'Mapes Avenue on the north east corner of 178th Street, ca. 1905." Mapes Avenue was named after early settlers to the East Tremont, Bronx neighborhood. Thomas Mapes (1628-1687) and his wife Sarah Purrier (1630-1697) were the first to arrive sometime in the mid 17th century. By the end of the 18th century, the Mapes family owned a general store (later a small chain of stores) and were large landowners. The stores were operated by the family into the early 20th century.

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.