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The Bronx is New York City's northernmost Borough (New York City), coterminous with Bronx County. The Bronx is located Northeast of Manhattan. It is the only one of the city's five boroughs situated primarily on the United States mainland rather than on an island. As of 2005, the United States Census Bureau estimated that the borough's population was 1,357,589. Bronx County, New York, United States Census Bureau, accessed December 30, 2006 If all five boroughs were independent cities, the Bronx would rank as the ninth most populous city in the United States. Recently, its population, which had been in decline since the 1960 census, has increased. The borough had its peak population in 1950. The Bronx is the fourth most populous of New York City's five boroughs, and Bronx County is the 5th most populous county in the New York Metropolitan Area.

"The Bronx" is the only borough in New York City that, in its capacity as a borough, is referred to, in both lawSee, for example, New York City Administrative Code § 2–202 and popular usageSee, for example, references on the New York City website, with the definite article ("The"). (The name of the coterminous "Bronx County," however, does not include a "the.") A common explanation for the definite article is that the original name of the borough, when it was annexed from Westchester, was "The Borough of the Bronx River," referring to the river that passed through the borough.Lloyd Ultan, Bronx Borough Historian, in "Notes & Asides", National Review, January 28, 2002Steven Hess, "From the Hague to the Bronx: Definite Articles in Place Names," Journal of the North Central Name Society Fall 1987. The river was named after Jonas Bronck, a Swede, who was a sea captain and 1641 resident whose 500 acre (2 km²) farm lay between the Harlem River and the Bronx River or Bronx River, as it was called by the Native Americans of the time. Another explanation for the use of the definite article in the borough's name is that the original form of the name was possessive: The Broncks'.

History The Bronx was called Rananchqua Bronx History: What's in a Name?, New York Public Library. Accessed October 15, 2007. "The Native Americans called the land Rananchqua, but the Dutch and English began to refer to it as Broncksland." by the Native Americans in the United States Siwanoy New York City Department of Parks and Recreation: Harding Park, accessed December 1, 2006 band of Lenape, while other Natives knew The Bronx as Keskeskeck. It was divided by the "Aquahung" river, now known as the Bronx River. The land was first settled by Europeans in 1639, when Jonas Bronck, for whom the area was later named, established a farm along the Harlem River in the area now known as the Mott Haven section. The Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as "Bronck's Land".From North of Manhattan by Harry Hansen (Hastings House, 1950), excerpted at http://www.bronxmall.com/cult/series/2.html

The territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, New York, an original county of New York state. The present Bronx County was contained in four towns: Westchester, Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham.

In 1846, a new town, West Farms, was created by division of Westchester; in turn, in 1855, the town of Morrisania, Bronx was created from West Farms. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge, Bronx (roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, Bronx, and Woodlawn, Bronx) was established within the former borders of Yonkers, New York.

In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County, consisting of the towns of Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania, was transferred to Manhattan, and to New York City; the three towns were abolished in the process. In 1895 the Town of Westchester and portions of Eastchester and Pelham, similarly were transferred to New York County and City. City Island, Bronx, New York City's only nautical community, voted to join New York County in 1896. In 1898, the amalgamated City of New York was created, including the Bronx as one of its five boroughs (although still within New York County). In 1914, those parts of the then New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in the past decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, while keeping its status as a borough of New York City.

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 and Italians but especially Jews settled here. Author Willa Cather, Pierre Lorillard who made a fortune on tobacco sales, and inventor Jordan Mott were famous settlers. In addition, French American, German American, and Polish American immigrants moved into the borough. The Judaism population also increased notably during this time and many synagogues still exist throughout the borough, although many of these have been converted to other uses.

In prohibition days, rum-running and gangs ran rampant in the Bronx. Mostly Irish American and Italian American immigrants smuggled in the illegal whiskey. By 1926, the Bronx was noted for its high crime rate and its many Speakeasy.

After the 1930s, the Irish immigrant population in the Bronx decreased as a result of better living conditions in New York suburbs and in other states. The German population followed suit in the 1940s. So did many Italians in the 1950s and Jewish-Americans in the 1960s. As the generation of the 1930s retired, many moved to southeastern Florida, west of Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, Florida. The migration has left a thriving Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican American) and African-American population, along with some white areas in the southeastern and northwestern part of the county.

During the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp change in the residents' quality of life. Many factors have been put forward by historians and other social scientists. They include the theory that urban renewal projects in the borough (such as Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway) destroyed existing low-density neighborhoods in favor of roads that produced urban sprawl as well as high-density Public housing in the United States and Canada. Another factor may have been the reduction by insurance companies and banks in offering property-related financial services (mortgages) to some areas of the Bronx -- a process known as redlining.

For a period, a wave of arson overtook the southern portion of the borough's apartment buildings, with competing theories as to why. Some point to the heavy traffic and use of illicit drugs among the area's poor as causing them to be inclined to scam the city's benefits for burn-out victims as well as the Section 8 (housing) housing program. Others believe landlords decided to burn their buildings before their insurance policies expired and were not renewed. After the destruction of many buildings in the South Bronx, the arsons all but ended during the tenure of Mayor Ed Koch with aftereffects still felt into the early 1990s thanks to the infamous crack epidemic.

Since the early 1990s, much development has occurred. Groups affiliated with South Bronx churches have built the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. This and other developments have transformed the south Bronx, and the ripple effects are felt borough-wide. While the Bronx still contains the poorest congressional district in the mainland US, crime has dropped substantially from the burned-out days of the 1970s and 1980s. This is due to many reasons, but primarily to community members working to take the community back and build it up once again.

The resurgence in housing has led some single-family homes in the East Bronx to be replaced by multi-family homes. There have been many new apartments built in the Melrose and Morrisania sections of the South Bronx, and near the Grand Concourse, onetime rental apartments are being upgraded and turned into condominiums.Joyce Cohen, "A Pleasant Surprise in the Bronx", New York Times, July 13, 2007 As a result, the IRT White Plains Road Line has had an increase in riders. Business chains such as Staples have started stores in the Bronx, and the number of bank branches has increased.

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 1980's in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The Bronx Tourism Council's slogan is "The Bronx is Up".Timothy Williams, "Celebrities Now Give Thonx for Their Roots in the Bronx." New York Times, June 27, 2006.

Geography overlooking Yankee Stadium.The Bronx is almost entirely situated on the North American mainland, but it also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound. The Hudson River separates the Bronx from New Jersey to its west, the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest, the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast, and Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County, New York to the east. Westchester County is directly north of the Bronx.

As a part of New York City, Bronx County contains no other political subdivisions. It is located at (40.704234, -73.917927). According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of 148.7 square kilometre (57.4 square mile). 108.9 km² (42.0 sq mi) of it is land and 39.9 km² (15.4 sq mi) of it (26.82%) is water.

The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a freshwater river (the Bronx River) running through it. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River, passes through the northeast Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay. The borough includes two of the largest parks in New York City, Pelham Bay Park and Van Cortlandt Park. Pelham Bay Park includes a large man-made public beach called Orchard Beach, New York, created by Robert Moses. Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, is located near the border with Westchester County, New York. It opened in 1863, at a time when the Bronx was still considered a rural area.

Neighborhoods Famous Bronx neighborhoods include the South Bronx, "Little Italy" on Arthur Avenue (Bronx) in the Belmont, Bronx section, Morris Park, Bronx, and Riverdale, Bronx.



West Bronx The western parts of the Bronx are hilly and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older tenement buildings and apartments as well as mansions in Riverdale, Bronx. It includes three of the Bronx's largest neighborhoods: Kingsbridge, Bronx, University Heights, Bronx, and Riverdale, as well as the large Van Cortlandt Park. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard runs through it, north to south. The West Bronx was the first area outside Manhattan that was annexed by the City of New York. This occurred in 1874, and today's West Bronx was then known as the "Annexed District."

East Bronx

East of the Bronx River, the borough is flatter, and includes four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throgs Neck. In the northeast corner of the Bronx, Rodman's Neck lies in Long Island Sound. Sections of the Northeast Bronx have small apartment buildings, small private homes and multi family homes. It also contains the giant high-rise apartment complex of Co-op City. Neighborhoods include: Eastchester, Edenwald, Baychester, Co-op City, Woodlawn, Wakefield, Pelham Parkway, Williamsbridge, and Norwood. Southeast Bronx consists of large apartment buildings, and complexes,as well as small private homes, and large upscale homes. Neighborhoods include, Pelham Gardens, Country Club, Soundview, Castle Hill, Throgs Neck, Parkchester, Van Nest, West Farms, Morris Park, Bronxdale, Westchester Square, Pelham Bay, City Island, Locust Point, and Silver Beach. It is the home of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Gardens.

City Island

A small island located in Long Island Sound, known for its seafood restaurants, and water front private homes. City Island is home to many animals and birds not seen anywhere else in the Bronx. City Island is also home to many shops and stores similar to small New England cities along the coast. The neighborhoods of Co-op City are to its far west across the City Island Bridge, the Long island Sound is to its east. City Island Avenue is the island's major road and the BX 29 bus connects the area to the mainland.

South Bronx ,"The House that Ruth Built", and the home of the New York Yankees, is located on 161st and River Avenue in the Bronx. It is soon to be replaced by the New Yankee Stadium, which is scheduled to be completed in 2009.

The area south of Fordham Road ,and west of the Bronx River is filled with high-density apartment buildings. The South Bronx is home to the downtown Bronx including the Bronx County Court House and Borough Hall (and many other civil court houses), as well as Yankee Stadium. The South Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. It is home to what has been called The Hub, Bronx: a Third Avenue shopping center. The South Bronx has old tenement buildings, large and small apartment buildings, as well as small private homes, multi-family homes and more than 50% of The Bronx's housing projects. Neighborhoods include, Mott Haven, Bronx, Melrose, Bronx, Morrisania, Bronx, Hunts Point, Bronx, Tremont, Bronx, Highbridge, Bronx, Concourse Village, and Grand Concourse. Basketball star Dolph Schayes and sociologist Barry Wellman grew up there.

Rikers Island A small island in the East River that is home to the Rikers island jail facility. Operated by the New York City Department of Corrections, it is the largest jail facility in New York City. Although it is a part of Bronx County, the Island is only accessible by a bridge running from Queens to the island. Although most of the island is composed of jail facilities, the island is a neighborhood in its own right, with barbershops, supermarkets, and other shops. The island is served by Q101R bus.

Government

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Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the Bronx has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" Mayor-council government. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in the Bronx.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision. Cornell Law School Supreme Court Collection: Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris, accessed June 12, 2006Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. The Borough President of the Bronx is Adolfo Carrión Jr., elected as a Democratic Party (United States) in 2001 and re-elected in 2005.

The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and annexation of parkland for New Yankee Stadium.

Each of the city's five counties (coterminous with each borough) has its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Robert T. Johnson, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Bronx County since 1989. He is the first African-American District Attorney in New York State. The Bronx has 9 City Council members, the fourth largest number among the five boroughs. It also has 12 administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents.

In the 2004 presidential election Democrat John Kerry received 82.8% of the vote in the Bronx and Republican George W. Bush received 16.5%.

Demographics {{USCensusPop|1900 = 200507|1910 = 430980|1920 = 732016|1930 = 1265258|1940 = 1394711|1950 = 1451277|1960 = 1424815|1970 = 1471701|1980 = 1168972|1990 = 1203789|2000 = 1332650-->

As of the census of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 12,242.2/km² (31,709.3/sq mi). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 4,507.4/km² (11,674.8/sq mi). The racial makeup of the borough was 35.64% African American (U.S. Census) or Race (United States Census), 29.87% White (U.S. Census), 0.85% Native American (U.S. Census), 3.01% Asian American, 0.10% Pacific Islander (U.S. Census), 24.74% from Race (United States Census), and 5.78% from two or more races. 48.38% of the population were Hispanics in the United States or Latino (U.S. Census) of any race. (The 2005 U.S. census estimates that the percentage of Latinos has increased to a majority: 51.3%.) The Bronx has one of the highest percentages of Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic in the U.S. with 24.0% and 10.0%, respectively. However, the Puerto Rican population has slowly been declining over the last few years as the Dominican population has increased.

West Africa is the most frequent region of origin for immigrants to the Bronx. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service data shows that in 1996, about two-thirds of those Ghanaians arriving in the United States, and nearly three-fourths of those naturalized, live in The Bronx. Many have clustered in Bronx communities, including Morris Heights, Highbridge, Bronx, and Tremont, Bronx."Chilly Coexistence." The Columbia Spectator, Spring 2000.

Based on sample data from the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 47.29% of the population five and older speak only English language at home. 43.67% speak Spanish at home, either exclusively or along with English. Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian language (1.36%), Albanian language (1.07%), Kru language, Ibo language, or Yoruba (0.72%), French language (0.54%).

The African American and Puerto Rican population have recently began to decline, with many of them relocating to cities elsewhere in New York State such as Rochester, Albany, and the southern United States. The Dominican population has increased significantly in the last five years, and by 2010 are expected to be doubled in population compared to 2000. The Jamaican population continues to increase with large amounts of immigration. The White population is seeing growth in some neighborhoods of the Bronx but also losses in others. Some neighborhoods, such as Kingsbridge Heights and Riverdale (both located in the Northwest and already White-Majority neighborhoods) are becoming homes to many ex-Manhattanites (mostly Whites) looking for cheaper rent. Albanians and Russians are some of the recently arrived European immigrants located mainly in the east Bronx. The size of southern Asian-origin ethnicities has grown, as many immigrants are from Bangladesh and other countries are moving to the Bronx.

There were 463,212 households out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were Marriage living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.

The age distribution of the population in the Bronx was as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 87.0 males.

The median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over.

Despite the stereotype that the Bronx (especially South Bronx) is a typical poor urban area of New York City, it is not true of the entire borough. The Bronx has much affordable housing (as compared to most of the rest of the New York metropolitan area, as well as upscale neighborhoods like Riverdale, Bronx, City Island, Bronx, Pelham Bay, Bronx, Kingsbridge Heights, Bronx, Woodlawn, Bronx, and Country Club, Bronx).



Shopping The Bronx is home to several known shopping areas such as the vicinity of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, Bay plaza, The Hub, Bronx, River/Kingsbridge Shopping center, Bruckner Blvd and many other streets especially those aligned underneath the Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, and Broadway elevated transit lines. The Bronx is home to trend setting, low-cost styles sometimes not found anywhere else in New York city.

Culture: from Poe to hip-hop , and have won numerous titles. 2007 Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival websiteAuthor Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life (1846 to 1849) in the Bronx at Poe Cottage, now located at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse (Bronx). A small wooden farmhouse built about 1812, the cottage once commanded unobstructed vistas over the rolling Bronx hills to the shores of Long Island. Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, accessed October 9, 2006

In recent years, the Bronx has become an important center of African-American culture. Hip hop first emerged in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. The New York Times has identified 1520 Sedgwick Avenue "an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway and hard along the Major Deegan Expressway" as the starting point, where DJ Kool Herc presided over parties in the community room.David Gonzalez,"Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplce of Hip-Hop?" New York Times, May 21, 2007. Beginning with the advent of beat match DJing, in which Bronx DJs including Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc extended the breaks of funk records, a major new musical genre emerged that sought to isolate the percussion breaks of hit funk, disco and soul songs. As hip hop's popularity grew, performers began speaking ("rapping") in sync with the beats, and became known as MCs or emcees. The Herculoids, made up of Herc, Coke La Rock, and Clark Kent, were the earliest to gain major fame. The Bronx is referred to in hip-hop slang as "The Boogie Down Bronx", or just "The Boogie Down". This was hip-hop pioneer KRS-One's inspiration for his thought provoking group BDP, or Boogie Down Productions, which included DJ Scott La Rock. Newer hip hop artists from the Bronx include Fat Joe, Big Pun (deceased), Terror Squad.

The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge in the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent a major expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica.

Other major cultural sites in the Bronx include The New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, and the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a national landmark overlooking the Harlem River and designed by the renowned architect Stanford White. Yankee Stadium is the home of the New York Yankees, and houses "Monument Park (Yankee Stadium)", a tribute to great Yankees of the past.

The Bronx in the movies Originally, movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely-settled, working-class, urban culture. Paddy Chayefsky's Academy-award winning Marty is the epitome of this, with its tag line, "What are you doing, Marty? Nothing." This thematic line has continued to some extent as in the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale and Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, centered in an Italian-American Bronx community. Other movies have used the term, "Bronx" for comic effect, such as the 1995 Jackie Chan film Rumble in the Bronx (Hong faan kui in Cantonese) -- which had nothing to do with the real Bronx, and "Bronx," the character on the Disney animated series Gargoyles (TV series).

However, starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. In casual French "c'est le Bronx" stands for "what a mess". The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s launched the phrase "the Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both a New York Times editorial and a BBC documentary film. However, the line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell intoned, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: The Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City frequently point to Cosell's remark as a sign of both the city and the borough's decline. A new feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagan called "Bronx Burning" is in productionSee for the call for source material. in 2006, chronicling what led up to the arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s and the subsequent rebirth of the community.

These themes have been especially pervasive in representations of the Bronx in cinema. There are good depictions of Bronx gangs (1950s-1960s) in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors (film), the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (an apparent corruption of the name Gun Hill Road).

A somewhat ironic use of this theme is the title of The Bronx is Burning: an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series championship. The TV series emphasizes the boisterous nature of the team, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson (however, a significant part of the mini-series also deals with the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the financial problems, the arson issues, and the election of Ed Koch to mayor).

The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx also portrayed the Bronx as gang- and crime-ridden. The film's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx. This movie was condemned by community leaders for condoning police brutality, and for unflattering depiction of the borough; former Young Lords member and Puerto Rican activist Richie Perez formed a protest group, "The Committee Against Fort Apache". By contrast, Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is also set in the Bronx.

The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, (also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000,) an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!"

Media The Bronx has featured in much fiction. One rich tale is Avery Corman's The Old Neighborhood (1980) in which the upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and Grand Concourse, and learns that even though the folks are poor Hispanic and African-American, they are good people. By contrast, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) starts with an account of a similar upper-middle class white protagonist getting lost and off the Deegan Expressway in the South Bronx and having a vicious altercation with a local Bronx gangs. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Court House.

The Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Review, The Bronx Times Reporter, Inner City Press and Co-Op City Times. Four non-profit news outlets, Norwood News, Mount Hope Monitor, Highbridge Horizon and The Hunts Point Express serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of The Riverdale Press, Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)

The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, The Bronx Home News, started January 20, 1907 and merged into the New York Post in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.

One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, a 50,000 watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna is atop Montefiore Medical Center, the borough's tallest building.

The City of New York has an official television station run by the NYC Media Group and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in The Bronx to have its own cable provider outside of Manhattan. The local cable access station BRONXNET provides public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents. Its website showcases Bronx Music Vol.1; a CD featuring the old and new sounds and artists of The Bronx.

The Bronx in poetry In poetry, The Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets:

The Bronx No Thonx : Ogden Nash, The New Yorker, 1931

Nash later repented 33 years after his calumny, in 1964 he wrote the following prose poem in 1964 to the Dean of Bronx Community College:

I can't seem to escape the sins of my smart-alec youth; Here are my amends. I wrote those line, "The Bronx? No thonx"; I shudder to confess them. Now I'm an older, wiser man I cry, "The Bronx? God bless them!"Williams, Timothy. "Celebrities Now Give Thonx for Their Roots in the Bronx", The New York Times, June 27, 2006. Accessed September 16, 2007.:

See also: Culture of New York City, Music of New York City, and List of people from The Bronx

Transportation Roads The Bronx street grid is irregular. Much of the west Bronx follows the Manhattan street grid, and some of the streets are numbered (the numbering comes from the Manhattan grid, but does not match it exactly). The west Bronx's hilly terrain, however, leaves a relatively free street grid that closely resembles that of extreme upper Manhattan, which has similar terrain. Because the street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, the lowest numbered street in the Bronx is East 132nd Street. The east Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. However, only the Wakefield, Bronx neighborhood picks up the street numbering.

Three major north-south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue (Manhattan), Park Avenue (Manhattan), and Broadway (New York City). Other major north-south roads include the Grand Concourse (Bronx), Jerome Avenue , Webster Avenue , and White Plains Road. Major east-west streets include Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, Boston Road and Tremont Avenue. Many east-west streets are prefixed with either "East" or "West," to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) as the dividing line).

Several major expressways and highways traverse the Bronx. These include:



Bridges Many bridges connect the Bronx to Manhattan and Queens. These include, from west to east:

To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge (Manhattan), the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge (New York City), the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (Manhattan) (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).

To Manhattan or Queens: the Triborough Bridge

To Queens: the Bronx Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge

Mass transit The Bronx is served by six lines of the New York City Subway: Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line (Metro-North) and the Hudson Line (Metro-North)) serve 12 stations in the Bronx. In addition, trains serving the New Haven Line (Metro-North) stop at Fordham (Metro-North station).

Education 's Keating Hall.

Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education. Private schools range from elite independent schools to parochial schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.

Many high schools are located in the borough including the Bronx High School of Science, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, DeWitt Clinton High School, and the Grace H. Dodge Vocational & Technical H.S.. Parochial (Catholic-linked) high schools include St. Raymond High School for Boys, All Hallows High School, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School (New York City), Preston High School (New York City), St. Catharines Academy, and Mount Saint Michael Academy. The Bronx is home to three of New York City's most elite private schools: Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Horace Mann School (New York City), and Riverdale Country School.

Starting in the 1990s New York City began closing large, public high schools in The Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Cited reasons for the changes include poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include James Monroe, William Howard Taft High School (New York City), Theodore Roosevelt High School (New York City), Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus High School (Bronx, New York), Morris, Walton High School (New York City), and South Bronx High Schools. More recently the City has started phasing out large middle schools, also replacing them with smaller schools.

Several colleges and universities are located in The Bronx. Fordham University, a coeducational undergraduate and graduate university, was founded in 1841. It is officially an independent institution but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill is the main campus of the university. Addionally, the main campus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Yeshiva University, is in Morris Park. Three campuses of the City University of New York are in The Bronx, including Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University), Hostos Community College, and Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College). The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college located Riverdale and is under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale. Manhattan College offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. Graduate programs are offered for education and engineering. Monroe College is a private college with a campus in the Bronx. It offers both two-year and four-year programs. The State University of New York Maritime College is a national leader in maritime education.

References Briggs, Xavier de Souza, Anita Miller and John Shapiro. 1996. "CCRP in the South Bronx." Planners' Casebook, Winter.

External links

See also

The Bronx is New York City's northernmost Borough (New York City), coterminous with Bronx County. The Bronx is located Northeast of Manhattan. It is the only one of the city's five boroughs situated primarily on the United States mainland rather than on an island. As of 2005, the United States Census Bureau estimated that the borough's population was 1,357,589. Bronx County, New York, United States Census Bureau, accessed December 30, 2006 If all five boroughs were independent cities, the Bronx would rank as the ninth most populous city in the United States. Recently, its population, which had been in decline since the 1960 census, has increased. The borough had its peak population in 1950. The Bronx is the fourth most populous of New York City's five boroughs, and Bronx County is the 5th most populous county in the New York Metropolitan Area.

"The Bronx" is the only borough in New York City that, in its capacity as a borough, is referred to, in both lawSee, for example, New York City Administrative Code § 2–202 and popular usageSee, for example, references on the New York City website, with the definite article ("The"). (The name of the coterminous "Bronx County," however, does not include a "the.") A common explanation for the definite article is that the original name of the borough, when it was annexed from Westchester, was "The Borough of the Bronx River," referring to the river that passed through the borough.Lloyd Ultan, Bronx Borough Historian, in "Notes & Asides", National Review, January 28, 2002Steven Hess, "From the Hague to the Bronx: Definite Articles in Place Names," Journal of the North Central Name Society Fall 1987. The river was named after Jonas Bronck, a Swede, who was a sea captain and 1641 resident whose 500 acre (2 km²) farm lay between the Harlem River and the Bronx River or Bronx River, as it was called by the Native Americans of the time. Another explanation for the use of the definite article in the borough's name is that the original form of the name was possessive: The Broncks'.

History The Bronx was called Rananchqua Bronx History: What's in a Name?, New York Public Library. Accessed October 15, 2007. "The Native Americans called the land Rananchqua, but the Dutch and English began to refer to it as Broncksland." by the Native Americans in the United States Siwanoy New York City Department of Parks and Recreation: Harding Park, accessed December 1, 2006 band of Lenape, while other Natives knew The Bronx as Keskeskeck. It was divided by the "Aquahung" river, now known as the Bronx River. The land was first settled by Europeans in 1639, when Jonas Bronck, for whom the area was later named, established a farm along the Harlem River in the area now known as the Mott Haven section. The Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as "Bronck's Land".From North of Manhattan by Harry Hansen (Hastings House, 1950), excerpted at http://www.bronxmall.com/cult/series/2.html

The territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, New York, an original county of New York state. The present Bronx County was contained in four towns: Westchester, Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham.

In 1846, a new town, West Farms, was created by division of Westchester; in turn, in 1855, the town of Morrisania, Bronx was created from West Farms. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge, Bronx (roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, Bronx, and Woodlawn, Bronx) was established within the former borders of Yonkers, New York.

In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County, consisting of the towns of Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania, was transferred to Manhattan, and to New York City; the three towns were abolished in the process. In 1895 the Town of Westchester and portions of Eastchester and Pelham, similarly were transferred to New York County and City. City Island, Bronx, New York City's only nautical community, voted to join New York County in 1896. In 1898, the amalgamated City of New York was created, including the Bronx as one of its five boroughs (although still within New York County). In 1914, those parts of the then New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in the past decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, while keeping its status as a borough of New York City.

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 and Italians but especially Jews settled here. Author Willa Cather, Pierre Lorillard who made a fortune on tobacco sales, and inventor Jordan Mott were famous settlers. In addition, French American, German American, and Polish American immigrants moved into the borough. The Judaism population also increased notably during this time and many synagogues still exist throughout the borough, although many of these have been converted to other uses.

In prohibition days, rum-running and gangs ran rampant in the Bronx. Mostly Irish American and Italian American immigrants smuggled in the illegal whiskey. By 1926, the Bronx was noted for its high crime rate and its many Speakeasy.

After the 1930s, the Irish immigrant population in the Bronx decreased as a result of better living conditions in New York suburbs and in other states. The German population followed suit in the 1940s. So did many Italians in the 1950s and Jewish-Americans in the 1960s. As the generation of the 1930s retired, many moved to southeastern Florida, west of Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, Florida. The migration has left a thriving Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican American) and African-American population, along with some white areas in the southeastern and northwestern part of the county.

During the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp change in the residents' quality of life. Many factors have been put forward by historians and other social scientists. They include the theory that urban renewal projects in the borough (such as Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway) destroyed existing low-density neighborhoods in favor of roads that produced urban sprawl as well as high-density Public housing in the United States and Canada. Another factor may have been the reduction by insurance companies and banks in offering property-related financial services (mortgages) to some areas of the Bronx -- a process known as redlining.

For a period, a wave of arson overtook the southern portion of the borough's apartment buildings, with competing theories as to why. Some point to the heavy traffic and use of illicit drugs among the area's poor as causing them to be inclined to scam the city's benefits for burn-out victims as well as the Section 8 (housing) housing program. Others believe landlords decided to burn their buildings before their insurance policies expired and were not renewed. After the destruction of many buildings in the South Bronx, the arsons all but ended during the tenure of Mayor Ed Koch with aftereffects still felt into the early 1990s thanks to the infamous crack epidemic.

Since the early 1990s, much development has occurred. Groups affiliated with South Bronx churches have built the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. This and other developments have transformed the south Bronx, and the ripple effects are felt borough-wide. While the Bronx still contains the poorest congressional district in the mainland US, crime has dropped substantially from the burned-out days of the 1970s and 1980s. This is due to many reasons, but primarily to community members working to take the community back and build it up once again.

The resurgence in housing has led some single-family homes in the East Bronx to be replaced by multi-family homes. There have been many new apartments built in the Melrose and Morrisania sections of the South Bronx, and near the Grand Concourse, onetime rental apartments are being upgraded and turned into condominiums.Joyce Cohen, "A Pleasant Surprise in the Bronx", New York Times, July 13, 2007 As a result, the IRT White Plains Road Line has had an increase in riders. Business chains such as Staples have started stores in the Bronx, and the number of bank branches has increased.

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 1980's in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The Bronx Tourism Council's slogan is "The Bronx is Up".Timothy Williams, "Celebrities Now Give Thonx for Their Roots in the Bronx." New York Times, June 27, 2006.

Geography overlooking Yankee Stadium.The Bronx is almost entirely situated on the North American mainland, but it also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound. The Hudson River separates the Bronx from New Jersey to its west, the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest, the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast, and Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County, New York to the east. Westchester County is directly north of the Bronx.

As a part of New York City, Bronx County contains no other political subdivisions. It is located at (40.704234, -73.917927). According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of 148.7 square kilometre (57.4 square mile). 108.9 km² (42.0 sq mi) of it is land and 39.9 km² (15.4 sq mi) of it (26.82%) is water.

The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a freshwater river (the Bronx River) running through it. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River, passes through the northeast Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay. The borough includes two of the largest parks in New York City, Pelham Bay Park and Van Cortlandt Park. Pelham Bay Park includes a large man-made public beach called Orchard Beach, New York, created by Robert Moses. Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, is located near the border with Westchester County, New York. It opened in 1863, at a time when the Bronx was still considered a rural area.

Neighborhoods Famous Bronx neighborhoods include the South Bronx, "Little Italy" on Arthur Avenue (Bronx) in the Belmont, Bronx section, Morris Park, Bronx, and Riverdale, Bronx.



West Bronx The western parts of the Bronx are hilly and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older tenement buildings and apartments as well as mansions in Riverdale, Bronx. It includes three of the Bronx's largest neighborhoods: Kingsbridge, Bronx, University Heights, Bronx, and Riverdale, as well as the large Van Cortlandt Park. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard runs through it, north to south. The West Bronx was the first area outside Manhattan that was annexed by the City of New York. This occurred in 1874, and today's West Bronx was then known as the "Annexed District."

East Bronx

East of the Bronx River, the borough is flatter, and includes four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throgs Neck. In the northeast corner of the Bronx, Rodman's Neck lies in Long Island Sound. Sections of the Northeast Bronx have small apartment buildings, small private homes and multi family homes. It also contains the giant high-rise apartment complex of Co-op City. Neighborhoods include: Eastchester, Edenwald, Baychester, Co-op City, Woodlawn, Wakefield, Pelham Parkway, Williamsbridge, and Norwood. Southeast Bronx consists of large apartment buildings, and complexes,as well as small private homes, and large upscale homes. Neighborhoods include, Pelham Gardens, Country Club, Soundview, Castle Hill, Throgs Neck, Parkchester, Van Nest, West Farms, Morris Park, Bronxdale, Westchester Square, Pelham Bay, City Island, Locust Point, and Silver Beach. It is the home of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Gardens.

City Island

A small island located in Long Island Sound, known for its seafood restaurants, and water front private homes. City Island is home to many animals and birds not seen anywhere else in the Bronx. City Island is also home to many shops and stores similar to small New England cities along the coast. The neighborhoods of Co-op City are to its far west across the City Island Bridge, the Long island Sound is to its east. City Island Avenue is the island's major road and the BX 29 bus connects the area to the mainland.

South Bronx ,"The House that Ruth Built", and the home of the New York Yankees, is located on 161st and River Avenue in the Bronx. It is soon to be replaced by the New Yankee Stadium, which is scheduled to be completed in 2009.

The area south of Fordham Road ,and west of the Bronx River is filled with high-density apartment buildings. The South Bronx is home to the downtown Bronx including the Bronx County Court House and Borough Hall (and many other civil court houses), as well as Yankee Stadium. The South Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. It is home to what has been called The Hub, Bronx: a Third Avenue shopping center. The South Bronx has old tenement buildings, large and small apartment buildings, as well as small private homes, multi-family homes and more than 50% of The Bronx's housing projects. Neighborhoods include, Mott Haven, Bronx, Melrose, Bronx, Morrisania, Bronx, Hunts Point, Bronx, Tremont, Bronx, Highbridge, Bronx, Concourse Village, and Grand Concourse. Basketball star Dolph Schayes and sociologist Barry Wellman grew up there.

Rikers Island A small island in the East River that is home to the Rikers island jail facility. Operated by the New York City Department of Corrections, it is the largest jail facility in New York City. Although it is a part of Bronx County, the Island is only accessible by a bridge running from Queens to the island. Although most of the island is composed of jail facilities, the island is a neighborhood in its own right, with barbershops, supermarkets, and other shops. The island is served by Q101R bus.

Government

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Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the Bronx has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" Mayor-council government. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in the Bronx.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision. Cornell Law School Supreme Court Collection: Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris, accessed June 12, 2006Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. The Borough President of the Bronx is Adolfo Carrión Jr., elected as a Democratic Party (United States) in 2001 and re-elected in 2005.

The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and annexation of parkland for New Yankee Stadium.

Each of the city's five counties (coterminous with each borough) has its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Robert T. Johnson, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Bronx County since 1989. He is the first African-American District Attorney in New York State. The Bronx has 9 City Council members, the fourth largest number among the five boroughs. It also has 12 administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents.

In the 2004 presidential election Democrat John Kerry received 82.8% of the vote in the Bronx and Republican George W. Bush received 16.5%.

Demographics {{USCensusPop|1900 = 200507|1910 = 430980|1920 = 732016|1930 = 1265258|1940 = 1394711|1950 = 1451277|1960 = 1424815|1970 = 1471701|1980 = 1168972|1990 = 1203789|2000 = 1332650-->

As of the census of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 12,242.2/km² (31,709.3/sq mi). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 4,507.4/km² (11,674.8/sq mi). The racial makeup of the borough was 35.64% African American (U.S. Census) or Race (United States Census), 29.87% White (U.S. Census), 0.85% Native American (U.S. Census), 3.01% Asian American, 0.10% Pacific Islander (U.S. Census), 24.74% from Race (United States Census), and 5.78% from two or more races. 48.38% of the population were Hispanics in the United States or Latino (U.S. Census) of any race. (The 2005 U.S. census estimates that the percentage of Latinos has increased to a majority: 51.3%.) The Bronx has one of the highest percentages of Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic in the U.S. with 24.0% and 10.0%, respectively. However, the Puerto Rican population has slowly been declining over the last few years as the Dominican population has increased.

West Africa is the most frequent region of origin for immigrants to the Bronx. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service data shows that in 1996, about two-thirds of those Ghanaians arriving in the United States, and nearly three-fourths of those naturalized, live in The Bronx. Many have clustered in Bronx communities, including Morris Heights, Highbridge, Bronx, and Tremont, Bronx."Chilly Coexistence." The Columbia Spectator, Spring 2000.

Based on sample data from the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 47.29% of the population five and older speak only English language at home. 43.67% speak Spanish at home, either exclusively or along with English. Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian language (1.36%), Albanian language (1.07%), Kru language, Ibo language, or Yoruba (0.72%), French language (0.54%).

The African American and Puerto Rican population have recently began to decline, with many of them relocating to cities elsewhere in New York State such as Rochester, Albany, and the southern United States. The Dominican population has increased significantly in the last five years, and by 2010 are expected to be doubled in population compared to 2000. The Jamaican population continues to increase with large amounts of immigration. The White population is seeing growth in some neighborhoods of the Bronx but also losses in others. Some neighborhoods, such as Kingsbridge Heights and Riverdale (both located in the Northwest and already White-Majority neighborhoods) are becoming homes to many ex-Manhattanites (mostly Whites) looking for cheaper rent. Albanians and Russians are some of the recently arrived European immigrants located mainly in the east Bronx. The size of southern Asian-origin ethnicities has grown, as many immigrants are from Bangladesh and other countries are moving to the Bronx.

There were 463,212 households out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were Marriage living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.

The age distribution of the population in the Bronx was as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 87.0 males.

The median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over.

Despite the stereotype that the Bronx (especially South Bronx) is a typical poor urban area of New York City, it is not true of the entire borough. The Bronx has much affordable housing (as compared to most of the rest of the New York metropolitan area, as well as upscale neighborhoods like Riverdale, Bronx, City Island, Bronx, Pelham Bay, Bronx, Kingsbridge Heights, Bronx, Woodlawn, Bronx, and Country Club, Bronx).



Shopping The Bronx is home to several known shopping areas such as the vicinity of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, Bay plaza, The Hub, Bronx, River/Kingsbridge Shopping center, Bruckner Blvd and many other streets especially those aligned underneath the Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, and Broadway elevated transit lines. The Bronx is home to trend setting, low-cost styles sometimes not found anywhere else in New York city.

Culture: from Poe to hip-hop , and have won numerous titles. 2007 Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival websiteAuthor Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life (1846 to 1849) in the Bronx at Poe Cottage, now located at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse (Bronx). A small wooden farmhouse built about 1812, the cottage once commanded unobstructed vistas over the rolling Bronx hills to the shores of Long Island. Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, accessed October 9, 2006

In recent years, the Bronx has become an important center of African-American culture. Hip hop first emerged in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. The New York Times has identified 1520 Sedgwick Avenue "an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway and hard along the Major Deegan Expressway" as the starting point, where DJ Kool Herc presided over parties in the community room.David Gonzalez,"Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplce of Hip-Hop?" New York Times, May 21, 2007. Beginning with the advent of beat match DJing, in which Bronx DJs including Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc extended the breaks of funk records, a major new musical genre emerged that sought to isolate the percussion breaks of hit funk, disco and soul songs. As hip hop's popularity grew, performers began speaking ("rapping") in sync with the beats, and became known as MCs or emcees. The Herculoids, made up of Herc, Coke La Rock, and Clark Kent, were the earliest to gain major fame. The Bronx is referred to in hip-hop slang as "The Boogie Down Bronx", or just "The Boogie Down". This was hip-hop pioneer KRS-One's inspiration for his thought provoking group BDP, or Boogie Down Productions, which included DJ Scott La Rock. Newer hip hop artists from the Bronx include Fat Joe, Big Pun (deceased), Terror Squad.

The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge in the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent a major expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica.

Other major cultural sites in the Bronx include The New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, and the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a national landmark overlooking the Harlem River and designed by the renowned architect Stanford White. Yankee Stadium is the home of the New York Yankees, and houses "Monument Park (Yankee Stadium)", a tribute to great Yankees of the past.

The Bronx in the movies Originally, movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely-settled, working-class, urban culture. Paddy Chayefsky's Academy-award winning Marty is the epitome of this, with its tag line, "What are you doing, Marty? Nothing." This thematic line has continued to some extent as in the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale and Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, centered in an Italian-American Bronx community. Other movies have used the term, "Bronx" for comic effect, such as the 1995 Jackie Chan film Rumble in the Bronx (Hong faan kui in Cantonese) -- which had nothing to do with the real Bronx, and "Bronx," the character on the Disney animated series Gargoyles (TV series).

However, starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. In casual French "c'est le Bronx" stands for "what a mess". The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s launched the phrase "the Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both a New York Times editorial and a BBC documentary film. However, the line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell intoned, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: The Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City frequently point to Cosell's remark as a sign of both the city and the borough's decline. A new feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagan called "Bronx Burning" is in productionSee for the call for source material. in 2006, chronicling what led up to the arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s and the subsequent rebirth of the community.

These themes have been especially pervasive in representations of the Bronx in cinema. There are good depictions of Bronx gangs (1950s-1960s) in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors (film), the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (an apparent corruption of the name Gun Hill Road).

A somewhat ironic use of this theme is the title of The Bronx is Burning: an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series championship. The TV series emphasizes the boisterous nature of the team, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson (however, a significant part of the mini-series also deals with the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the financial problems, the arson issues, and the election of Ed Koch to mayor).

The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx also portrayed the Bronx as gang- and crime-ridden. The film's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx. This movie was condemned by community leaders for condoning police brutality, and for unflattering depiction of the borough; former Young Lords member and Puerto Rican activist Richie Perez formed a protest group, "The Committee Against Fort Apache". By contrast, Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is also set in the Bronx.

The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, (also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000,) an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!"

Media The Bronx has featured in much fiction. One rich tale is Avery Corman's The Old Neighborhood (1980) in which the upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and Grand Concourse, and learns that even though the folks are poor Hispanic and African-American, they are good people. By contrast, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) starts with an account of a similar upper-middle class white protagonist getting lost and off the Deegan Expressway in the South Bronx and having a vicious altercation with a local Bronx gangs. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Court House.

The Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Review, The Bronx Times Reporter, Inner City Press and Co-Op City Times. Four non-profit news outlets, Norwood News, Mount Hope Monitor, Highbridge Horizon and The Hunts Point Express serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of The Riverdale Press, Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)

The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, The Bronx Home News, started January 20, 1907 and merged into the New York Post in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.

One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, a 50,000 watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna is atop Montefiore Medical Center, the borough's tallest building.

The City of New York has an official television station run by the NYC Media Group and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in The Bronx to have its own cable provider outside of Manhattan. The local cable access station BRONXNET provides public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents. Its website showcases Bronx Music Vol.1; a CD featuring the old and new sounds and artists of The Bronx.

The Bronx in poetry In poetry, The Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets:

The Bronx No Thonx : Ogden Nash, The New Yorker, 1931

Nash later repented 33 years after his calumny, in 1964 he wrote the following prose poem in 1964 to the Dean of Bronx Community College:

I can't seem to escape the sins of my smart-alec youth; Here are my amends. I wrote those line, "The Bronx? No thonx"; I shudder to confess them. Now I'm an older, wiser man I cry, "The Bronx? God bless them!"Williams, Timothy. "Celebrities Now Give Thonx for Their Roots in the Bronx", The New York Times, June 27, 2006. Accessed September 16, 2007.:

See also: Culture of New York City, Music of New York City, and List of people from The Bronx

Transportation Roads The Bronx street grid is irregular. Much of the west Bronx follows the Manhattan street grid, and some of the streets are numbered (the numbering comes from the Manhattan grid, but does not match it exactly). The west Bronx's hilly terrain, however, leaves a relatively free street grid that closely resembles that of extreme upper Manhattan, which has similar terrain. Because the street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, the lowest numbered street in the Bronx is East 132nd Street. The east Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. However, only the Wakefield, Bronx neighborhood picks up the street numbering.

Three major north-south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue (Manhattan), Park Avenue (Manhattan), and Broadway (New York City). Other major north-south roads include the Grand Concourse (Bronx), Jerome Avenue , Webster Avenue , and White Plains Road. Major east-west streets include Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, Boston Road and Tremont Avenue. Many east-west streets are prefixed with either "East" or "West," to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) as the dividing line).

Several major expressways and highways traverse the Bronx. These include:



Bridges Many bridges connect the Bronx to Manhattan and Queens. These include, from west to east:

To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge (Manhattan), the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge (New York City), the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (Manhattan) (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).

To Manhattan or Queens: the Triborough Bridge

To Queens: the Bronx Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge

Mass transit The Bronx is served by six lines of the New York City Subway: Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line (Metro-North) and the Hudson Line (Metro-North)) serve 12 stations in the Bronx. In addition, trains serving the New Haven Line (Metro-North) stop at Fordham (Metro-North station).

Education 's Keating Hall.

Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education. Private schools range from elite independent schools to parochial schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.

Many high schools are located in the borough including the Bronx High School of Science, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, DeWitt Clinton High School, and the Grace H. Dodge Vocational & Technical H.S.. Parochial (Catholic-linked) high schools include St. Raymond High School for Boys, All Hallows High School, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School (New York City), Preston High School (New York City), St. Catharines Academy, and Mount Saint Michael Academy. The Bronx is home to three of New York City's most elite private schools: Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Horace Mann School (New York City), and Riverdale Country School.

Starting in the 1990s New York City began closing large, public high schools in The Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Cited reasons for the changes include poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include James Monroe, William Howard Taft High School (New York City), Theodore Roosevelt High School (New York City), Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus High School (Bronx, New York), Morris, Walton High School (New York City), and South Bronx High Schools. More recently the City has started phasing out large middle schools, also replacing them with smaller schools.

Several colleges and universities are located in The Bronx. Fordham University, a coeducational undergraduate and graduate university, was founded in 1841. It is officially an independent institution but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill is the main campus of the university. Addionally, the main campus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Yeshiva University, is in Morris Park. Three campuses of the City University of New York are in The Bronx, including Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University), Hostos Community College, and Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College). The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college located Riverdale and is under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale. Manhattan College offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. Graduate programs are offered for education and engineering. Monroe College is a private college with a campus in the Bronx. It offers both two-year and four-year programs. The State University of New York Maritime College is a national leader in maritime education.

References Briggs, Xavier de Souza, Anita Miller and John Shapiro. 1996. "CCRP in the South Bronx." Planners' Casebook, Winter.

External links

See also



I Love The Bronx!
A listing of things to do and places to visit in the borough, presented by the Bronx Tourism Council. Includes links to famous places and off-the-beaten path destinations.

The Bronx: News
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MySpace music profile for The Bronx with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs, band information, downloads and more

The Bronx
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BBC NEWS | South Asia | From Bhutan to the Bronx
Dumeetha Luthra meets some Bhutanese refugees who have arrived in the US from Nepal. ... A first group of Bhutanese refugees camped in Nepal is settling in the US as part of what ...

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