Horsepower-operated device moving a house (out of frame) to a new location, possibly on Holland Avenue, May 25, 1928. No. 3530 Holland Avenue is the building at left. The large apartment building at right is No. 3514 Holland Avenue.

Magenta Street at Barker Avenue, June 16, 1938. The detached house is No. 3400 Barker Avenue. The IRT White Plains Road Line tracks are visible at right, crossing Magenta Street.

The Goodfellows Club, Olinville Avenue, June 1, 1928. Two men watch from the porch of this wood-frame structure in Olinville. The 1918 Sanborn map identifies a beer garden at the rear of this house, which might explain the Prohibition-era lookouts in P.L. Sperr’s photo.

Elevated tracks of the IRT Third Avenue and White Plains Road lines converge at the Gun Hill Road station, May 12, 1938. In 1920, the Third Avenue El was extended from Bronx Park Terminal to Gun Hill Road, where the line terminated at a lower platform of the White Plains Road Line (today’s 2/5) Gun Hill Road Station. Third Avenue El service in the Bronx was discontinued in 1973, 18 years after the line’s Manhattan tracks were dismantled. The auto repair shop at left, at the corner of Willett Avenue, is No. 695 East Gun Hill Road.

Capuchin Friars Monastery, 1938. Since 1920, the Church of the Immaculate Conception has been associated with the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, a Catholic order related to the Franciscan Friars. This view shows the Friars’ residence, at the rear of the church. The land in the foreground is today occupied by the NYCHA Gun Hill Houses (completed in 1950).

Williamsbridge Lodge No. 1596, Loyal Order of Moose, November 11, 1932. The Loyal Order of Moose, a fraternal organization, was founded in 1888, in Louisville, Kentucky. The organization counts four former US Presidents among its ranks, including New Yorkers Franklin D. and Theodore Roosevelt. The building appears as a YMCA branch as late as 1918, but fundraising appeals published in the Mount Vernon Daily Argus indicate that its status was precarious. In the same newspaper, mentions of the Moose Lodge at that location begin in the early 1930s.

Church of the Immaculate Conception, May 24, 1928. Around the turn of the century, the Church of the Immaculate Conception (unrelated to other parishes of the same name) was established in a storefront on White Plains Road. The first church was a wooden structure on the north side of Briggs Avenue ( Gun Hill Road), completed in 1905. When that church was destroyed in a 1923 fire, parish officials elected to build a new structure, across Gun Hill Road east of Holland Avenue. The new, neo-Romanesque church designed by Joseph Ziccardi was completed in 1925.

Evander Childs High School, May 11, 1938. Evander Childs, a lifelong New Yorker and graduate of City College, was a teacher and administrator in city schools for over fifty years. Childs died in post, in 1912: stricken, “he fell forward with a cry and struck heavily on his desk” in the principal’s office of P.S. 10 in Morrisania. In 1930, the Department of Education named its new, 4,700 student Williamsbridge high school for Childs. The massive Italian Renaissance campus was part of a flurry of school construction in the late 1920s. In 2008, the high school closed after years of poor performance, and was split into six specialized schools located in the Childs campus.

Bronx Boulevard and Duncomb Avenue, view is southeastward. The large building in the distance is Public School 41, 1938.

Third Avenue El tracks over Gun Hill Road, viewed from the Gun Hill Road station of the IRT White Plains Road line, June 1, 1928. The view is westward, across the Bronx River to Webster Avenue, where the Third Avenue El turns southward to Manhattan. This spur carried connecting trains between 1920 and 1973.

Three wood-frame houses on the south side of Duncomb Avenue, June 16, 1938.

A ca. 1910 wood-frame house being moved to a new location, May 25, 1928. This house was originally located at 727-729 East Gun Hill Road, down the hill from the location pictured, where it was erected some time after 1905. This photo captures the house in transit, on East 211th Street west of Holland Avenue (the brick building in the background, at left is No. 3530 Holland Avenue). Photographer P.L. Sperr failed to note the house’s ultimate destination. However, Nos. 3561-3563 Holland Avenue match the building’s footprint and street-facing windows, though bays and cornice work have been removed.

Rock outcrop on Magenta Street, east of White Plains Road, June 16, 1938. The land to the left would be set aside for the New York City Housing Authority’s Gun Hill Houses, a six-building development which opened in 1950. The rock formation is still visible on Magenta Street.

409 East Gunhill Road, 1938. Amazingly this tiny wood-frame structure with the concave mansard roof still stands. Constructed circa 1899, likely as a home, it seems to be occupied by a cafe. Today it is a tire shop.

Intersection of Gun Hill Road and Bronxwood Avenue, ca. 1917. This view is westward along Gun Hill Road. The vacant lot at left would become the site of the Evander Childs High School, completed in 1930. Gun Hill Road station of the IRT White Plains Road Line (today’s 2/5 trains) is visible in the distance, over Gun Hill Road. This station opened in March, 1917. A further elevated structure is visible in the background. This may be the Gun Hill Road spur of the IRT Third Avenue line, under construction; this segment opened to traffic in October, 1920.