A 1950s congressman’s faded re-election ad still remains on a Bronx tenement

It’s been more than 70 years since Paul A. Fino began serving as a U.S. Congressional rep for the Bronx, where he was born and raised.

Fino, a leader in the Bronx’s Republican party, won a seat in the 83rd Congress in 1952, then was reelected for seven more terms—resigning in 1968 to become a judge on the New York State Supreme Court.

He sounds like the kind of colorful, promotional politician who understood his constituents in the borough’s 25th District. In postwar New York City, that district—from Riverdale to Woodlawn to Parkchester to Throgs Neck—was primarily Italian, Irish, German, and Jewish, per a New York Times article on Fino’s battle to keep his Congressional seat in 1956.

It’s hard to know where he would land in today’s political climate. Fino, who earned a law degree in 1937, was described in one article as a “pragmatic moderate.” He was opposed to busing and abortion rights, but he voted for the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. He supported Medicare, as well as “bigger and earlier” Social Security benefits.

His battles with liberal Mayor John Lindsay were legendary. “Mr. Fino had a hard time swallowing what he considered the Manhattan-style elitism of Mr. Lindsay, who was mayor from 1966 through 1973,” the New York Times stated in Fino’s obituary.

Fino retreated from political life after the 1970s; he died in 2009 at age 95. I wonder what this long-serving politician would think if he knew that a re-election ad painted on the side of a tenement in the 1950s or 1960s would still be legible in 2024?

The faded sign, at Crotona Avenue and 183rd Street, preserves him as “your fighting congressman” on a tenement located roughly between two Bronx landmarks: Arthur Avenue and the Bronx Zoo.

[Shoutout to Justine V. for spotting this ad and taking the photo. Second photo: New York Times]

The stone and brick remains of a 19th century snuff mill on the Bronx River

There’s a curious stone and brick building perched near a woodsy border along the Bronx River inside the boundaries of the New York Botanical Garden.

Three stories high and renovated to pristine condition, the exquisite building could pass as a new creation—if not for the irregular-shaped stones encased in mortar that form its stunning walls and give away its pre-Civil War pedigree.

The building is what remains of a snuff mill, built in 1840 when the Bronx was remote countryside not yet part of New York City. Exploring who constructed it and how the mill managed to give demolition the slip for almost two centuries means traveling back in time to the tobacco-loving colonial city.

The story of the mill begins in 18th century Gotham. Outside of the city center from Greenwich Village to Bloomingdale (today’s Upper West Side), farmers grew a wide variety of crops, including tobacco. Demand for tobacco was high, as men, women, and even children at the time smoked it regularly, typically from clay pipes.

More lucrative than just growing tobacco leaves, however, was manufacturing it into tobacco products. One popular product was snuff: tobacco that had been dried and ground so it could be “snorted up the nose for a quick nicotine hit,” according to the Bronx River Alliance.

Enter Pierre Abraham Lorillard, a French Huguenot who arrived in New York from France around 1760. That year, he “opened a snuff-grinding factory in a rented house on Chatham Street in lower Manhattan,” notes NYC Parks.

Pierre Lorillard didn’t run what would become the Lorillard Tobacco Company for long. He was killed by Hessian mercenaries during the occupation of New York by the British in the late 1770s.

His two sons, Peter and George, took over the company in 1792. “The brothers Lorillard maintained the administrative offices in Manhattan but relocated the manufacturing operations north to a grist mill on the Bronx River,” states NYC Parks.

That grist mill, originally made of wood, harnessed the waters of the Bronx River to produce more chewing tobacco, snuff, and cigars than any other facility in the country, per NYC Parks.

In 1840, it was supplanted by a mill made of stone—the remains of which form the building in the Botanical Garden today.

Tobacco production in New York City made the Lorillard family very wealthy. In the 1850s, the family established Belle Mont, a 661-acre estate centered around a mansion (above photo) in today’s Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx.

The Lorillards were on the move. After the Civil War they left New York and reestablished the company in Jersey City. The stone mill was abandoned in 1870 (fourth photo, in 1895). One remnant of the family’s prominence is the Bronx’s Lorillard Avenue as well as shorter Lorillard Place, where the family’s servants resided.

Finding a proper use for a former snuff mill proved difficult. For years it served as a carpentry shop for the New York City Parks Department, according to David Dunlap in a 2009 New York Times article about the mill.

“In 1915, the agency granted a 140-acre parcel, including the mill (above, in the 1930s), to the botanical garden, which used the old building as a shop and a storehouse,” wrote Dunlap. In the 1950s, the mill had a new function: It became the Snuff Mill Tea Room, a concession space for Garden visitors.

Following a restoration about a decade ago, the Lorillard mill has been transformed into the New York Botanical Garden’s wedding venue, the Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill.

It’s certainly a lovely and historic space for a wedding. I wonder if wedding guests ever wonder about the millstone (above)—presumably original to the mill itself—embedded in the ground beside the slope toward the Bronx River?

[Third image: NYPL Digital Collections; fourth image: New-York Historical Society; fifth image: MCNY X2010.11.6517; sixth image: MCNY 95.51.2; seventh image: LOC]

This 1911 map is a wishlist of bridges and tunnels New York City would never build

A burial ground and parking lot in Central Park, an airport spanning dozens of blocks on Manhattan’s West Side, filling in the East River to create more land—the list of ideas for “improving” the city’s infrastructure and transit system includes some truly weird proposals.

But as this 1911 map shows, some of the most ambitious plans focused on bridge and tunnel building. The image comes from the New-York Tribune, which ran a front page article On January 1 of that year outlining all of the bridges and tunnels the city should build to make it easier to traverse the boroughs.

Of course, some of these bridges and tunnels already existed: the Queensboro, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges across the East River, for example. And others made the jump from proposal to reality in the ensuing years, like the Hell Gate Bridge (completed in 1916) and the 179th Street bridge across the Hudson—opened in 1931 as the George Washington Bridge.

But others were merely wishful thinking—like the 57th Street and 110th Street bridges to New Jersey, and a fourth East River crossing between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. The Tribune noted that “borings have been made for this proposed bridge” and it was to be named after Brooklyn Democratic leader and politician Pat McCarren. (His name ended up gracing a park instead.)

The Tribune predicted all kinds of chaos if these bridges and tunnels weren’t built to accommodate the “tide of humanity” that needed them. But the reality of raising funds for construction likely sounded the death knell, if they were ever taken seriously in the first place.

And what would we do with all these crossings in the age of remote work? That’s one development the Tribune of more than a century ago could not possibly have predicted.

A faded sign with a mystery two-letter phone exchange beside a Bronx highway

Discovering faded ads for city businesses is always a delight. And an ad that includes one of those old two-letter phone exchanges officially phased out in the 1960s? Bring it on.

This one above, beside the Bruckner Expressway between 140th and 141st Streets in the South Bronx, is for a shipper and mover called La Flor de Mayo Express. Weathered by the elements, the ad itself isn’t very old—but the business is.

“Serving the Hispanic Community since 1934,” the sign tells us, adding four locations: New York, Puerto Rico, Santa Domingo, and Florida. Still in business almost 90 years later, the company likely helped fuel the growth of the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities in the city in the decades after World War II.

Now, the two-letter phone exchange: LU. That’s something of a mystery. It could signify a geographical location in the neighborhood or well-known attraction.

Maybe Longwood, after the nearby neighborhood? Or Lorillard, for the tobacco company that got its start along the Bronx River in the 18th century? These past posts share more old-school New York City phone numbers.

[Thanks to Justine for discovering this one!]

The unusual beauty of a 1908 row house “oasis of tranquility” in the Bronx

When you think of the Bronx, districts of tidy single-family attached row houses probably don’t come to mind. And that makes sense, considering the late start this northernmost borough had in terms of urban development.

The Bronx still maintained a sizable number of rural areas (and large estates owned by the wealthy) within its borders when it was annexed to New York City in stages from 1872 to 1895. The borough was too spread out, and had too few people, to build the kinds of brownstone and townhouse rows that urbanized Manhattan and Brooklyn throughout the 19th century.

But after a population boom in the early 1900s, as well as the opening of the New York City subway, row house development did come to some parts of the Bronx—including Hunts Point, when 42 two-story dwellings lining the north and south sides of Manida Street hit the market.

Instead of the brownstone or limestone homes typical of large parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the row houses along this stretch of the newly developed South Bronx are semi-detached dwellings in the Renaissance Revival or Flemish Revival style with bow fronts, stepped parapets, and other whimsical architectural touches.

These houses, situated on a single block between Garrison and Lafayette Avenues, make up the Manida Street Historic District. Made official in 2020, the new historic district joins others in the Bronx like the Bertine Block in Mott Haven and a section of Morris Avenue near the Grand Concourse.

[Above, 839 and 841 Manida Street today; below, the two houses in 1939-1941]

“On both sides of Manida Street, the two-story and basement, semi-detached buildings feature mirror-image facades with rounded projecting bays, low stone stoops, simple cornices with steeply pitched parapets above, and ornamentation concentrated around the doors and windows,” stated the Landmarks Preservation Commission Report.

Designed by architects James F. Meehan and Daube & Kreymborg in 1908-1909, the row houses were built on speculation and advertised to potential buyers in a 1909 ad that ran in the New York Times, per the LPC report.

“These two-family houses are situated in one of the prettiest and most accessible areas of the Bronx,” the ad read. “They are in the heart of a district built up with some of the finest homes in the greater city.”

Who decided to buy one of these two-family row houses, which included the appealing option of renting one half of the house to another family and making back a little cash?

The first crop of owners were mostly immigrants, primarily Russian Jews, according to the LPC report. “In addition, there were several German households along the block, with a few Irish and Italian residents as well,” the report added.

Like much of the rest of the Bronx, Manida Street maintained its middle-class status as the 20th century continued. Residents worked as “tailors, teachers, diamond dealers, and leather merchants,” noted the report. Some worked at the nearby American Bank Note Company Printing Plant.

Demographics changed as the century continued, of course. While the Bronx’s fortunes turned, the row houses on Manida Street and the sense of a middle-class island in Hunts Point remained intact.

“In the 1970s, when the Hunts Point section of the Bronx became associated with drugs, crime, and prostitution, a group of bow-front row houses in the 800 block of Manida Street remained an oasis of tranquillity,” wrote the New York Times in 2010.

These days, the South Bronx is a place of redevelopment, and the Manida Street row houses are part of a protected historic district. Though many of the houses reflect the bad old days of the area—with bars over bay windows, metal fences, and ornamentation on the facades missing—there’s an unusual harmony and beauty to the quiet block.

Will it be the next Park Slope? Probably not—it’s just one slender street. But never say never.

[Third photo: NYC Department of Records and Information Services]

Two early Bronx subway signs that still point the way “up town”

The blue and white tiles are obscured by decades of grime, edged out of the way by brighter yet featureless subway signage at a Bronx IRT station.

I tried my best to brighten them up digitally and make them look as delightful as they probably did in 1919, when this station, at Hunts Point, opened. No camera filter did them justice. So try to overlook the filth and feel the magic of seeing “Up Town” spelled out as two separate words.

Unfortunately there were no corresponding “Down Town” signs in this station; they were probably damaged years ago, then carted away by the MTA.

But you can still come across similar olds-school tiled signs in other early stations—like the Chambers Street IRT on the West Side, which features bright, clean “Up Town” and “Down Town” directionals.

The city’s most neglected war memorial might be this granite marker in the Bronx

You can barely walk through a New York City park or square without coming across some kind of war memorial, and I consider that a good thing.

Sturdy doughboy statues, proud eagle sculptures, sedate bronze plaques—these monuments don’t just pay homage to the dead but connect us to different eras in Gotham’s past. They remind us, even for a passing moment as you hurry to catch the bus, about the human toll of combat.

But occasionally you encounter a war memorial that feels not just forgotten but almost actively neglected, so battered by the elements over time that it’s become more of a receptacle for litter, not a source of reflection.

That’s the case with this granite, five-foot marker outside the Hunts Point 6 train station in the Bronx. Intended to honor the Hunts Point natives who lost their lives in World War I, it sits on a sidewalk island once known as Crames Square, for a local resident named Charles Crames who was killed in the Great War.

“To the men of Hunts Point who gave their lives in the World War 1914-1918,” a simple inscription at the top reads like a scroll between two carved ribbons.

This granite marker didn’t start out so unloved. “Three thousand residents of Hunt’s Point [sic] attended the unveiling of a seven-ton granite memorial to World War dead from that part of the Bronx,” wrote the New York Times in a small writeup on May 23, 1938.

The afternoon ceremony went from 2:30 to 4:30, and it was preceded by a parade “of civic organizations, school children, Gold Star mothers and veterans and auxiliaries of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars,” continues the Times.

Buglers played taps, and a local official told the reporter that “the purchase of a bronze eagle three feet in height was being considered by the civic association to complete the monument.”

Eighty-five years after the unveiling, Crames Square no longer honors a Great War casualty because it no longer exists. This busy spot is now known as De Valle Square, after a Cuban-born priest who led the nearby Bronx parishes at St. Anselm’s and St. Athanasius in the 1970s and 1980s.

The granite monument itself hasn’t been erased, but there’s an empty circle which perhaps held the bronze eagle the civic leader at the parade mentioned to the New York Times reporter.

Waiting for Thanksgiving dinner at a Bronx orphanage

Thanksgiving in early 20th century New York City wasn’t just celebrated in private homes and expensive hotel restaurants. Institutions of all kinds across Gotham also honored the holiday with their own commemorative dinners.

Hospitals, facilities for the poor, sick, and aged, and even city prisons served up a special Thanksgiving meal—usually along with speeches by important guests and often religious sermons.

Orphanages also celebrated Thanksgiving. This photo (above) shows more than 100 young residents sitting at long, linen-draped tables inside the girls’ dining room at the Roman Catholic Orphan Society in the Bronx. The orphanage was built in 1902, relocated from an older building on Fifth Avenue in Midtown.

A boys’ dining room operated in a building next door. Together, both the girls’ and boys’ buildings could house up to 1,600 residents at a time, according to nycago.org.

These uniform-clad, unsmiling girls look like they’re on their best behavior. I wish we knew exactly what their Thanksgiving menu offered…and what their adult lives were like.

You won’t find this handsome orphanage (above, in 1914) in the Bronx anymore. By the 1920s, thanks to a sizable reduction in the number or orphan residents, both buildings were abandoned and sold. The Bronx VA Hospital took its place.

[Photos: New-York Historical Society]

The story of how the Bronx got its name

Manhattan is a corruption of the Native American word Mannahatta; Staten Island derives from Staaten Eylandt, named by the Dutch. Brooklyn is the anglicization of the Dutch village of Breukelen, and Queens comes from English Queen Catherine of Braganza, who happened to be on the throne in the 1680s, when England was divvying up the former New Netherland.

But the origin of the name for New York City’s northernmost borough, the Bronx? That’s a longer story of an immigrant and his prosperous farm in the wilderness of the New World.

It all starts in 17th century Europe with a man named Jonas Bronck. The consensus seems to be that Bronck was Danish, though some historians believe he was from Sweden. Others contend he was from a Dutch Mennonite family driven to Denmark by religious persecution.

A 1639 map of New Netherlands, the year Jonas Bronck arrived

Whatever his native country was, Bronck made his way to Holland. With his wife and a group of other immigrants, he boarded a ship to New Amsterdam in 1639. “The ship also carried implements and cattle for commencing a plantation on a large scale,” states the 1916 text Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630-1674.

Upon arrival, Bronck purchased 500 acres from local Native Americans (or from Dutch leaders; sources differ) in today’s Morrisania or Mott Haven neighborhood, on the other side of the Harlem River. He cleared the land and built a stone house “covered with tiles,” a barn, several tobacco houses, and barracks for his servants, per Scandinavian Immigrants in New York.

The view from Broncksland a century after Jonas Bronck’s death

“The purchase price was two guns, two kettles, two adzes [a tool similar to an axe], two shirts, a barrel of cider, and six coins,” states a New Yorker piece from 1939. “His house stood where the N.Y. Central 138th St. station is now, just north of Harlem River.”

In sparsely settled New Netherland, Bronck grew tobacco, wheat, and corn. He also raised cattle and hogs, in “numbers unknown running in the woods,” according to a 1903 edition of the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden.

In 1908, John Ward Dunsmore portrayed the signing of the peace treaty at Bronck’s house

His farm must have been a success. The Broncks furnished their house with fine bed linens, table cloths, alabaster plates, silverware, and a library of religious and historical books in both Danish and German. It was inside this finely furnished house in 1642 where a peace treaty was signed between Native Americans and Dutch colonists (which didn’t last very long, needless to say).

Bronck’s time in his namesake borough was short. He died in 1643, and his wife quickly remarried and moved upstate. Despite his demise, the land where he built his farm was already known as Bronck’s Land, and the river north of his property was referred to as the Broncks’ River.

The South Bronx in the 19th century, with the High Bridge in the distance

Eventually, the entire borough—annexed into the city of New York in stages in the 19th century—became the Bronx at the time of consolidation in 1898. What’s with “the” in the borough’s name? “The” is a simply a holdover from when Broncks meant the river.

[Top image: MCNY, F2011.33.687; second image: Library of Congress via Wikipedia; third image: University of Michigan Library Digital Collections; fourth image: Wikipedia; fifth image: NYPL]

A peek inside a 1946 Yankees program—and the New York brands that advertised inside

I have no idea what a Yankees program looks like today. But I do know what it looked like in 1946, when the Bronx Bombers hosted the Cleveland Indians either in late April/early May, June, or August of that postwar year.

Strangely, the 16-page program doesn’t say when the series takes place. But it mentions the upcoming All-Star Game at Fenway Park, so it must have been before July.

The lineup of legendary players to take the field that day included Phil Rizzuto, Joe DiMaggio, and Bill DIckey, with Bill Bevens and Spud Chandler listed as pitchers. More interesting to me are the ads throughout the 16-page program—like Ruppert Beer.

The Ruppert ad for this Yorkville-brewed beer isn’t much of a surprise because the Yankees were owned by Jacob Ruppert from 1915 until his death in 1939. A plaque recognizing his devotion to his team stands in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park.

I’ve never heard of Major’s Cabin Grill. It’s on 34th Street, a long subway ride from Yankee Stadium, but why not? I like the warning about betting and gambling at the stadium.

I’m glad to see Schrafft’s make an appearance in the program; the restaurant chain famous for its ice cream was highly popular at the time. Apparently the ice cream bars they sold to fans at the stadium were in short supply.

The Hotel New Yorker today may not be a five-star kind of place, but it had a better reputation in the mid-20th century. This is the first time I’ve seen it described as a “home of major-league ball clubs.”

Here’s the actual scorecard, plus some fun ads on the sides—especially for the famous Hotel Astor rooftop. At one time, this was a glamorous place for dining, dancing, and catching a cool breeze in a city without air conditioning.