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New South Bronx Apartments Named For Local Nun

A once-empty lot in the South Bronx is now the site of new apartments.

The Sister Thomas Apartments at 870 Southern Boulevard in Hunts Point was officially named Thursday.

The abandoned city-owned lot, once a reminder of the crime that plagued the neighborhood in the 1970s, was developed by the South East Bronx Community Organization into 103 units of affordable housing.

“When I came up today in my car and I went through the area, and it was extraordinary,” said former Mayor Ed Koch, who attended the dedication. “It was alive. And I remember when I went through this area when I became mayor and it was dead or dying.”

“And Lord make this home a happy place and bless it from above. So that’s how my new family knows how much I love them,” said Sister Thomas of the Sisters of Charity, whose name graces the apartments.

Sister Thomas was one of those who led the push to clean up the neighborhood and bring housing back to the borough.

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Remembering Father Bill, of St. Athanasius Church on Tiffany St.

Hundreds of people streamed in and out of St. Athanasius Church on Tiffany St. one day last week, filing past the thin figure in the coffin at the altar of the 100-year-old, red brick church, the focal point of a bustling neighborhood, dwarfed on all sides by apartment buildings and a pristine nursing-home complex. Across the street are tidy, ranch-style houses.

They were paying respects to the Rev. William Smith, better known as Father Bill Smith, whose church had once stood desolate, towering over rubble and vacant lots in the South Bronx’s darkest days.

Now all the buildings full of people stand as tributes to Smith.

He died last week at 74 years old, after a long illness that weakened but didn’t stop him from serving the people of his beloved South Bronx, whose remarkable recovery Smith had a large hand in.

He was ordained in 1959, and shortly after was assigned to St. John Chrysostom Church on E. 167th St., when the area was still a solid working-class neighborhood.

“He married my wife and me in 1968,” said Luis Burgos, 63, standing in the plaza outside St. Athanasius after he paid respects to Smith, with his granddaughter in tow.

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The Rev. Louis Gigante, who helped rebuild neighborhoods destroyed by poverty and arson in the 1960s and ’70s.

Bronx Leader Leads New Generation To Become Leaders

The man who helped rebuild the Bronx from the ashes is passing a torch of a very different sort.

The Rev. Louis Gigante, who founded the South East Bronx Community Organization in 1968 as a wave of arson began sweeping through the borough, stepped down last week as head of the renowned nonprofit after nearly 40 years at the helm.

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