The Bronx Is More Than Just Yankee Stadium
THIS season is your last chance to catch a game in the old Yankee Stadium, before the House That Ruth Built is replaced by its modern cousin across 161st Street, the House That Steinbrenner and Taxpayer Subsidies Built.
That means a lot of first-timers will be heading into town and up to the South Bronx, and they might have no idea what else there is to see and do around the stadium. They shouldn’t feel bad: most lifelong Yankees fans who have been up there hundreds of times don’t know, either.
That’s in part because the area still suffers the hangover of decades of bad press. But Howard Cosell is dead, the Bronx isn’t burning, and sticking around after the game does not have to mean crowding into beer-soaked bars across the street from the stadium.
You don’t even have to go very far; you’re only three blocks away from the Grand Concourse, the once-stately, still-impressive thoroughfare that in its day was a most desirable address. It’s working-class these days, but you can still sense the grandeur in the sheer width of the 11-lane road and the architecture that lines it.
Not far from the stadium, at the intersection of 161st and the Concourse, are the Bronx County Courthouse (a handsome but imposing fortress), Joyce Kilmer Park (a spot to picnic on jerk chicken from the nearby Feeding Tree restaurant or a bresaola panini from the Press Cafe) and the former Concourse Plaza Hotel (once full of Yankees and politicians).
But the Concourse is best known architecturally for what is often called the biggest concentration of Art Deco buildings outside Miami. Walking north from 161st Street you’ll find at least one gem every few blocks, but be sure you walk at least the half-dozen blocks to 1150 Grand Concourse, the apartments known as the Fish Building for its aquarium mosaic. It’s enough to make you think (for a moment, anyway) that you’re in South Beach, not the South Bronx.
Ambitious Art Deco buffs could keep going for miles (on foot or by bus), all the way to Fordham Road past the old Loew’s Paradise, and cut east to eat in the Bronx’s Little Italy. Or keep going to the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, the slightly relocatedoriginal house where the poet retreated in what was, in the mid 19th century, bucolic hinterlands.
Your other option is to head south from the stadium down to Mott Haven, home to an ever-growing artists’ colony. (The closest train from Manhattan is the 6 train to 138th Street, but from the stadium take the 4 to 138th and walk east to Alexander Avenue.) The area has long been known for its antiques shops, which attract visitors from Westchester County and beyond, but now there are also arts spaces to check out, places to eat and even a new place to party.
Art makes its way into weird places in Mott Haven. Haven Arts recently moved into a 2,500-square-foot space in a former linoleum store (check out the freight scale built into the floor) and is currently showing “NY Press,” an exhibition of New York photojournalists from The New York Times, The Daily News and other publications. It also holds free painting classes from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, usually with a nude model.
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