Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Hi, David--

Am so glad you liked the section on the Bronx of literature. When I
was planning the book, I debated how to use that material -- whether to
thread it through the narrative or put it all in one place. I decided
largely on the latter because it seemed important to underscore how
novelists, etc., viewed the area and its rhythms.

I love Kate Simon's work...in fact I interviewed her once for the
Times...and her description of being taken to Loew's Paradise by an
older family friend was in my mind when I was writing about the
theater.

Did not know about Henry Roth, but am glad you mentioned him; i could
check that out. I remember his first book but have to admit I didn't
read "Rude Stream."

Re Marshall Berman, indeed I both interviewed him at length, read
virtually everything he's written on the Bronx and related topics, and
in fact saw him just the other day when I was speaking to an urban
affairs class at Fordham. He is indeed amazing and when we had lunch
that day he did say complimentary things about the book. As I told him,
he was one of the people who contributed in many ways, not the least
of which was suggesting how to organize the chapter in which I discuss
the various institutions along the boulevard. He was also the person
who first told me about Jack Molinas, who turned out to be one of the
more interesting Bronx-related figures in the book.

and to jeffrey--

Car 54, absolutely. In doing research at the Museum of Broadcasting, i
looked at old episodes of the show, which I don't remember having 
seen when they were first broadcast, and although I didn't end up
specifically referring to the show in my book, it was great to be
introduced to it, and its catchy theme song stayed locked in my mind
for quite a while.

The description of the '64 school boycott is interesting. There's
probably no end of smart books about racial tensions in the Bronx that
could be written. I learned a lot about the subject through the African
American Oral History project at Fordham, and this topic sounds like
one that would be hugely interesting to them.
 









 
  

    
Connie, the main person who organized the '64 New York school boycott
was the Rev Milton Galamison from Brooklyn, interesting character. Glad
to hear Marshall Berman had a prominent role in your project. 
And yes, catchy title tune to Car 54:-)
  

    
yep, Milton Galamison -- a blast from the past.
  

    
This is strange, but a week or so before this topic got started, i
"discovered" the "street view" feature of Google Maps, and started
using it to check out both my old 'hood as well as The Bronx, and here
comes this topic. One of the places i randomly "touched down" in was at
Boston Rd and Southern Boulevard, and it hit me that this was a site
i've been trying for years to figure out the location of. Soon after we
arrived in New York, we went apartment hunting, and one of the first
places was some location near el tracks, i remember going to a nearby
low-rise structure with a bunch of stores where we had hot dogs, i
didn't like it, maybe was sick, i don't know if that set the mood, but
we didn't locate there,maybe my parents just picked up a bad vibe. Went
through the Southern Boulevard/Boston Rd junction on the train in '64
(about 5 years later), and got the sense that area was deteriorating
fast, though i couldn't see the immediate vicinity due to the station
structure, so i didn't recognize ever having been there. So a week or
so ago, i "touched down" at that intersection, and there was the low
rise structure with the stores, amazing how i recognized it so easily
after over 50 years (and lots of changes). Would have been a bad
decision to have moved there.
  

    
Great book!  Connie, I've been enjoying reading it.  I live in southwest 
Yonkers, just over the border from Riverdale, and your descriptions of the 
past lives of the buildings and tenants could be pulled from Yonkers also.
Especially the faded glory.

(Just had a great chat with the daughter of the people who live across the 
street, back when my neighborhood was Italian/Jewish, instead of Latino, 
black, and Arab)  She described the Halloweens that they used to go to, 
and how they played kickball off of my garage, but the lady who used to 
live in one of the houses was really old and would complain, and then ask 
them to go up the corner store to buy her some milk. And the large mansion 
that used to be a senior center that got pulled down so they could put up 
a school 6 years ago.)

I'm particularly intrigued by the Paradise Theatre, which I'm glad they 
restored, but can't imagine how its not going to fall in disrepair again.

As these historic areas re-gain their luster, at least for a short 
while, how do you protect them from the same fate again?

?
  

    
Hi, Kafclown--

Yes, Yonkers is an interesting place all on its own, partly because
it's old and has a lot of history.

Re. Loew's Paradise, who knows what its future will hold. But at least
there seems to be a viable business model for keeping the place open,
what with the concerts and sports events, and the fact that the Bronx
generally is less under assault than it has been in previous decades
should help.

As to how you protect such places, good question. Great question. If
we knew the answer, we could probably save a lot more of them.

One answer, at least in my opinion, has to do with the constituency
for these places. In neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, one reason
historic buildings got protected is because there was a strong local
constituency eager to help save them. In many parts of the Bronx, the
people with the fondest memories of certain buildings are long gone
from the neighborhood; they're not on the scene, fighting for
landmarking or other such changes.

At least when it comes to the beautiful Art Deco building, I hope my
book will at least remind people that there are some architectural
treasures along the Grand Concourse. That couldn't hurt.
  

    
Hello! I was in the middle of a long post about my babyhood in the West 
Bronx, and then the computer clicked off. I had to go down to the basement 
to flip the breaker. 

So, I will reconstruct the post; more later. 

The basics are that I was born in 1942, and we lived at 266 Bedford Park 
Boulevard, which is one of those great deco buildings. 
  

    
fom, do you still recognize it when you look at the street with Google
street view?
  

    
I guess you would if this is it:  http://tinyurl.com/266bldg  That
structure can't have changed all that much!
  

    
I am loving this book--it is like a well-written mystery novel
combined with excellent sociology.  (I'll probably have questions when
I finish, but in the meantime I'm just enjoying it.)
  

    
yes, I totally recognize it, and earlier this year Monica went and took 
some pics of the building, which she put on Flickr.

Of course it seemed bigger when I was a baby. 
  

    
It seemed like a huge building to me. I remember the lobby especially, 
with deco murals and brass railings, and then you could go right or left, 
up a few steps, and there was the elevator into your end of the building.

Our apartment had the sunken living room with parquet floor, and the 
wrought iron railing. My particular memory of the wrought iron railing is 
that when I was about 3 or 4, some relative gave me a green plastic ring 
(like, Bakelite) and it got stuck on my finger, and some other relative or 
family friend had to file it off, as I clung to the wrought iron railing 
for strength.

I think we were on the fourth floor. We were at a corner, and there was a 
firehouse across the way; they did demonstrations of things like jumping 
off a building into a net, which I loved.

Besides the living room and really nice entry hall, our apartment had a 
galley kitchen and 2.5 bedrooms, if I recall correctly. 

My parents were both professors at Fordham. This was my mother's dream 
existence; she had made it from a small town in Wisconsin to being a 
professor at a university in New York. She didn't like the midwest. Then 
my father got offered a job at the University of Chicago, to which he 
could not say no. My mother refused to move to Chicago, a place she 
detested. So my father went there on his own, hoping she'd eventually join 
him, and when I was one and a half she finally did.

And then, my aunt and my grandfather (Lois and Grandpapa) took over the 
apartment on Bedford Park Boulevard, and we visited often from Chicago, so 
my memories of it stretch from 1942-ish to 1947 or so. (Lois comnmuted 
from there to her job at College of New Rochelle. I guess there was a 
train?)
  

    
Wow,interesting. I've never been on that part of Bedford Park Blvd.
Bronx Science is a few blocks to the Northwest, both of the subway
stops students used to take were Bedford Park Blvd, one at the
Concourse (D Train),the other at Jerome Ave (that train is above ground
at that point, it surfaces near Yankee Stadium). 
Could commuting have been done via the subway and then the New Haven
RR? 
I got motivated and researched, and discovered to my chagrin that one
of my favorite buildings in The Bronx, old Borough Hall on Tremont
Ave., got razed after a fire way back in '69. That was quite a nice
structure.
  

    
Thanks for all the Bedford Park Blvd. memories! One of the great
pleasures of writing the book was hearing other people's stories, like
yours, and happily that's continuing even after publication! These
memories, as I say in the book, are invariably very rich and very sharp
-- I think that tells you a great deal about how people feel about
this part of the city.
  

    
I always say I grew up in Chicago and I've been in the Bay Area for 39 
years, but I am actually from The Bronx.
  

    
to fom--

Some people who live in Riverdale refuse to say they're from the
Bronx, even though Riverdale is undisputably part of the Bronx. It's
all very complicated.
  

    
Connie, I wanted to ask you about your website for this book. It's at
<http://boulevard.fromthesquare.org/> and it is lavishly adorned with
reviews. 

I'm wondering, how important are websites for books?  Do people find
you there and follow up with purchases, or booking events with you...
or is it mostly a producer of "buzz" and general awareness, in your
opinion?

It's also got a link to an audio tour at the Times.  (Warning - sound
and slides both start up when you open the page - but it's very nicely
done.)

<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/21/arts/20090821_CONCOURSE_AUDIO.ht
ml>
  

    
More than a few people use Riverdale as their mailing address vs The
Bronx. It's the last large section of the borough which is still
predominately "non Hispanic white" (aside from small pockets like
Belmont (Little Italy), Woodlawn and Throggs Neck. And Riverdale is
high income as well. Hmm, wonder if there's a connection:-)
Another Bedford Park Blvd story. In January '64 (i'm pretty sure it
was the 14th), i had a midyear math exam to take at Bronx Science.
Early that morning a snowstorm started. The Board of Education, already
feeling pressed by all the expenses due to the segregation mess,
decided to keep schools open, depending upon the forecast of "light
snow" vs the outside conditions of whiteout, 10°F with winds gusting to
40mph. So off to school i went. Got off at the Bedford Park
Blvd/Concourse station (D Train) and started walking the two blocks to
Harris Park on it (to be followed by one block along Paul Ave to the
school), and almost didn't make it, had a hard time walking, and seeing
where i was walking, did it more by memory of Bedford Park Blvd than
anything, scared that if i tripped and fell, i'd get buried by a drift
within minutes and no one would see me fall. Made it, by the time i got
to school, one of my eyeballs had a hard time moving. So we all took
the test, during which winds would at times make it feel like the
building was shaking, so rattled were the windows, and while normally
you could see across the nearby running track and the Jerome Reservoir,
nothing was visible. The principal told us via intercom to leave
school after the test in groups. Schools were closed... the next day.
One of my scariest weather experiences ever. The School Board, already
besieged from several sides, caught huge flack from incensed parents
all over the city, but insisted that they made the right decision. It
was another sign that the City was headed into trouble.
  

    
Hi, Gail--

I always knew I wanted a website for my book (it's official address,
by the way, is: http://www.boulevard-of-dreams.com), largely so I could
direct people there when I wanted them to know about events, reviews,
my bio, etc. When it first went up, I sent an email blast to lots of
people I knew, just saying it had arrived. As to how much other people
find it, and use it, I really don't know. But since I'm not on
Facebook, the website seemed the best way to give the book automatic
presence on the web.
  

    
As someone who didn't live in New York City, I have only a vague
understanding of the boroughs. Most of what I know about Brooklyn comes
from reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and similar, whereas I don't
really know of a similar body of literature around the Bronx. How are
Brooklyn and the Bronx different and similar?
  

    
The Bronx is the only borough which is on the US mainland, though a
tiny part of what's geographically in The Bronx, Marble Hill, is in
Manhattan politically. Boroughs are contiguous with counties, though
the names of the county sometimes differs from the corresponding
borough (Manhattan = New York, The Bronx = Bronx, Brooklyn= Kings,
Queens=Queens, Staten Island = Richmond). Brooklyn was a separate city
till 1898, tends to be flatter (being a part of Long Island), has a
very distinct "downtown", since it was a separate city, is overall
older. The Bronx didn't really get built up in a dense way till the
20th Century, when the subway lines got extended up there, permitting a
more easy commute. There are houses and other artifacts from earlier
times in The Bronx, but Brooklyn tends to have more of a history in
that sense. Both historically have had distinct ethnic neighborhoods,
though there were more in Brooklyn, which had lots more people (2.7
million peak, vs 1.6 million for The Bronx). Due to the events
discussed here, The Bronx has seen much more urban devastation, which
did take place in eastern parts of Brooklyn (Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Brownsville, East New York) but was not as extensive, much if not most
of The Bronx experienced it. The population of the Bronx is now
majority Latino, only some 13% are non-Hispanic whites, whereas they
form a larger portion of the population of Brooklyn. And parts of
Brooklyn near downtown Manhattan (Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope,
Williamsburg, Greenpoint) have seen the process some call
yuppification, so far there hasn't been much of that in The Bronx, not
to my knowledge.  More of Brooklyn also consists of suburban like areas
of detached homes, especially the further south one goes.
  

    
did not know the Bronx was the only borough on the mainland!
  

    
Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island (though when people say Long
Island, they usually mean the two counties further east, outside the
city, ie Nassau and Suffolk), Manhattan and Staten Island are..
islands:-) (Staten Island is really more a part of New Jersey, from
which it's separated mostly by a narrow strip of water called Arthur
Kill, it's far closer to the Jersey short than to either Manhattan or
Brooklyn).
  

    
Gentrification in the Bronx is an interesting issue and one that gets
discussed a lot these days. On the one hand, it seems to bode well for
the borough, but on the other, many people are apprehensive that it
will bring hipster culture, not to mention higher housing prices, to
areas of the borough that desire neither. As many other parts of the
city have discovered, gentrification can be a double-edged sword.
  

    
Connie, you have an interesting section in the book about the Armenian
photographer who did a lot of the weddings in the area.  Could you
tell us more about your interviews with his daughter?

I've always been a big fan of wedding photos.  I look at them as a
social scientist trying to extract cultural meanings from the way
people pose in formal settings.  They are telling everyone:  This is
the way we want you to see us.  This is the way things *should* be, not
necessarily the way things are.

The portrait that you draw of the Bronx and the Grand Concourse is a
series of seperate worlds.  Is it a Jewish story?  An Italian story? 
Irish story?  Puerto Rican story?  Black story?

What do these worlds share so that it is a Bronx story?