Railroad tracks came through the area now known as Fordham as early as 1842 by the New York and Harlem Railroad. The names of the railroad companies that passed through this station changed a number of times throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Currently this station serves both the Harlem and New Haven Lines of Metro-North Railroad. One of the busiest stations in the current Metro-North system, the station house, likely built in the late 19th century, still bares the name of the Metro-North predecessor, New York Central Railroad, over the main doors.

2715 Creston Avenue, 1925.

Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest writers, spent the last years of his life in this modest cottage in the Bronx.

This 1923 building once housed the Jacob H. Schiff Center, a Jewish community and cultural center and synagogue. Schiff was a banker and philanthropist. He acquired funding from European investor to assist in building America’s railroads, mines, and other infrastructure enterprises. He strongly held to the German-Jewish tradition of communal welfare. He was involved in building and supporting American civic, cultural, and educational institutions. These acts included lobbying for New York State government reform, donating a large sum to Cornell University, and the building of community spaces such as this one in the Bronx.

The two story wood-frame home seen in this 1936 photograph was once the home of Riker Carroll Livingston, a mechanical engineer involved in the early plans for flood control of the Mississippi River. The home was replaced a year later by a 7-story Art Deco residential building. The brick building to the left of the wood-frame home is the former Fordham Library Center of the New York Public Library. Built in 1923, the building closed as a library in 2005 when the nearby and brand new Bronx Library Center opened.

2754 Grand Concourse, ca. 1925.

The small white farmhouse now known as Poe's Cottage was built circa 1812. The structure once occupied a plot across the street from its current location in Poe Park (once a large apple orchard). In 1846 poet Edgar Allan Poe and his wife Virginia began renting the cottage for $100 a year. Virginia, who suffered from tuberculous, died in 1846 and Poe lived in the cottage, at least part of the time, until his death two years later. Around the turn of the 20th century, the home was in danger of demolition because of the proposed widening of Kingsbridge Road. A local literary group petitioned for the house to be moved across the street and to have a park created around the structure. Poe Park opened in 1902 and was a bucolic area of winding paths, trees, and flowerbeds. In 1913 the home was moved once more (only a few hundred feet) to its current position and has been in the care and custody of The Bronx County Historical Society since 1975.

"Children filing into the library after the formal opening with a public celebration." This photograph depicts the 1923 opening day of the Fordham Branch of the New York Public Library. The land for the building was purchased in 1917 but the First World War delayed the construction. The McKim, Mead, and White-designed building was originally called the Bronx Central Library and, when opened, was the largest library building in the borough. The building included a lecture space and was used to teach local immigrants communities (Irish, Italian, and Jewish) how to read and write English and adjust to American culture. The children lined up in the opening day photograph were likely the children of these local immigrant communities.

Entrance to the Dollar Savings Bank, 2530 Grand Concourse, ca. 1970. Constructed between 1932 ans 1933 in a classic Art Deco style, the Dime Savings Bank is one of a number of highly visible Deco buildings on the Grand Concourse. Deigned by Adolf Muller of Halsey, McCormack \&Helmer (well known as bank architects), the bank building continued to grow after its original construction. In the late 1930s the building was extended 100 feet along the Grand Concourse and in 1950 a new 50 foot extension of the facade accompanied the building of a 10-story office block and 50-foot tower. The tower included four clock faces, which could be seen from the distance. Today none of the clocks are active (they are all stopped at different times). The main bank building served as a bank (lastly Apple Bank) until 2014. The tower has been vacant since the early 2000s. In 2013 both the tower building and the bank were purchased and the new owners noted their interest in renovating and filling both spaces, as well as, perhaps restoring the clocks.