East 162nd Street, north side, east from Melrose Avenue, April 20, 1941. No. 415 is the three-story home with porch in the middle-right of the frame.

860 Melrose Avenue. ca. 1910. This narrow, but long two-story building on Melrose Avenue was likely a new construction at the time this photograph was taken. The storefront at the corner is occupied by a "fancy cash groceries" and just down the block (at no. 864 in the same building) is a fish and oyster market. The other storefront are empty and have "to let" notifications posted.

Late night fire at the Brook Avenue facility of Morris & Co., a "meat concern," April 13, 1933. Around 10pm, a fire broke out in rail a tunnel beneath the Morris & Co. building, a cold storage facility for meat products. The tunnel, which led to the New York & Harlem Railroad freight yards then on located on the east side of Brook Avenue, "creating a draught, spread the flames through the building quickly." With the fire partially suppressed, some FDNY resources were redirected to another active blaze, some four blocks south at 506 Brook Avenue.

East 161st Street, north side, east from Melrose Avenue, 1941. The building just preceding the five-story tenements (with the marquee) opened as the Melrose Theatre in 1916. In the 1940s it was converted into a banquet hall known as the Ambassador Ballrooms. Today the building still stand—somewhat worse for the wear— and it used as a daycare center.

Hupfel's Brewery, 1898. The South Bronx was once a brewing mecca. As a German immigrant community with more open space than Manhattan, dozens of brewers set up shop here in the mid to late 19th century. Originally owned by a Xavier Grant, the business was purchased by Anton Heupfel in 1863 who later passed it along to his sons. The brewery was located on a steep slope between St. Ann's Avenue to Eagle Avenue. This hill provided an excellent spot for digging out caves. These naturally insulated spaces were perfect for aging and storing the lager that the brewery produced. When Prohibition came to New York's breweries, many continued to produce "near beer" (and real beer surreptitiously and illegally). Adolph Hupfel Jr. had a different plan. He converted his family business into a "mushroom plantation." The beer-aging caves were also well suited to mushroom growing, and the business produced more than 200,000 pounds of the crop per year. The brewery closed in 1938, presumably after returning to beer production when Prohibition ended in 1933. The Hupfel brewery still stands in ruins, the only 19th-century Bronx brewery building still extant. The tall red brick building can still be seen boxed in by the newer low-rise industrial buildings on St. Ann's Avenue south of East 161st Street.

Eagle Avenue Bridge, 1915. This 1915 photograph of 612 East 161st Street was taken from the Eagle Avenue Bridge. This steep hilly area of the Bronx necessitated a bridge over the road and the first crossing at this spot (seen here) was a steel structure with stairs allowing pedestrians to descend to the street below. The 1936 bridge, with one lane for traffic, a parking lane, and two sidewalks, no longer provides this access. (The older bridge also had much more attractive lamposts.) The buildings, such as this one, immediately adjacent to the bridge have long since been demolished and the steep slope of the hill here is much more visible today.

East 161st Street, at the northwest corner of Melrose Avenue, showing what was called the "city's tiniest house" in the 1927 book "The Bronx and its People," 1941.