Mott Haven Branch, NYPL 321 East 140th Street Designed by Babb, Cook & Willard, 1905 The Mott Haven Branch was the first NYPL building to be constructed in The Bronx. The building’s strong, Classical Revival style design was the work of Babb, Cook & Willard, the same firm responsible for Andrew Carnegie’s own mansion on Fifth Avenue and East 91st Street. Its three-story, brick façades are marked by prominent limestone quoins at the corners and around the entrance. The building is within the Mott Haven Historic District, an oasis of historic architecture, a small-scale residential enclave surrounded by tall mid-century housing projects. The historic district was designated in 1967, making it one of the city’s first. The library is located in the Mott Haven Historic District and a National Register of Historic Places District.

"Alexander Avenue, east side, north from East 140th Street. At the south east corner of East 141st Street is the Alexander Avenue Baptist Church, circa 1937." The original Alexander Avenue Baptist Church was a wooden chapel built in 1876 in this same corner at 141st Street and Alexander Avenue. The congregation had been organized four years earlier in 1872. The chapel was torn down in 1900 in preparation for a new building.The current building was dedicated in 1902 and became the Tercera Iglesia Bautista (Third Spanish Baptist Church) in 1962.

(Michael J. Garvin, 1906-07) The merger of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898 caused a wave of public building projects as the new municipal government consolidated and upgraded its services. Like the police station (site 6a) and library (site 6b), this firehouse is designed in the formal Neoclassical style typical of the era. Its architect was Michael Garvin, a Bronx native who served as the borough’s first Commissioner of Buildings. This particular company traces its history to the private fire squad associated with the J. L. Mott Iron Works, established in the mid-19th century and merged into the public service when portions of the Bronx were annexed by Manhattan in 1874. Another individually designated firehouse is located on the opposite side of the neighborhood at 618 East 138th Street. Firehouse Engine Company 83 and Hook & Ladder 29 (Robert D. Kohn, 1904-05) was established during this period of municipal improvements. It was one of the earliest firehouses in the city with two vehicle entrances.

(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.

"Willis Avenue, north from E. 140th Street, showing the buildings on the east side of the avenue and the Willis Avenue Methodist Church, at E. 141st Street, April 1941." Built in 1900 and designed by George W. Kramer (who designed churches all over the country and authored a 1897 book called "The What, How, and Why of Church Building"), the original Willis Avenue United Methodist Church (in the distance) is a Gothic Revival building with particularly colorful stained glass windows. The church was shut down in the fall of 2016 due to declining membership and insufficient funding.

St. Rita's Roman Catholic Church was founded in 1904.

(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.

Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church, April 28, 1941. In 1850 Mott Haven founder, Jordan L. Mott, donated land and funds for the establishment of a new Dutch Reformed church. Services were first performed in a nearby schoolhouse, but in 1854 the new brick church was completed. Dedicated in March of the next year, the bell tower was finished seven years later. The Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church bells rung out in celebration on January 1, 1874 when this area, once part of Westchester Country, was annexed by New York City. (These new city residents were certainly happier with their annexation than the disgruntled Brooklynites 24 years later when they became part of the Greater New York City.) With this municipal relationship also came further development, both positive and negative. The erection of the Third Avenue El caused quite a bit of problems for the congregation. The pastors were forced to pause when the trains rumbled by and the vibrations from the train passing caused instability in the old brick church. In the 1910s the church sued the city related to these issues, and following a win, used the reward funds to shore up the church and move it around the corner to a new foundation on 146th Street. The 19th century structure remained until 1971 when it was replaced with a low-rise, bland, and windowless structure.

Metropolis Theatre, 1903. Constructed in 1893 for theatrical productions, the elegant Metropolis Theatre could seat 1600 patrons and was the first theatre in the Bronx. The building included a "Rathskeller" (a German-style restaurant) in the basement and a rooftop garden. In the 1910s, the theatre was converted in a motion picture house—while likely continuing to present vaudeville and burlesque. During a small fire in 1920 the evacuation process for the 700 patrons present was jauntily described: "The theatre is a wealth of exits and moving to a lively jazz tune from the orchestra, the patrons were safe on the streets before the first engine came." Further excitement also came to theatre in 1926 when 10 performers, the theatre manager, and the stage manager were arrested for maintaining a public nuisance and indecent performance, presumably for a burlesque performance. The theatre ceased operations in 1926—perhaps because of the arrests that year— and was sold twice before the end of the decade. The buyer in 1929 was the Loew's circuit, who planned to use the space as a scenic studio for the construction and storage of stage sets, lighting and sound equipment, and props. The building served this function for more a decade. In the 1940s most of the building was demolished, though the facade fronting Third Avenue was retained and still stands as the unexpectedly elegant front of an office building.

(George W. Kramer, 1897-1900) The congregation was originally founded in 1865—early in Mott Haven’s residential development—as the First Methodist Episcopal Church of North New-York. This building replaced an earlier frame church on the same site. Its bulky, multi-story appearance is evocative of a flourishing neighborhood and congregation. The main sanctuary had seating for 1,000, there was a 500-seat lecture hall in the basement, and the upper stories contained Sunday school rooms for another 1,000 children. The façade, called English Gothic by the press, is notable for its buff brick with Indiana limestone trim and the expanse of delicate, pointed-arch windows. The corner bell tower was once topped with an upper tier and pyramidal roof.

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.

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."

"E. 143rd Street, adjoining the northeast corner of Willis Avenue showing the North Congregational Church and parish house, 1941." Originally called the Congregation Church of North New York, the direction in the name referenced its location at what was the northern reaches of New York City when the church was constructed in 1903. Designed by Dodge and Morrison, the massive church can fit 1000 parishioners on the main floor and more than 500 on the balcony.

"The Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library (a Carnegie library), Bronx, N.Y., undated \[circa 1905-1918]." The oldest New York Public Library in the Bronx, this red brick and limestone structure opened in March of 1905. It was designed by Babb, Cook, and Willard, who also designed the 5th Avenue mansion of the library's funder, Andrew Carnegie.

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.

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.