Talk Bronx New York

Wild green Bronx

PEACEFUL: Tourists rest on a bench overlooking the Hudson river and gardens at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the northwest Bronx in New York

IT SNAPS: Lisa Henderson and her daughter Sabrina admire snapdragons at the New York Botanical Garden.

PRETTY IN PINK: An Allium Giganteum, a member of the onion family, blooms at the New York Botanical Garden.

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25 percent of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion.

“Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year.

Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

GREEN SPACES: Sure, the Bronx Zoo has wild animals from around the world, including a new exhibit called Madagascar.

But for native wildlife, check out the Bronx River, which runs alongside the zoo. Turtles sun themselves on rocks, a red-winged blackbird calls, geese march by the shore.

On a recent day, a wayward duckling hopped out of the water and drew a crowd, attracting more attention than a nearby buffalo exhibit.

You can walk along the river without paying admission to the zoo; the trail starts near the totem pole in the zoo parking lot.

The Bronx River Alliance, which is restoring the waterway, hosts events and paddling on the river; http://www.bronxriver.org.

If you want lions and tigers too, the zoo is open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (5:30 p.m. on weekends); http://www.bronxzoo.com.

North of the zoo is the New York Botanical Garden, a National Historic Landmark that dates to 1891, http://www.nybg.org, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

A tram takes you around the garden’s 250 acres, which include a children’s garden, forest, rock garden, and a Victorian-style glass conservatory.

The vast rose garden’s 3,000 plants include varieties that bloom continuously spring to fall. An outdoor exhibit of 20 Henry Moore sculptures is up through Nov. 2.

Yves Soulier, a tourist from France, visited the garden recently with his wife, Anne. He said the Bronx had a reputation as “a hard banlieue,” using the French term for the outskirts of a city. “I have read this in the books,” he added. “But we like the flowers and plants here.”

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

New York promotes the Bronx’s parks and gardens

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is blooming!

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25% of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion. “Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

CITY GUIDE: Where to sleep, eat and shop in New York

It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year. Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

Green spaces only comprise part of the Bronx’s attractions. There is also Italian food on Arthur Avenue, a hip-hop music tour, a bed-and-breakfast called Le Refuge Inn, and saltwater swimming at Orchard Beach. For more information, visit the Bronx Tourism Council website at www.ilovethebronx.com or NYC & Company at www.nycvisit.com/bronx. Meanwhile, here are some highlights.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

New York Real Estate: Morris Park, Bronx

MAP/BOUNDARIES

Morris Park is defined by Pelham Parkway to the north, the Amtrak/Metro-North tracks to the east and south and Muliner Avenue and Bronxdale Avenue to the west.

INTRO

Morris Park’s thriving Italian community is often compared to the better-known Little Italy centered on Arthur Avenue, but that doesn’t mean the locals are any less proud of their neighborhood.

The number of pasticcerie, salumerias, and pizzerias crammed into the area is spellbinding, Italian is spoken in the shops, and even the parking meters are striped with the colors of the motherland’s flag.

But at the turn of the century, Morris Park was famous for something else: its racetrack, which was built by John Albert Morris.

Local development picked up in 1910 when a streetcar line was installed on Morris Park Avenue, and construction of new roads and housing continuing well past World War II. Soon, droves of Italian immigrants began settling in the area.

Though the area’s Italian qualities are prominent, some locals claim there’s more to Morris Park than the Italian community.

“It’s always been a family area, and that’s stayed the same, but now all types of people live here,” said Angela DaBenigno, who moved to Morris Park in 1992. “People move in, people move out, but the area constantly adapts to the changes.”

The neighborhood is now home to significant populations of Albanians, Latinos and Chinese.

“There are a lot of different ethnic varieties, different colors,” said DaBenigno. “Years ago it was much more Italian, but times change.”

Though Morris Park’s population has become more diverse in recent years, residents still have certain things in common.

“It’ll always be a good, regular crowd–down-to-earth, working class people,” said DaBenigno. “No matter how much it changes, it’s still a gem in the Bronx.”

TO EAT & DRINK

Morris Park’s restaurant scene is comprised largely of Italian eateries, with the pizza places considered among the best in the Bronx. Try Emilio’s (1051 Morris Park Ave.); Luciano’s Pizza (1005 Morris Park Ave.); Pasta Pasta (2023 Williamsbridge Rd.); and Federici Ristorante (980 Morris Park Ave.).

• Patricia’s

This extraordinarily popular brick pizza restaurant gets so packed during peak hours that squeezing through to your table can be quite trying indeed. The atmosphere’s unbeatable, and so is the food: sandwiches made with slices of rich and oily focaccia, breadbaskets accompanied by garlicky dips and arguably some of the best pizza in the Bronx (some even say the city).

1080 Morris Park Ave. 718-409-9069

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Giants Amid the Blooms

More Photos

AS summer approaches and the euro and pound remain mightier than the dollar, New York City seems to have been recolonized by Europeans over the last few weeks. But one group of visitors that arrived recently from Britain for a brief change of scenery did not travel the normal way, slogging through the purgatory of airport customs. Most of them arrived at Port Elizabeth in New Jersey in the holds of cargo ships. And at least one made its way into the Bronx strapped to a low flatbed truck so big that it had to wait until the middle of the night to cross the George Washington Bridge, stopping traffic with its greenish biomorphic bulk, like something bound for a government lab at Area 51.

The city is no stranger to these kinds of tourists, having hosted its share over the last few decades. But the New York Botanical Garden’s “Moore in America” exhibition, which opens Saturday with 18 of Henry Moore’s big, beloved bronzes (and two more in fiberglass), is the largest outdoor collection of his work in a single location ever presented in New York, or anywhere else in the country. And it serves as the garden’s announcement — after it dipped in its toes with a crowd-pleasing show of Dale Chihuly glass works in 2006 — of its intention to venture more ambitiously into the art world as a way of opening people’s eyes to the garden not simply as a nice, blossomy place to spend a summer afternoon but also as a museum in itself, one of flora.

“It opens up the gardens to new audiences who might not be all that into plants or into gardening but who are into human creativity,” said Todd Forrest, the garden’s vice president for horticulture, riding one recent sunny morning on the back of a golf cart as Moores were being trucked into place all across the garden’s 250 acres.

“And by bringing in art, we show them that the garden — that these kinds of gardens — are in themselves works of art,” he continued. “They’ve been designed and constructed and conserved in much the same spirit.”

In choosing Moore, one of the most revered and familiar sculptors of the 20th century, the garden may be taking few risks. But Mr. Forrest and officials at the Henry Moore Foundation, in rural Hertfordshire north of London, said that the landscape, with its combination of highly choreographed planting, natural schist formations and native forest, was such an ideal fit for the work that it seemed the logical choice for the garden’s first ambitious exhibition.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post