Last month we bid farewell to the iconic City Island Bridge, the only way on and off the island as the city begins the process of replacing the 114 year old structure (with an ugly causeway-like bridge.
Tommy Breen and his brother have been documenting the project since it began and have put together a rather heartwarming and touching video.
Located in Morrisania on Clay Avenue between 165th and 166th Streets, this tiny historic district has been selected by New York City’s Historic District Council’s ‘Six to Celebrate’ which, unbeknownst to many, sits on the former Fleetwood Trotting Track, a horse racing course.
Entering it’s fourth year, the program highlights six areas as the agency provides year long support not just in shining a spotlight but also helping with issues the district or organization may be facing.
The top story this morning continues to be how community boards across New York City are striking down de Blasio’s zoning changes. Meanwhile, a look into the world of green taxis, Comptroller Scott Stringer thinks it’s fine time to shut down Rikers, 4 buildings get a new lease on life, and a peek inside the Bronx General Post Office and plans for the landmark.
No Longer Empty Curatorial Lab (NLE Lab) is pleased to present Intersecting Imaginaries at 900 Grand Concourse, a site-responsive exhibition curated by Natasha Bunzl, Dalaeja Foreman, Paola Gallio, Mary Kay Judy, Eva Mayhabal Davis, Lindsey O’Connor, Walter Puryear, and Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle. Including sculpture, photography, installation, video, works on paper and commissioned works by Bronx-based and tri-state area artists, Intersecting Imaginaries considers mapping as a method for understanding place, time, and identity.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the philosophical concept of the social imaginary, which considers community to be composed of human interaction and perceived connection. Intersecting Imaginaries melds this abstract understanding with an acknowledgement of external circumstance, presenting a constellation of works that speak to memory and lived experience as composite parts of a map, and as the binding fibers of community.
Facing the Bronx Supreme Courthouse, and mere blocks from Yankee Stadium, the storefront sits in a highly frequented intersection of the South Bronx. These landmarks, each controversial in their own right, arouse singular stories within a diverse borough that inform the cultural and sociopolitical discussion at the heart of the exhibition. The site has served many functions: it was once a ballroom as part of the Concourse Plaza Hotel, a diner, a thrift store, and now stands empty, sharing walls with housing provided by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizen Council. Remnants of its former lives are evident in the raw space, serving as inspiration and context for works that navigate body politics, racial identity, communities in flux, and the natural environment as both separate and intersecting realities.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan to preserve and create 200,000 units of affordable housing is crumbling, Casita Maria searches for a new executive director as Sarah Calderon departs the organization after 7 wonderful years, and the Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College may be repurposed are some of the stories you’ll find here at Bronx PM Links.
An exploration of supernatural phenomenon, ghosts, and old-wives tales in the borough of The Bronx with LATIN HORROR’s Edwin Pagán.
Most people don’t associate the Bronx as a place connected to paranormal activity, having haunted houses, or deep and dark secrets connected to the supernatural, but there are plenty of old estates built on vast landscapes that were once farmland during the Colonial or industrial age, and plenty of places where tragedies have fostered apparitions seeking justice (or who cannot gain closure). We’ll visit a few of these places and discuss how these locations became haunted and the scary things that take place there, and who—or what—still walks those grounds today (and we’re not talking about the current tenants).
We love The Bronx, the much maligned borough of New York City.
I dare even say that Bronx pride surpasses that of other boroughs.
We have so much to be proud of throughout our history giving birth to so many movers and shakers, artists, music genres, and that’s not even touching upon our beautiful, natural resources.
A French Huguenot family, the Lorillards, settled in the area which is now known as Allerton as well as parts of the New York Botanical Garden back in the late 1700s. The family became extremely successful in the tobacco industry and their company would eventually give rise to Lorillard Inc, which makes Newport, Kent, and other cigarettes.
By 1840 they had built what is now known as The Snuff Mill at NYBG which according to the New York Times, “…tobacco was ground into smokeless, powdery form called snuff, which could be flavored and inhaled.”
When the Bronx General Post Office was purchased by YoungWoo and Associates last year, one of the first things they announced they would work on would be the restoration of the landmarked interior murals—masterpieces from the New Deal Era by Ben Shahn created in 1939.
Earlier this year, after selecting Parma Conservation, LTD, the delicate work of restoring these important works of art treasures began.
After No Longer Empty’s residency and exhibition at the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, ‘When You Cut Into The Preset The Future Leaks Out’, and over 6,000 visitors—over 75% from the area and not counting youth programs who graced the halls of this hallowed landmark—many have asked what now?
Well one possibility is that The Universal Hip Hop Museum—the only and official Hip-Hop museum chartered by the State of New York—may in fact call the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse Home. A fitting tribute given the fact that The Bronx is the birthplace of the global phenomenon that is Hip-Hop.
In case you haven’t made it yet and have been meaning to do so, this…
Thanks to community residents from Port Morris and Mott Haven in The South Bronx—along with local institutions, community based organizations and businesses—the vision for a sustainable waterfront and access to it by local residents has taken one leap closer to becoming reality and as soon as a 2017 groundbreaking.
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