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."

(Thomas E. O’Brien, 1924) NYC-HD, NR The Mott Haven Historic District also includes two notable civic buildings. Separated by two blocks and nearly two decades, both employ the stately Neoclassical architecture popularized by the City Beautiful movement of the early 20th century. More specifically, the buildings were meant to resemble Italian palazzi such as those found in Florence. They use a similar materials palette, with red brick façades and limestone trim, and Renaissance details such as molded window surrounds, round-arched openings, and quoins at the corners. The station house was designed by Thomas O’Brien, a Bronx resident and a lieutenant with the police department. He designed numerous similar stations throughout the city and was eventually named NYPD Superintendent of Buildings in 1929.

“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.

(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.

Grants Pickle Works, April 30, 1941. In the first half of the 20th century the Jennings Market was a a two-block shopping area for the mostly East European, Jewish, and Italian immigrant communities (many of whom had previously lived on the LES). The market's most famous tenant was 'Jake the Pickle Man' who peddled his pickles from five barrels on the sidewalk at Jennings and Charlotte Streets. The lines for his pickles could be a block long, and he was remember as very eccentric. Jake retired from the pickle business in 1961 and was sadly killed during a robbery in 1963. United Pickle, a fourth-generation family pickle factory in the Tremont section of the Bronx, was founded in 1897 and is still in operation. This company owns the trademark brand Guss' Pickles, which was the best-known Lower East Side pickle guy in the early 20th century. Though little can be specifically discovered about 'Grant's Pickle Works' seen here at Third Avenue and 137th Street, they were likely in good company among the pickle-loving community of the south Bronx.

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.

St. Jerome's Catholic Church was built in 1899-1900 to the designs of the architectural firm Delhi and Howard. The cost of the building was $100,000, a considerable sum for the turn of the 20th century. The Italianate / Baroque Revival building can house a crowd of more than 1400 parishioners. The church is a part of the Mott Haven Historic District, which was designated in 1969. The main thoroughfare of the district, Alexander Avenue (where the church sits on the corner with 138th Street) was once known as "Irish Fifth Avenue."

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.

St. Jerome’s Roman Catholic church complex occupies the whole eastern blockfront of Alexander Avenue between East 137th Street and East 138th Street and is dominated by the church’s corner tower with its colonnaded belfry and octagonal dome. The mostly Irish-American congregation of St. Jerome formed in 1869, and built the red-brick Victorian Gothic style school building at the southern end of the block first, in 1871, followed by the neo-Grec style rectory next door. The church itself was the last in the complex to be erected and was completed in 1898 in the Renaissance Revival style to the designs of the Manhattan-based firm Dehli & Howard. The church is an outstanding example of its style, with finely articulated facades of rusticated buff brick ornamented with robust Italian Renaissance-inspired architectural forms such as broken pediments, Ionic and Tuscan columns and elaborate cornices and entablatures. A statue of Jerome, the 4th-century scholar saint, sits at the corner of the church.

This is a pretty accurate representation of the South Bronx in the early 20th century. It was a lot of lovely architecture constructed likely just before the turn of the 20th century, but now showing signs of the rapid urbanization of the borough—the many advertisements, the proliferation of needed utility infrastructure, and constant construction (here an IRT subway line is being dug underneath 138th Street). This corner building was gone by the mid century, replaced with a diner and gas station by 1957. The lot has been empty, only a large patch of grass, for the last few decades. . In 2012, the 1991-built apartment house just to the east of the corner was converted into a 145-unit HUD senior and supportive housing building called Borinquen Court (285 East 138th Street). Between 2016 and 2018 the city added two additional buildings to this complex, naming it Tres Puentes (Three Bridges). The mixed-use buildings added 175 new affordable apartments for seniors. The corner building is now 2550 Third Avenue.

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.