The Bronx is the northernmost of the Five Boroughs of New York City. It is also the newest of the 62 counties of New York State. Located northeast of Manhattan and south of Westchester County, New York, the Bronx is the only borough not primarily located on an island. In 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the borough's population on July 1, 2008 was 1,391,903, inhabiting a land area of 42 square miles (109 square kilometers). This makes the Bronx the fourth-most-populated of the five boroughs, the fourth-largest in land area, and the third-highest in density of population.
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Queens and Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. Bronx County (the County of Bronx), with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (today coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) in 1912 and began its own operations in January 1914. Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S., about a quarter of its area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with the building of roads, bridges and railways.
The Bronx River and nearby land including the modern Borough were named for Jonas Bronck, an early settler from Sweden. The indigenous Lenape (Delaware) American Indians were progressively displaced after 1643 by settlers from the Netherlands and Great Britain. The Bronx received many Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants as its once-rural population exploded between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. They were succeeded after 1945 by African Americans and Hispanic Americans, together with immigrants from the Caribbean — especially Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.
The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the U.S., (the 16th), but its wide variety of neighborhoods also includes the affluent Riverdale and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, and the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown some signs of revival in recent years.
History
Main article: History of the BronxFor generations a rural area of small farms supplying the city markets, the Bronx grew into a railroad suburb in the late 19th century. Faster transportation allowed for rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900-29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth during 1930-49. The 1950s were hard times, as The Bronx decayed 1950-79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime, poverty and despair. Finally The Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.
At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.
The Bronx underwent rapid growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants flooded the Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans and especially Jewish-Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, and Polish immigrants moved into the borough. The Jewish population also increased notably during this time. In 1937, according to Jewish organizations, 592,185 Jews lived in the Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population), while in 2002, only about 45,000 did. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.
In Prohibition days (1920-33), bootleggers and gangs ran rampant in the Bronx. Irish, Italian and Polish ethnics smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey. By 1926, the Bronx was noted for its high crime rate and its many speakeasies.
After the 1930s, the Irish Americans started moving further north, and the German Americans followed suit in the 1940s, as did many Italian Americanss in the 1950s and Jews in the 1960s. As the older generation retired, many moved to Florida. The migration has left a Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican) and African-American population, along with some non-Hispanic white areas in the far southeastern and northwestern parts of the county.
In the 1970s the South Bronx became the iconic of America's urban crisis of unemployment and poverty during the 1970s, as arson in the city's public housing was a persistent symbol of the problem. However, led by aggressive community leaders, many burned-out tenements were replaced by single- and multifamily housing during the late 1970s to the present. Thus Co-op City began in 1968 as a subsidized, high-rise, middle-class housing project, whose tenants bought shares in the corporation that operated it. It succeeded because it delivered on its promise of economic affordability and controlled racial integration.
By 2000 The Bronx had a population of about 1.2 million and its bridges, highways, and railroads were more heavily traveled than those of any other part of the United States.
Fighting decline
Starting in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp decline in the residents' quality of life. Historians and social scientists have put forward many factors. They include the theory (elaborated in Robert Caro's biography The Power Broker ) that Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods. Another (unintended) factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects. Yet another may have been a reduction in the real-estate listings and property-related financial services (such as mortgages or insurance policies) offered in some areas of the Bronx — a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting. There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.
In the 1970s, the Bronx was plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was mostly in the South Bronx, concentrated especially along Westchester Avenue and in West Farms. The most common explanation of what occurred was that landlords decided to burn their buildings and take the insurance money as profit. Competing explanations blamed the insurance companies —since their non-renewals of policies might have encouraged the landlords— or the residents themselves. After the destruction of many buildings in the South Bronx, the arsons slowed significantly in the later part of the decade, but the after-effects were still felt into the early 1990s.
Since the mid-1980s, significant residential development has occurred, stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan" and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with South Bronx churches erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons began to rebuild the South Bronx. The ripple effects have been felt borough-wide. As a result of the growing population, the IRT White Plains Road Line has had an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples and Target have opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches have opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than wealthier boroughs.
In 1997, the Bronx was designated an All America City by the National Civic League, signifying its comeback from the decline of the 1970s. In 2006, The New York Times reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.
Geography
Main article: Geography of New York CityAdjacent counties
- Westchester County - north
- Queens County, New York (Queens) - s
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