My Old Neighborhood Remembered

ALSO BY AVERY CORMAN

M
Y
O
LD
N
EIGHBORHOOD
R
EMEMBERED

A Memoir

AVERY CORMAN

B
ARRICADE
B
OOKS

F
ORT
L
EE
, N
EW
J
ERSEY

Published by Barricade Books Inc.

2037 Lemoine Ave.

Fort Lee, NJ 07024

www.barricadebooks.com

Copyright © 2014 Avery Corman, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Corman, Avery.

My old neighborhood remembered : a memoir / Avery Corman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-56980-518-3

1. Bronx (New York, N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century. 2. Corman, Avery)—Childhood and youth. 3. Neighborhoods--New York (State)—New York)— History)—20th century. 4. City and town life)—New York (State))—New York)— History)—20th century. 5. Bronx (New York, N.Y.))—Biography. 6. New York (N.Y.))—Biography. 7. New York (N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century. 8. Authors, American)—Biography. I. Title.

F128.68.B8C78 2014

974.7'275043)—dc23

2014007506

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Manufactured in the United States of America

For my mother,
my sister, Jackie,
my Aunt Anne and Uncle Moses,
my cousins, Leo, Selma, Renee,
and the boyfriends who became husbands,
Norm, Cy, Lenny

1.   The Loew's Paradise Theater on the Grand Concourse south of 188th Street.
New York City Municipal Archives
.

2.   The intersection of the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road.
Courtesy of The Bronx County Historical Society, New York City
.

3.   Alexander's Department Store on the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road.
Courtesy of The Bronx County Historical Society, New York City
.

4.   A World War II war bond drive on the Grand Concourse in 1942.
Photo copyright SofTech Consulting, Chappaqua, NY, USA and reproduced by agreement. All rights reserved
.

5.   An eastbound trolley at the intersection of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse.
Courtesy
ouroldneighborhood.com
.

6.   175 Field Place, the building where the author lived, at the Grand Concourse between 183rd and 184th Streets.
New York City Municipal Archives
.

7.   Newspaper photo of the Memorial Day Parade of 1946. One of the people looking out the window is the author.
© Daily News, L.P. (New York). Used with permission
.

8.   The luxury area of the Grand Concourse. 930 Grand Concourse near 163rd Street.
The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY
.

9.   The Concourse Plaza Hotel on the Grand Concourse at 161st Street.
Courtesy of The Bronx County Historical Society, New York City
.

10.   P.S. 33 Elementary School on Jerome Avenue south of Fordham Road.
The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY
.

11.   DeWitt Clinton High School on Mosholu Parkway.
Courtesy of The Bronx County Historical Society, New York City
.

12.   Joseph Vitolo, Jr., the nine year old boy who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, praying before the crowd assembled in a vacant lot in 1945.
© Bettman/Corbis
.

13.   The Ascot Theater and a partial view of the Concourse Center of Israel on the right on the Grand Concourse north of 183rd Street.
New York City Municipal Archives
.

14.   J. S. Krum's on the Grand Concourse north of 188th Street.
New York City Municipal Archives
.

15.   The uncaged lions behind a moat in the African Plains exhibit of the Bronx Zoo.
The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY
.

16.   Joe DiMaggio at bat in Yankee Stadium in 1941.
© Bettman/Corbis
.

This is about the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s, my growing up years. I left the Bronx in February 1960. I was 24 and uncomfortable about still living at home at that age, although people still did so then. I was working in Manhattan and had been waiting to cobble together enough money to rent my own place downtown.

Her face and name are lost to time, but she offered me a catalytic moment. The young woman was from out of town and in my never-ending pursuit of low budget things to do on a date I managed to sell the idea that it was interesting to wander through the Central Park Zoo at night and see if any animals were out and about in their cages. We stopped in front of the polar bears and after watching them, we began to neck and then she said to me, “If you had your own apartment we could go there now.” I was gone from the Bronx almost instantly.

I did not see her again. She went back to wherever she came from and I moved into an apartment in Manhattan. Much has been written about the changes in the Bronx from the 1960s on. When I left, the changes had not yet occurred in the part of the Bronx where I lived. I was among those who left simply because the aspiration of our parents' generation, to live in the Bronx, was not our aspiration.

Bronx neighborhood life in the 1940s and 1950s was similar to neighborhood life in Brooklyn, with similar demographics and similar iconic symbols of that life. The major differences I can discern related to size, in that Brooklyn being larger than the Bronx had more of everything, population, schools, private houses, and also more neighborhoods that were distinct in their characteristics from other Brooklyn neighborhoods. In the Bronx economic differences did exist between parts of the east Bronx and the west Bronx, still it seems to me more homogeneity existed among neighborhoods across the Bronx than was the case in Brooklyn, that growing up in one neighborhood in the Bronx was very much like growing up in another. But then I didn't come from Brooklyn and Brooklyn people might argue the point. Meaning no disrespect to Brooklyn or anywhere else, or anyone else's experience of the Bronx, this is what I remember.

The building was a scruffy walkup with stores on the street level. Our family's move there was traditional. We followed the post-immigrant housing route which contributed to the development of the Bronx of the 1940s — from low income parts of the city like the lower east side to better housing in the east Bronx and, for some, to better housing in the west Bronx. We had come from a tenement building on Tiffany Street in the east Bronx to this west Bronx three-bedroom apartment on Field Place between 183rd and 184th Street, an apartment with two rooms facing the Grand Concourse. The ultimate in the Bronx was to live in a white brick, art deco elevator building on the Grand Concourse. This was not such a building.

A lifetime later I attended an alumni event of my high school, DeWitt Clinton. I was a published author by then and my name was announced as scheduled to attend. Several people whom I had known in high school, who had remained friendly with one another, decided to come. One of them asked me, “Where did you live exactly?” “Field Place and the Concourse.” “Oh, the Concourse,” was his response. “You must have been rich.” “He wasn't,” a classmate of mine dating back to elementary school said. “He lived in an apartment with his aunt and his uncle and a little brown dog.” I placed my hand to my heart. I was married with children. Nobody in my new family held that as a reference to me, my aunt and my uncle and my childhood dog.