Push carts at the corner of Essex and Hester Streets, ca. 1900. The store at the near corner, with “\[wines] & liquors” awning visible, is No. 28 Essex Street. Shortly after the turn of the century, this corner was cleared for the construction of P.S. 62, an intermediate school. Two decades later, that building was torn down to facilitate subway excavation. The campus was relocated to the former site of the Ludlow Street Jail.

“Street scene of peddlers and street vendors on Hester Street on the Lower East Side in 1898.” At the turn of the century, Hester Street was known for its open-air push cart market, one of many hubs for Lower East Side vendors. The tenement buildings in this photo — likely on the North side of Hester Street, near Norfolk and Suffolk Streets — were soon demolished to make way for the campus of the P.S. 62 intermediate school, which opened in 1905.

In the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, one of New York's most powerful mayors, launched a war against an enemy that was ubiquitous on New York's streets: Pushcarts.

There are many distinguished people featured in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at Bronx Community College. One who stands apart as a true community leader is Lillian Wald, the nurse, activist, and author renowned for establishing the Henry Street Settlement (HSS) and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY).