Friday, July 31, 2009

Tiffany Street in The Bronx

Update: FUBAR on this item. There was only one address where the family lived together in the Bronx: 965 Tiffany. I misread the 1920 census form to get a different address for that year. I've begun reading E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair to get a feel for life in the neighborhood in the 1930s.

I looked up the location of the two addresses where our family members lived in The Bronx during the 1920s, relocating there as their long-time previous neighborhood in Jewish Harlem underwent a demographic shift. The first address was right on the water in Hunt's Point in what later in the century became the blighted South Bronx. Two years later, they moved about a mile to the north into the neighborhood called Longwood, today also considered a part of the South Bronx. Here is some information about Longwood from Wikipedia:
For much of the first half of the 20th Century, Longwood was home to a predominantly Jewish population. Beginning in the 1950s, the neighborhood experienced a demographic shift as many Puerto Ricans moved to Longwood. Shortly after, white flight and abandonment began. By the late 1960s, many buildings in the neighborhood had burned down in an epidemic of arson.

There are still remains of the old Jewish presence in Longwood. For instance, 830 Fox Street, which is now a newly constructed low income apartment building, was formerly a Jewish synagogue and was burned down in the 1960s.

Colin Powell grew up on Kelly Street in Longwood.
The Fox St. address is about five blocks from 965 Tiffany.

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