who has assisted with the Van Cortlandt House Museum tile project. SONYI LOPEZ is an activist, organizer, community journalist, and Mott Haven History Keeper. STEVEN PAYNE is Director of The Bronx County Historical Society and holds a doctorate from Fordham University. OSCAR RIVERA is a photographer and Mott Haven History Keeper. AMY STARECHESKI is a longtime Mott Haven resident, founder of the Mott Haven Oral History Project, director of Columbia University’s Oral History Center, and was the Anthropologist- in-Residence at the Bronx County Historical Society in 2024–25. G. HERMALYN is CEO of The Bronx County Historical Society, a historian, Poe scholar, author of over 30 published works, and editor of 176 books for The Bronx County Historical Society Press, with a doctorate from Columbia University. THE GOUVERNEUR MORRIS VISITING SCHOLAR PROGRAM The Bronx County Historical Society names a visiting scholar annu- ally in honor of Gouverneur Morris, signer and penman of the U.S. Constitution. 2025 Amy Starecheski 2006 “Mott Haven History Keepers” 2024 Roger McCormack 2005 “Edgar Allan Poe” 2022 Pastor Crespo, Jr. “Bronx Veterans” 2004 2021 Steven Payne “Bronx Latino History Project” 2003 2020 Roger McCormack “Poe Cottage” 2002 2019 Lloyd Ultan “Bronx Parks” 2001 2018 Coline Jenkins “Elizabeth Cady Stanton” 2016 Vivian E. Davis 2000 “Celebrating 175 Years of St. Ann’s Church” 1999 2015 Edward Schneider “Abraham Lincoln” 1998 2014 Gary Hermalyn “The Erie Canal” 1997 2013 Tony Morante “Baseball” 1996 2012 Daniel Hauben “The Bronx Through the Eyes 1995 of an Artist” 2011 Gary Hermalyn “Bronx Homemakers Club of 1994 Daniel, Wyoming” 2010 Angel Hernández “Bronx Latinos” 1993 2009 Russell Currie “The Cask of Amontillado, An Opera” 1992 2008 Gary Hermalyn “Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham” 2007 Lloyd Rogler 1991 “The Story of the Hispanic Research Center” Jim Wunsch “Bronx Radio History” Brian Purnell “The Bronx is a Bomb, and It Is Ready to Explode” Evelyn Gonzalez “The South Bronx” Mark Naison “From Doo Wop to Hip Hop” Joseph Cunningham “New York Power” Elizabeth Beirne “The Good Life in the 19th Century Bronx” Allan S. Gilbert “Archaeology in The Bronx” Roger Wines “The Bronx River Parkway” Peter Derrick “Centennial of The Bronx” Edward Schneider “Newspapers of The Bronx” Gary Hermalyn “Morris High School” Lloyd Ultan “Gouverneur Morris and the Constitution” Thomas A. King “50th Anniversary of the Normany Invasion” George Lankevich “Creation of the U.S. Supreme Court” Lloyd Ultan “Gouverneur Morris Through Word and Speech” Dominic Massaro “Gouverneur Morris” BRONX BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE YEAR AWARD Presented to Bronx business leaders who support the humanities and the arts. 2025 James Slattery, Slattery Energy 2001 2024 Houlihan Family 2023 Joseph Mawad, Tekniverse, Inc. 2000 2022 Ram Gupta, Chatam Management Co., Inc. 1999 2020 Michael Max Knobbe, BronxNet 2019 Richard Legnini, Bronx Ad 1998 Group 2018 John Calvelli, Bronx Zoo 1997 2017 James H. Alston, McCalls Bronxwood Funeral Home 1996 2016 Steve Baktidy, S&T Auto Body 1995 Peter Madonia, Madonia Brothers Bakery John Reilly, Fordham-Bedford Housing Corp. Mario Procida, Procida Construction Corp. Veronica M. White, NYC Housing Partnership Dr. Spencer Foreman, Montefiore Medical Center Monroe Lovinger, CPA Gil and Jerry Beautus, Walton Shop Press 2015 Matthew Engel, Langsam 1994 Property Services 2014 Greg Gonzalez, Manhattan 1993 Parking Group 2013 Steve Tisso, Teddy Nissan 1992 2012 Joseph Kelleher, Hutchinson 1991 Metro Center 2011 Adam Green, Rocking the Boat 1990 2010 Anthony Mormile, Hudson Valley Bank 1989 2009 Lenny Caro, Bronx Chamber of Commerce 2008 Katherine Gleeson, Goldman Sachs 1988 2007 Sandra Erickson, Erickson Real Estate 2006 Cecil P. Joseph, McDonald’s 2005 Frank Cassano, New Bronx 1987 Chamber of Commerce 2004 Dart Westphal, Norwood News 2003 James J. Houlihan, Houlihan- Parnes 2002 David Greco, Mike’s Deli & Caterers William O’Meara, Greentree Restaurant Larry Barazzotto, Soundview Discount Muffler Gail McMillan, Con Edison Susan E. Goldy, ERA Susan Goldy & Co. Mike Nuñez, Bronx Venture Group Mark Engel, Langsam Property Services Carlos Nazario, Metro Beer & Soda Joel Fishman, Nehring Brother Realty Co. Michael Durso, Dollar Dry Dock Savings Bank Elias Karmon, EMK Enterprises THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESIDENTS Jacqueline Kutner, 1993– Robert R. Hall, 1986–1993 Raymond F. Crapo, 1976–1986 Robert Farkas, 1976 Lloyd Ultan, 1971–1976 Ronald Schliessman, 1969–1971 Roger Arcara 1967–1969 Thomas J. Mullins, 1964–1967 George J. Fluhr, 1963–1964 Ray D. Kelly, 1963 Fred E. J. Kracke, 1960–1963 Joseph Duffy, 1958–1960 Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff, 1955–1958 LIFE MEMBERS Steve Baktidy Dr. Elizabeth Beirne Louis H. Blumengarten Adolfo Carrión, Jr. Thomas X. Casey Sam Chernin James Conroy John Dillon Dan Eisenstein Mark Engel Natalie and Robert Esnard Ken Fisher Fordham Hill Owner’s Co. Robert Abrams Jorge L. Batista Hon. Michael Benedetto Lenny Caro William Castro Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez Gloria Davis Nino DeSimone Hector Diaz Rubén Díaz, Jr. Hon. Eric Dinowitz Hon. Jeffrey Dinowitz Dr. Joseph A. Fernandez Katherine Gleeson Greg Gonzalez David Greco Daniel Hauben Dr. Gary Hermalyn James Houlihan Marsha Horenstein Cecil P. Joseph March Lampell Douglas Lazarus Maralyn May Kathleen A. McAuley Anthony Paolercio HONORARY MEMBERS Hon. Oswald Feliz Fernando Ferrer Robert Fox Hon. Vanessa Gibson Hon. Carl E. Heastie Hon. Robert T. Johnson Stephen Kaufman Jeff Klein Michael Max Knobbe G. Oliver Koppell Jeffrey Korman Lawrence Levine James J. Periconi Alan Parisse Jane Mead Peter Joel Podgor Marilyn and Morris Sopher Elizabeth Stone Henry G. Stroobants Susan Tane Lloyd Ultan Van Courtlandt Village CC Gil Walton Jac Zadrima Ricardo Oquendo Roberto Ramírez Hon. Gustavo Rivera José Rivera Joel Rivera José Rivera José E. Serrano Stanley Simon SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND GIFTS OF THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY The below items, and additional publications and gifts, are available for purchase in-person at any of our locations; by mail, through writing to The Bronx County Historical Society at 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, NY 10467; or online, at www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/store. Life in The Bronx Series Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Birth of The Bronx: 1609–1900 $30 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: 1890–1925 $25 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, 1935–1965 $25 Lloyd Ultan, The Beautiful Bronx: 1920–1950 $25 Life in The Bronx, four-volume set $90 History of The Bronx Nicholas DiBrino, History of Morris Park Racecourse $10 Allan S. Gilbert (ed.), Digging The Bronx $25 G. Hermalyn, Geography of The Bronx $25 G. Hermalyn, Steven Payne, A Historical Sketch of The Bronx $15 G. Hermalyn and Thomas X. Casey, Bronx Views [Postcards] $12 G. Hermalyn and Anthony Greene, Yankee Stadium: 1923–2008 $22 G. Hermalyn and Robert Kornfeld, Landmarks of The Bronx $15 Kathleen A. McAuley, Westchester Town: Bronx Beginnings $15 Kathleen A. McAuley and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: Then and Now $22 John McNamara, History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (encyclopedia), 3rd edition $30 John McNamara, McNamara’s Old Bronx $20 Rubio P. Mendez, A History of the Riverdale Yacht Club $20 Michael Miller, Theatres of The Bronx $5 Lloyd Ultan, Blacks in the Colonial Bronx: A Documentary History $18 Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx in the Frontier Era $20 Lloyd Ultan, Legacy of the Revolution $15 Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of The Bronx $28 George Zoebelein, The Bronx: A Struggle for County Government $15 History of New York City Elizabeth Beirne, The Greater New York Centennial $20 Peter Derrick, Tunneling to the Future $20 G. Hermalyn, Morris High School and the Creation of the New York City Public High School System $34 George Lankevich, New York City: A Short History $20 History of New York State G. Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, Hudson’s River $20 Elizabeth Beirne, The Hudson River $20 Douglas Lazarus et al., Re‐inspired: The Erie Canal $20 Roots of the Republic Series George Lankevich, Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court $20 George Lankevich, The First House of Representatives and the Bill of Rights $20 Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Constitution of the United States $20 Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Declaration of Independence $20 Richard Streb, The First Senate of the United States $20 Lloyd Ultan, Presidents of the United States $20 Roots of the Republic Series, six-volume set $99 Educational Material Roger McCormack, The Bronx Geography Workbook $22 Anthony Greene, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 1 $20 Roger McCormack, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 2 $22 Dan Eisenstein, Local History Classroom Resource Guide $15 Lisa Garrison, The South Bronx and the Founding of America $15 G. Hermalyn, The Study and Writing of History $20 Samuel Hopkins, West Farms Local History Curriculum Guide $15 Alonso Serrano, Latin Bicentennial, comic book $5 The Bronx County Historical Society Journal Back issues of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1963–2022, are available for purchase for $15 per issue, excepting special issues like the Centennial of The Bronx issue, available for purchase for $20. Research Center Dominick Caldiero et al., Newspaper Titles of The Bronx $15 G. Hermalyn, Publications and Other Media of The Bronx County Historical Society Since 1955 $5 G. Hermalyn et al., The Bronx in Print $10 G. Hermalyn et al., Education and Culture in The Bronx $20 G. Hermalyn and Laura Tosi, Genealogy of The Bronx $10 Kathleen A. McAuley, A Guide to the Collections of The Bronx County Archives $20 Laura Tosi et al., Ethnic Groups in The Bronx $20 Laura Tosi et al., Index to The Sheet Map Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $20 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898 $15 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Atlas Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Microfilm/Microfiche Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Media Collection $10 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Video Collection $10 Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, a documentary on DVD $20 Elizabeth Beirne, Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $20 Kathleen A. McAuley, Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $15 Special Interest Peter Derrick and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx Cookbook $15 Remember The Bronx, Bronx history calendar for 2024 $12 Gifts The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $8 The Bronx Afghan, washable cotton blanket, 50" x 65" $50 The Bronx River Parkway, c. 1915, poster, 20.5" x 29.5" $20 Edgar Allan Poe coffee mug $8 The Grand Concourse, 1892, poster, 25" x 12" $20 The Bronx Comfort gift set, includes The Bronx Cookbook, The Bronx Afghan, and The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $60 Volume/Issue Volume and Issue of a periodical. 62/1–2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, vol. 62, nos. 1–2, 2025 Subject The topic of the resource Great Depression Delft Tiles Van Cortlandt House Museum Mott Haven History Keepers Local history Geography (The Bronx, NY) Description An account of the resource Vol. 62, nos. 1–2 of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, published 2025. Contents: — Ed Beller, "The Bronx in the Great Depression, p. 1 — Paul Herther* with Victoria Keller, "Dutch Tiles in The Bronx," p. 39 — Sonyi Lopez, Steven Payne, Oscar Rivera, and Amy Starecheski, "The Mott Haven History Keepers," p. 55 — G. Hermalyn, "Notes on Bronx Geography," p. 67 — About the Authors, p. 71 *Paul Herther has not been affiliated with Van Cortlandt House Museum since September 2024. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Beller, Ed Herther, Paul Keller, Victoria Lopez, Sonyi Payne, Steven Rivera, Oscar Starecheski, Amy Hermalyn, G. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Bronx County Historical Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource ©2025, The Bronx County Historical Society Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Periodical Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BCHSJOUR.2025