Crystal Chemical Company, ca. 1919 This building once housed the Crystal Chemical Company, a manufacturing space for pharmaceutical drugs and makeup. The company was originally located at 861 Westchester Avenue. Upon its founding, it made only three products. Within a year, it quickly expanded to twenty-eight, and moved to this much larger location. The new, bigger factory opened on September 18th, 1919, with a grand party, attended by prominent doctors, dentists, and retail distributors, who were given a tour of the six floors of the building. The building had facilities to store, distribute, label, and manufacture different medications and makeup. The makeup and beauty products especially were in high demand, due to their reduced price and an extensive marketing campaign; their slogan was "Crystal Products Satisfy."

2460 Second Avenue, ca. 1928. Up until 2015, this site was a bus depot operated by the New York City Transit Depot. The city-owned site will become the Harlem African Burial Ground and Cultural Center, slated for completion in 2021. An 1820 map indicates that the plot was initially owned by Nathaniel G. Ingraham. A church and slave burial ground occupied the portion of the lot closest to the Harlem River. In the late 19th-century, the lot became Sulzer's Harlem River Park, an amusement park that covered the entire block between First and Second Avenue and 126th and 127th Street. Herman Sulzer opened the Harlem River Park after his father gave him the land in 1878. The property included various entertainment venues such as a large casino, restaurants, meeting rooms, and a carousel. However, it was not to last. On an unfortunate late November morning in 1907, the park caught on fire. The New York Times reported "strong northeast wind all over Harlem," leading to the fire to spread into a $200,000 disaster. The paper chronicled a dramatic scene of a woman who worked for the casino jumping from a window to escape flames engulfing the building's staircase. She survived the fall but broke both her ankles. Nor were only employees affected! Ernest Sultzer, the president of the park at the time, owned an apartment on the second floor of the casino. Upon hearing of the fire, he rushed home to rescue his wife, who was trapped inside. She was saved, but only three exterior walls of the casino remained after the blaze. The nearby 126th Street station of the Second Avenue Elevated was spared as firefighters worked diligently to stop the flames from spreading. A new, much larger casino was built one year later. By World War I, Sultzer's Park had been sold to the city of New York and was being used for a different purpose. The New York 15th National Guard Infantry Regiment, or the 369th Regiment, an all-black infantry unit, was housed in barracks and trained before deployment on the site. The property was acquired by Cosmopolitan Productions in 1918. The company was a brainchild of William Randolph Hearst in conjunction with Adolph Zucker of Paramount Pictures. Heart's publications, such as Cosmopolitan Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping would warm up readers to the storylines of Cosmopolitan Production's movies before they were released. Thus, by the time they hit the screen, the films would have already captured the public's attention. In a particularly unlucky incident, the lot caught fire once again in the morning hours of February 19th, 1923. The Times reported that the second fire razed "the studio's electrical equipment and scenery, and almost the entire wardrobe," though its reels were salvaged. To properly contain the fire, Con Edison had to shut off electricity to the entire surrounding area. The neighborhood was left without power until six in the evening when the flames finally subdued. Hearst rebuilt the studio after the fire, but split with Zukor to merge with Goldwyn Pictures. Goldwyn provided a studio in Culver City, California for the production company to operate out of while the Harlem studio was rebuilt. In 1924, Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures Corporation acquired Goldwyn-Cosmopolitan and re-named it Metro-Goldwyn. By the time the new building was completed, the film company was called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after a subsequent merger. MGM occupied the lot until some time after the mid-20th century.

“Pulaski Park (Bronx): A view eastward across the park from the \[Willis Avenue Bridge]. On the extreme left is visible East 133rd Street, and on the right the approach to the bridge. The 3-story building within the park is that of the Board of Health. May 7, 1937.” In 1904, the City of New York acquired a plot of land in order to construct an approach (at right) to the Willis Avenue Bridge (opened 1901). In 1916, the unused land became a public park, later named for Casimir Pulaski, the Polish military commander who fought with the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War.

This story is about the lot between First and Second Avenues between 126th and 127th streets. The city is presently redeveloping this block-spanning lot into a cultural center, memorial, and mixed-use development. The memorial will commemorate the African Burial Ground, which was part of the Dutch village of Nieuw Harlem. The excavation of the cemetery took place after the New York Transit Depot closed the bus depot that had operated on the site. The project will be called the Harlem African Burial Ground Memorial and is planned for completion in 2021. Between the cemetery and bus depot, this lot has taken on quite a history in its own right. Take a look at the history of this corner in Harlem.

(Albert E. Davis, 1911-12) The North Side was a common term for the portion of the Bronx annexed by New York City in 1874. Its Board of Trade was founded in 1894 to advocate for the borough and was cited as one of the leading civic organizations of its time. The building resembles many contemporary public institutions, its Neoclassical design characterized by Ionic columns and pilasters, round-arched windows with keystones and a rusticated base. The upper stories, which were occupied by the Board’s offices, are clad in matte white terra cotta, while the ground floor contained commercial space for a bank and is clad in granite. Davis, the building’s architect, was also the Board’s founder, first president and primary advocate for building its new headquarters. He selected this site feeling it was the “gateway to the borough.” The plaza it faces contains a memorial to the Spanish-American War, dedicated in 1919 and also designed by Davis, with a bas-relief plaque by sculptor Charles Keck.

The Bronx is named after Jonas Bronck, a Nordic European settler who arrived in the colony of New Netherlands in 1639. Bronck and his Dutch wife, Teuntje Joriaens, established their farmstead in what is now Mott Haven at the confluence of the Harlem River and Bronx Kill overlooking Randall’s Island. In 1670 much of the area was acquired by the Morris family, who established a large manor called Morissania. The family retained ownership—and the area remained sparsely populated—through the early 19th century. It was the arrival of the New York and Harlem Railroad line, announced in 1840, that finally persuaded the Morrises to embrace suburban development on their estate. Jordan L. Mott, the neighborhood’s namesake, purchased sizable tracts from the Morris family in 1841 and 1848. Hoping to create a “downtown of Westchester County” (of which this area was then still a part), he laid out streets and building lots and began marketing the new hamlet called Mott Haven. According to Mott’s plan, the southern portion was devoted to industrial uses, including his own iron works, all served by a purpose-built, 3,000-foot canal. The northern section was reserved for tidy residential buildings, protected by restrictive covenants from anything “pernicious to health or noxious or offensive to the neighborhood.” Other developers soon followed Mott to the South Bronx, purchasing large tracts from the Morris family and laying out their own suburbs such as Wilton (subdivided 1857) and North New York (1860)—now both part of the neighborhood of Mott Haven. The Morris family itself entered the development business, planning the industrial neighborhood of Port Morris. Development of these tracts was steady, if not as rapid as their promoters may have wanted. Mott Haven proper—which consisted of the area between Third Avenue and the Harlem River—was the most populous, containing a concentration of modest, mostly wood-framed, houses built for local factory workers. By the 1860s the area even boasted a few brick rowhouses, some of which still survive. Much of the area, however, remained in the hands of real estate investors waiting for the area to gain in value. The Panic of 1873 delayed this by several years, although around the same time, in 1874, the South Bronx was annexed into New York City, likely ensuring its eventual development as an urban neighborhood. The arrival of mass transit (the 1887 opening of the Suburban Rapid Transit Company’s 138th Street Station, later part of the IRT Third Avenue Elevated) provided the ultimate spark for the area’s growth. Within a decade or two, most of Mott Haven’s streets were completely built up with a diverse range of buildings, from comfortable single-family rowhouses, to larger multi-family tenements and apartment buildings. Industry also blossomed. Mott’s iron works, now controlled by his descendants, continued to expand. Other manufacturers moved into the area including a remarkable number of piano manufacturers. In fact, by the early 20th century the Bronx had (by one count) 63 piano factories—43 of them in Mott Haven—producing more than 100,000 instruments a year. Mott Haven’s dense industrial base meant the neighborhood was particularly hard hit by the deindustrialization of New York City in the mid 20th century. Though the South Bronx became a symbol of urban decay and disinvestment by the 1970s, it also remained a vibrant immigrant neighborhood with new institutions, such as the Teatro de Puerto Rico, moving into the many surviving historic buildings. The rich history and architectural distinction of Mott Haven has been recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission through the designation of three historic districts (including the first in the Bronx) and several individual landmarks.

Willis Avenue Bridge, viewed from East Harlem, Manhattan, ca. 1934. The Willis Avenue bridge opened in 1901, connecting traffic from Manhattan's First Avenue to the Bronx and points north. The bridge was replaced by a new span in 2007. The bridge is also notable to veterans of the New York City Marathon: the bridge falls at the five-borough course's 20-mile mark.

East 128th Street and Harlem River Drive Handball Court Keith Haring 1986 Famed graffiti artist Keith Haring (1958-90) painted two colorful murals on both sides of a concrete handball court in 1986. The design is composed of Haring’s signature kinetic figures and abstract forms in bold outlines, cautioning youth against crack, an addictive and dangerous form of cocaine whose use had reached epidemic proportions. The Crack is Wack mural is a lasting reminder of Keith Haring’s talent and legacy. A foundation in his memory was established, which continues to support the preservation of the mural. Photo courtesy Marina Ortiz, East Harlem Preservation, Inc.

Though the name of this business is advertised as plural bowling alley(s), further research suggests no other locations existed and the narrow width of the buildings makes it seem unlikely that this operation had more than one or two lanes.