Landmark rowhouses in a gritty Bronx enclave

There’s brownstone Brooklyn . . . but how about brownstone Bronx?

It exists, and it’s worth exploring. Tucked into some of the borough’s older neighborhoods are lovely clusters of row houses that resemble their counterparts in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

One landmarked stretch is on Morris Avenue and 179th Street. This is the Morris Avenue Historic District—a slender, quiet enclave two blocks from the gritty, seen-better-days Grand Concourse.

Designed by a single architect, they date back between 1906 and 1910, after the opening of the IRT subway sparked a wave of development in the Bronx aimed at Manhattanites itching to move out of the city.

The block “is a notable example of a uniformly planned streetscape,” states the Landmark Commission Report from 1986.

Too bad these once-elegant bowfront homes are not in the best shape.

Some windows are boarded up, and many have been divided into SRO apartments. But so were parts of Fort Greene and Boerum Hill back in the day.

Here’s another beautiful stretch of Bronx rowhouses, on a block once known as the “Irish Fifth Avenue.”