"Echo Park (Bronx): An early view of the small park on the west side of Valentine Avenue, between East Tremont and East Burnside Avenues, ca.1900." This park was called Echo Park for more than a hundred years due to the echo that can be heard between the two large rock masses that monopolize the landscape. The park was renamed Richman Park in 1973 to honor Julius J. Richman, who served on Mayor Lindsey's West Bronx Neighborhood Task Force and was chairman of the Twin Parks Association and the Urban Action Task Force. In 1997 the 'Echo' part of the original name was added back parenthetically.

Tremont Presbyterian Church, ca. 1909. The Tremont Presbyterian Church began in the spring 1854 as a small group of people worshiping at a house meeting. The church was officially organized as the Union Church of Upper Morrisania in November 1854. A permanent church building was completed in 1860, and was renamed the First Presbyterian Church of Tremont. In 1915 a new church building was constructed on the nearby Grand Concourse, and the congregation moved out of this 1860 building. The church still stands, though with some questionable exterior alterations (what appears to be metal or vinyl siding and asphalt shingles). It currently houses St. Mary Protectress Ukrainian Catholic Church.

"4192-4194 Park Avenue, adjoining the S.E. corner of E. Tremont Avenue, showing an abandoned, old frame house, 1938." The wood-frame home seen at right was likely demolished soon after this photograph was taken. The ground level windows are covered with posters and ads, such is the life of an abandoned storefronts. The larger sign just below the dormer windows marks this building as the one time Tremont Dog and Cat Hospital. The building on the left at no. 4196 remains with its stone arched door frame.

Tremont Towers apartment building, 1938. This uniquely curved apartment building was designed by Jacob M. Felson in the mid to late 1930s. Felson was a Russian immigrant to the U.S. In 1938 he became the president of Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc., which specialized in building apartment buildings. In addition to his apartment houses, he is also known for designing movie theatres and parking garages. This simple Art Deco apartment house is one of his lesser known works, though he designed quite a few more elaborate Deco buildings in this neighborhood.

Tremont Branch, date unknown. The neo-Federal, red brick Tremont Library was designed by Carrère & Hastings and completed in 1905. The cornerstone was laid on January 21, 1904 at an event attended by a couple hundred people. One the speakers at this program was Reverent F.B. Makepeace, President of the Bronx Free Library, which has only the year before merged with the NYPL. In 1916, using surplus funds from the Carnegie bequest, the addition was constructed.

Bronx Savings Bank, 1930. The constructions dates for this bank building are a bit of a mystery. This classically-inspired bank building stood likely from the early 1930s until 2016. (After its life as a bank ended, it was a restaurant and event space.) The area surrounding the building is being redeveloped, and in 2016 there was an agreement to preserve certain architectural and historical elements, and incorporate the Bank’s facade into the lobby at the entrance of a new building. But the building has been entirely demolished as of the start of 2017.

FDNY Engine 46, 1937 Mack truck.

This is a walking tour of historic sites in the Tremont neighborhood hosted by urban design graduate students from the Spitzer School of Architecture.

Bronx Borough Hall, ca. 1905. Constructed on a high rocky plateau in what was then an extension of Crotona Park, the original Bronx Municipal Building the structure was contemporaneously described as a "common sense building with pleasant architectural results." The work of famed architect George B. Post (who went on to design the new New York Stock Exchange building in 1903), the three-story building was rendered in a Renaissance Revival style. Renamed the Bronx Borough Hall only a year after completion following the consolidation of the Greater New York City, the building once celebrated would find detractors in the first decades of the 20th century. As the population of the borough boomed, the building was criticized for being inadequate and impossible to enlarge (due to its somewhat precarious location). By 1934 most borough offices and services were relocated from this building to the new Bronx County Courthouse on the Grand Concourse. The only government service left in the building by the 1960s was the Marriage License Bureau and it was then referred to as the "Old Borough Hall." Designated a city landmark in 1965, a few months after the passage of the Landmarks Law (it was the first Bronx landmark), the decision was overturned by the Board of Estimate the next year. Following a fire, which caused the structure to be deemed unsafe, it was demolished in 1969. Today the land on which the building stood is part of Tremont Park.