Talk Bronx New York

Edgar Allen Poe’s home in the Bronx to be restored

Poe Cottage, the Bronx home of writer Edgar Allan Poe, will close this winter for restoration

A new, $3.2 million visitor center, seen in an artist’s conception, is slated to open in 2009.

There may not be ravens rapping at the door of Edgar Allan Poe’s final home in the Bronx.

But with a planned $250,000 fix-up and a new visitor center, thousands more tourists are expected to make the pilgrimage to Poe Cottage.

After two moves and years of being shaken by cars on the Grand Concourse and the nearby subway, the house of the famed poet and writer is in bad shape. Paint is peeling, the plaster is cracked and there are cobwebs on the rain-damaged windows.

Once restored, the house will have a fresh coat of paint, new green shutters, a ramp for the handicapped and, ideally, a projected increase of 6,000 tourists a year, said Kathleen McCauley, manager of the cottage in Poe Park, at the Concourse and Kingsbridge Road.

“It’s gone through a lot of transformations,” she said. “Poe would have liked that.”

The design of the new, $3.2 million, 2,000-square-foot visitor center was inspired by Poe’s poem, “The Raven.”

The slate shingles are meant to look like feathers, and the roof sweeps down like bird wings. The bathroom walls will have an abstract picture of Poe’s face.

Repairs and the visitor center are being funded by a combination of federal and city dollars and from donations to the Bronx Historical Society, which operates the facility. The city Parks Department owns it.

The visitor center is due to open in August 2009, while the cottage will be closed for repairs sometime this winter and reopened in 2010.

The cottage, where Poe spent the last years of his life and wrote “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “Eldorado,” now sees about 4,000 visitors annually.

Read more..

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

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.

Read more..

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

City Reaches Out to Bronx On New BRT Route

NYC DOT and NYC Transit have begun presenting at Bronx community boards to help promote the June 29 launch of NYC’s first bus rapid transit route along Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx. The new service, known as Select Bus Service, has distinct features that will make riding the bus a new experience for transit riders along the corridor.

As MTR wrote earlier, Select Bus fares will be paid under a “proof of payment” system where riders would pay at stations and show a receipt if asked by on-board fare collectors. This will shorten delay caused as passengers pay one by one at the head of the bus.

Read more..

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

Bronx Resident Has War Museum

Joseph Garofalo stands among his war relics that include these Army, Navy and Marines insignia. Items from all four branches of the military are featured.

 

Grenades of various types, coins and medals donated by local vets can be viewed by visitors, who can also look up and enjoy the models of war planes collected by Garofalo.

Korea and Vietnam conflicts are remembered among these badges of honor that hang beneath some of the equipment of war.

Nazi motorcycle gloves, a box labeled “beans with frankfurter chunks,” and a knife made out of the propeller of a downed Kamikaze plane. They are just some of the small relics of war Bronx veterans have brought home over a century, and Joseph Garofalo is fighting to find them a home.

The 87-year-old retired carpenter and lifelong Bronx resident has created an eclectic exhibit of more than 100 items - what he loosely calls the Bronx Veterans Museum.

It is currently housed in a corner of the sitting room at the John Dormi & Sons Funeral Home on Morris Park Ave.

The exhibit’s most popular feature is two growing binders filled with photos of Bronx veterans, dropped off by family members or the vets themselves.

New this month is a showcase, paid for by veterans, filled with uniforms from the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force from World War I through the Vietnam War.

“People come in almost every day,” said Terry LeVoci, office manager of the funeral home. “They want to look at pictures or artifacts. They are drawn to it.”

Garofalo would like to find a permanent display area in the Bronx.

Read more..

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

Chase In The Bronx Leads To Shooting..

In the ninth shooting to involve police during the first seven days of 2008, police officers shot and wounded an unarmed suspect who led them on a car chase through the Bronx yesterday, police officials said.

The confrontation happened at about 11:30 a.m., as plainclothes anti-crime officers on patrol attempted to stop the suspect as he was driving near Jerome Avenue and Kingsbridge Road, police said. The suspect fled in his car as the officers approached, prompting them to jump in their unmarked car and give chase, police said.

After the suspect’s vehicle became stuck in traffic near West Kingsbridge Road and Aqueduct Avenue, about three blocks away, police tried to stop him again. According to police officials, the officers approached the vehicle and demanded to see the suspect’s identification.

Read more..

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