FDNY Engine 73. During the 1970s and 80s, when many fire stations in the Bronx were disbanded and the borough suffered from neglect, Engine 73 responded to a huge number of calls, over 7000 in 1977.

Montefiore Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, 1938. The Montefiore Hebrew Congregation was founded in 1901 and six years later moved into their brand new synagogue on Hewitt Place. The Romanesque building was modeled on eastern European synagogue styles but is also topped with a pair of—somewhat fanciful— onion domes, more common in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. For two decades the congregation was led by an impassioned and dynamic leader named Rabbi Jacob Katz. Russian born, he arrived to New York City as toddler, later attending City College, Columbia, and Jewish Theological Seminary before getting a law degree from NYU. He began his career at a Flatbush synagogue before taking the leadership in 1920 of this Bronx community. He also served for 32 years as the chaplain at Sing-Sing Prison. As chaplain he attended to the spiritual needs of the general population and as well as more than 70 men executed for their crimes. Rabbi Katz moved on from Montefiore in the early 1940s. The religious building was designated a landmark in 1980 (as part of the Longwood Historic District) while serving as the home of the Hewitt Place United Church. The imposing structure still stands, with its eye-catching roofline, but sans its ornate stained glass (which is either lost or covered up).

East 149th Street and Trinity Avenue, northwest corner, 1938.

East 149th Street and Trinity Avenue, northeast corner, 1938.

St. Anselm's Roman Catholic Church as viewed from Wales Avenue, 1938. The parish of St. Anselm's dates to 1891, while the current church building was not constructed until 1918. A clear stylistic change from most of the earlier nearby churches, St. Anselm's was designed in the Byzantine Revival style. It is said that the design was inspired by the Hagia Sophia, the basilica, turned mosque, turned museum in Istanbul, Turkey. A quirky bit of religious history was once housed at St. Anselm's. The body of St. Peregine, who was martyred in Rome in A.D. 192 and entombed as a shrine and venerated by communities in Rome and then Germany, came to the Bronx for a time. In 1895, after a fire in the church where it had been housed , the shrine traveled to the United States and was kept at St. Anselm's in the Bronx until 1927, when it was removed to St. John's Abbey in Minnesota.