The Bronx
—  Borough of New York City  —
Bronx County
Concourse Village and Yankee Stadium
Flag
Nickname(s): "The Boogie Down Bronx"
Motto: "Ne cede malis" Yield Not To Misfortunes
The Bronx is shown in orange.
Coordinates: 40°50′14″N 73°53′10″W / 40.83722°N 73.88611°W / 40.83722; -73.88611
Country	United States
State	New York
County	Bronx
City	New York City
Borough created	1898  (County in 1914)
Government
• Type	Borough (New York City)
• Borough     President	Ruben Diaz, Jr. — (Borough of the Bronx)
• District     Attorney	Robert T. Johnson — (Bronx County)
Area
• Total	57 sq mi (150 km2)
• Land	42 sq mi (110 km2)
• Water	15 sq mi (40 km2)
Highest elevation	280 ft (90 m)
Population (April 1, 2010 U.S. Census)[1]
• Total	1,385,108
• Density	32,393/sq mi (12,507/km2)
	(2010 pop. as estimated in March 2011; density is July 2006 est. pop. on land area as of 2000[2])
Time zone	Eastern Standard Time (North America) (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)
ZIP Code	104 + two digits
Area code(s)	347, 718, 917. 646.
Website	Official website of the Bronx Borough President

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated. Located north of Manhattan and Queens, and south of Westchester County, the Bronx is the only borough that is located primarily on the mainland (a very small portion of Manhattan, the Marble Hill neighborhood, is physically located on the mainland, due to the rerouting of the Harlem River in 1897). The Bronx's population is 1,400,761 according to the 2010 United States Census.^[1] The borough has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km²), making it the fourth-largest in land area of the five boroughs, the fourth most populated, and the third-highest in density of population.^[2][3]

The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.^[4] The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. Bronx County, with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (afterwards coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) as of January 1, 1914.^[5] Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S.,^[2] about a quarter of its area is open space,^[6] including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with the building of roads, bridges and railways.

The Bronx River was named for Jonas Bronck, who created the first settlement as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639,^{[7][8][9][10][11]} and eventually lent its name to the entire borough. The native Lenape were progressively displaced after 1643 by settlers. The Bronx received many Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants as its once-rural population exploded between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. They were succeeded after 1945 by African Americans and Hispanic Americans from the Caribbean basin — especially Puerto Rico^[12] and the Dominican Republic, but also from Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.

The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the U.S., the 16th, but its wide variety of neighborhoods also includes the affluent and middle to upper class Riverdale, Schuylerville and Country Club.^[13][14] The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, and the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown some signs of revival in recent years.^[15]

History[link]

Grand Concourse & 161 street at the turn of the century.

For generations a rural area of small farms supplying the city markets, the Bronx grew into a railroad suburb in the late 19th century. Faster transportation allowed for rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900–29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth. The 1950s were hard times, as the Bronx decayed 1950–79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime and poverty. Finally the Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.^[17]

The South Bronx was for many years a manufacturing center, and in the early part of the 20th Century was noted as a center of piano manufacturing. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.^[18]

At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.^[4][19]

The Bronx underwent rapid growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants flooded The Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, and Polish immigrants moved into the borough. The Jewish population also increased notably during this time. In 1937, according to Jewish organizations, 592,185 Jews lived in The Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population),^[20] while only 45,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2002. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.^[21]

In Prohibition days (1920–33), bootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx. Irish, Italian and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey.

After the 1930s, Irish Americans started moving further north, and German Americans followed suit in the 1940s, as did many Italian Americans in the 1950s and Jews in the 1960s. As the older generation retired, many moved to Florida. The migration has left an African American and Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican) population, along with some Caucasian communities in the far southeastern and northwestern parts of the county.

In the 1970s, the Bronx became identified with a high rate of poverty and unemployment, which was mainly a persistent problem in the South Bronx. Some property owners committed arson on their own properties for insurance claims as it was more lucrative to get insurance money than to refurbish or sell a building in a severely distressed area. These Bronx fires and urban decay would paint a face of New York City in the 1970s as a down-and-out city in a state of decline. Indeed, out of 289 census tracts in the Bronx borough, seven different tracts lost more than 97% of their buildings to fire and abandonment between 1970 and 1980; while another 44 different tracts had more than 50% of their buildings meet the same fate. However, starting in the 1990s, many burned-out and run-down tenements were replaced by single- and multifamily housing.^[22]

By 2000, the Bronx had a population of about 1.2 million, and its bridges, highways, and railroads were more heavily traveled than those of any other part of the United States.

Fighting decline[link]

Row houses now stand where there was once burnt rubble. The Bronx has seen an increase in revitalization in recent years.

Starting in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp decline in the residents' quality of life. Historians and social scientists have put forward many factors. They include the theory (elaborated in Robert Caro's biography The Power Broker)^[23] that Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods. Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects. Yet another may have been a reduction in the real-estate listings and property-related financial services (such as mortgages or insurance policies) offered in some areas of the Bronx — a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting.^[24][25] There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.^[26]

In the 1970s, the Bronx was plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was mostly in the South Bronx and in West Farms. The most common explanation of what occurred was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money as profit.^[27] After the fiery destruction of many buildings in the borough, the arsons slowed by the turn of the decade, but the after-effects were still felt into the 1990s.

Since the mid-1980s, some residential development has occurred in the Bronx, stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan"^[28][29] and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons^[30][31][32] began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx. The ripple effects have been felt borough-wide. The IRT White Plains Road Line began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target have opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches have opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.^{[33][34][35][36]}

Although not actually a city, in 1997, the Bronx was designated an All America City by the National Civic League, signifying its comeback from the decline of the 1970s. In 2006, The New York Times reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings."^[37] The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.^[38]

Geography[link]

Adjacent counties[link]

• Westchester County – north
• Queens County, New York (Queens) – south
• New York County, New York (Manhattan) – southwest
• Bergen County, New Jersey – west

		Westchester County
	Bergen County, New Jersey		Eastchester Bay
		Bronx County, New York    East
	New York County (Manhattan)	Queens County (Queens)

Location and physical features[link]

New York Times 1896 map of parks and transit in the newly-annexed Bronx. Marble Hill is in pink, cut off by water from the rest of Manhattan in orange. Parks are light green, Woodlawn Cemetery medium green, sports facilities dark green, the not-yet-built Jerome Park Reservoir light blue, St. John's College (now Fordham University) in violet, and the city limits of the newly-expanded New York in red.^[39]

The Bronx is almost entirely situated on the North American mainland.^[40] The Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and, to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle.

• (There is also a short southern land boundary with Marble Hill in the Borough of Manhattan, over the filled-in former course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Marble Hill's postal ZIP code, telephonic Area Code and fire service, however, are shared with the Bronx and not Manhattan.)

The New York Public Library maintains a Map Rectifier facility that reconciles old maps of the Bronx (and elsewhere) with current cartography.[1]

The Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City.^[41] A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.

The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Although it is part of the Bronx, Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire City, can be reached only by water, by air, or—since 1966—over the Francis Buono Bridge from Queens.

The Bronx's highest elevation 280 feet (85 m), is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School.^[42] The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once salt marsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throg's Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island.

† (New York City's last freshwater marsh was in Van Cortlandt Park until displaced in the 1930s by the junction of the Mosholu and Henry Hudson Parkways.)

Almost 27%,15.4 square miles (40 km²) of the Bronx's total area is water, and the irregular shoreline extends for 75 square miles (194 km²).^[43][44]

Parks and open space[link]

Although, in 2006, it was the third most densely populated county in the United States (after Manhattan and Brooklyn),^[2] about one-fifth of the Bronx's area, and one-quarter of its land area, is given over to park land: about 7,000 acres (28 km²).^[6]

Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, at a time when the Bronx was still considered a rural area.

The northern side of the borough includes the largest park in New York City - Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach - and the fourth largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers.

Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park. Its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the entire city, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the U.S.^[46]

Farther south is Crotona Park, home to a 3.3-acre (1.3 ha) lake, 28 species of trees and a large swimming pool.^[47] The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.^[48]

Some of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.

The Northern tip of Hunter Island in Pelham Bay Park.

Just south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by 2 miles (3 km) of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood. The reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack.^[49]

In 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Van Cortlandt Park's golf course. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.^[50]

Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins — known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts — overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale.

Neighborhoods[link]

The number, locations and boundaries of the Bronx's neighborhoods (many of them sitting on the sites of 19th-century villages) have become unclear with time and successive waves of newcomers. In 2006, Manny Fernandez of The New York Times wrote,

"According to a Department of City Planning map of the city's neighborhoods, the Bronx has 49. The map publisher Hagstrom identifies 69. The borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., says 61. The Mayor's Community Assistance Unit, in a listing of the borough's community boards, names 68. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, lists 44."^[51]

Notable Bronx neighborhoods include the South Bronx, Little Italy on Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section, and Riverdale.

East Bronx[link]

(Bronx Community Boards 9 [south central], 10 [east], 11 [east central] and 12 [north central] )^[52]

The neighborhood of Co-op City is the largest cooperative housing development in the world.

East of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat, and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as smaller and larger single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.

Neighborhoods include: Clason's Point, Harding Park, Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester (under Board 9), Throgs Neck, Country Club, City Island, Pelham Bay, Co-op City (Board 10), Westchester Square, Van Nest, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park (Board 11), Williamsbridge, Eastchester, Baychester, Edenwald and Wakefield (Board 12).

City Island and Hart Island[link]

The sea is a part of everyday life in City Island

(Bronx Community Board 10)

City Island is located east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound, and is known for its seafood restaurants and waterfront private homes. City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge.

East of City Island is Hart Island which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's Potter's Field or pauper's graveyard for unclaimed bodies.

West Bronx[link]

The Grand Concourse at East 165th Street

(Bronx Community Boards 1 to 8, progressing roughly from south to northwest)

The western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston.^[53] It includes New York City's fourth largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.

Northwestern Bronx[link]

(Bronx Community Boards 7 [between the Bronx and Harlem Rivers] and 8 [facing the Hudson River] — plus part of Board 12)

Neighborhoods include: Fordham-Bedford, Bedford Park, Norwood, Kingsbridge Heights (Board 7), Kingsbridge, Riverdale (Board 8), and Woodlawn (Board 12). (Marble Hill, Manhattan is now connected by land to the Bronx rather than Manhattan and is served by Bronx Community Board 8.)

South Bronx[link]

Yankee Stadium is located on 161st and River Avenue

(Bronx Community Boards 1 to 6 plus part of Board 7 —— progressing northwards, Boards 2, 3 and 6 border the Bronx River from its mouth to Bronx Park, while 1, 4, 5 and 7 face Manhattan across the Harlem River)

Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.

Neighborhoods include: The Hub (a retail district at Third Avenue and East 149th Street), Port Morris, Mott Haven (Board 1), Melrose (Board 1 & Board 3), Morrisania, East Morrisania [also known as Crotona Park East] (Board 3), Hunts Point, Longwood (Board 2), Highbridge, Concourse (Board 4), West Farms, Belmont, East Tremont (Board 6), Tremont, Morris Heights (Board 5), University Heights, and Fordham (Board 5 & Board 7).

Shopping districts[link]

The Hub on Third Avenue

Prominent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza (in Co-op City), The Hub, Riverdale/Kingsbridge Shopping center and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard and Broadway. The Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.

The Bronx Hub[link]

The Hub–Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.) is the retail heart of the South Bronx, located where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues.^[54] It is primarily located inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven.^[55] The Hub has been called "the Broadway of the Bronx."^[56] It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial "bow-tie" created by the geometry of the street.^[57] The area is part of Bronx Community Board 1.

The Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market[link]

The renovated Prow Building, part of the original Bronx Terminal Market

The Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market is a shopping center in The Bronx that encompasses less than one million square feet of retail space, built on a 17-acre (69,000 m2) site that formerly held the Bronx Terminal Market, a wholesale fruit and vegetable market as well as the former Bronx House of Detention, south of Yankee Stadium.^[58]

The $500 million shopping center, which was completed in 2009, saw the construction of new buildings and two smaller buildings, one new and the other a renovation of an existing building that was part of the original market. The two main buildings are linked by a six-level garage for 2,600 cars.[1] The center has earned itself a LEED "Silver" designation in its design.^[59]

Transportation[link]

Bronx-Whitestone Bridge

Roads and streets[link]

The Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.

The East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a disalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.

Three major north-south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north-south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.

Most east-west streets are prefixed with either East or West, to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line).

The historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east-west in some places, and sometimes northeast-southwest.

Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths.

Approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.^[60]

Highways[link]

Several major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include:

• the Bronx River Parkway
• the Bruckner Expressway (I-278/I-95)
• the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I-95/I-295)
• the New England Thruway (I-95)
• the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY-9A)
• the Hutchinson River Parkway
• the Major Deegan Expressway (New York Thruway) (I-87)

Bridges and tunnels[link]

Aerial View of the Throgs Neck Bridge

Many bridges and tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan and Queens (3). These include, from west to east:

To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).

To Manhattan or Queens: the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (which opened as the Triborough Bridge).

To Queens: the Bronx Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.

Mass transit[link]

Middletown Road subway station on the 6 <6> trains.

NYC Transit bus operating on the Bx40 line in University Heights.

The Bronx is served by six lines of the New York City Subway with 70 stations in the Bronx:

• IND Concourse Line (B D trains)
• IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line (1 train)
• IRT Dyre Avenue Line (5 train)
• IRT Jerome Avenue Line (4 train)
• IRT Pelham Line (6 <6> trains)
• IRT White Plains Road Line (2 5 trains)

Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Road.

Postal service[link]

The United States Postal Service operates post offices in the Bronx. The Bronx General Post Office is located at 558 Grand Concourse.^[61][62]

Demographics[link]

Race, ethnicity, language, and immigration[link]

Racial concentrations within the Bronx, by block. (Red indicates Hispanic of any race; Blue indicates non-Hispanic White; and Green indicates non-Hispanic Black or African-American.)

According to the 2010 Census, 10.9% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 30.1% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 3.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 0.6% from some other race (non-Hispanic) and 1.2% of two or more races (non-Hispanic). 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race)

The U.S. Census considers the Bronx to be the most diverse area in the country. There is an 89.7 percent chance that any two residents, chosen at random, would be of different race or ethnicity.^[63] The borough's formerly most populous ethnic group, white, declined from 98.3% in 1940 to 35.7% by 1990.^[64]

The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a Hispanic majority, many of whom are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. In 2000, The Bronx had some of the nation's highest percentages of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans with 24.0% and 10.0%, respectively.^[65]

According to the 2009 American Community Survey, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-fifth (22.9%) of The Bronx's population. However, non-Hispanic whites formed under one-eighth (12.1%) of the population, down from 34.4% in 1980.^[64] Out of all five boroughs, The Bronx has the lowest number and percentage of white residents. 320,640 whites called the Bronx home, of which 168,570 were non-Hispanic whites. The majority of the non-Hispanic European American population is of Italian and Irish descent. People of Italian descent numbered over 55,000 individuals and made up 3.9% of the population. People of Irish descent numbered over 43,500 individuals and made up 3.1% of the population. German Americans and Polish Americans made up 1.4% and 0.8% of the population respectively.

At the 2009 American Community Survey, Black Americans made the second largest group in the Bronx after Hispanics and Latinos. Blacks of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-third (35.4%) of the Bronx's population. Blacks of non-Hispanic origin made up 30.8% of the population. Over 495,200 blacks resided in the borough, of which 430,600 were non-Hispanic blacks. Over 61,000 people identified themselves as "Sub-Saharan African" in the survey, making up 4.4% of the population.

Native Americans are a very small minority in the borough. Only some 5,560 individuals (out of the borough's 1.4 million people) are Native American, which is equal to just 0.4% of the population. In addition, roughly 2,500 people are Native Americans of non-Hispanic origin.

Asian Americans are a small but sizable minority in the borough. Roughly 49,600 Asians make up 3.6% of the population. Roughly 13,600 Indians call The Bronx home, along with 9,800 Chinese, 6,540 Filipinos, 2,260 Vietnamese, 2,010 Koreans, and 1,100 Japanese.

Multiracial Americans are also a sizable minority in the Bronx. People of multiracial heritage number over 41,800 individuals and represent 3.0% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and African American heritage number over 6,850 members and form 0.5% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Native American heritage number over 2,450 members and form 0.2% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage number over 880 members and form 0.1% of the population. People of mixed African American and Native American heritage number over 1,220 members and form 0.1% of the population.

In 2009, Hispanic and Latino Americans represented 52.0% of the Bronx's population. Puerto Ricans represented 23.2% of the borough's population. Over 72,500 Mexicans lived in the Bronx, and they formed 5.2% of the population. Cubans numbered over 9,640 members and formed 0.7% of the population. In addition, over 319,000 people were of various Hispanic and Latino groups, such as Dominican, Salvadoran, and so on. These groups collectively represented 22.9% of the population. At the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race).

Approximately 44.3% of the population over the age of 5 speak only English at home, which is roughly 570,000 people. The majority (55.7%) of the population speak non-English languages at home. Over 580,600 people (45.2% of the population) speak Spanish at home.^[67][68]

According to the 2005–2007 American Community Survey Estimates, the borough's population was 23.0% White (13.0% non-Hispanic White alone), 34.5% Black or African American (30.6% non-Hispanic Black or African American alone), 0.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.8% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 40.4% from some other race and 2.4% from two or more races. 50.7% of the total population were Hispanic or Latino of any race (23.3% of Bronx's population were Puerto Ricans). [2] 31.7% of the population were foreign born and another 8.9% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parents. 55.6% spoke a language other than English at home and 16.4% had a Bachelor's degree or higher. [3]

The Census of 1930 counted only 1.0% (12,930) of the Bronx's population as Negro (while making no distinct counts of Hispanic or Spanish-surname residents).^[69]

Immigrants from Ghana have clustered along the Grand Concourse.^[70]

Based on sample data from the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 47.3% of the population five and older spoke only English at home, while 43.7% spoke Spanish at home, either exclusively or along with English. Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian (1.36%), Kru, Igbo, or Yoruba [West Africa] (0.72%) and French (0.54%).

Population and housing[link]

Poverty concentrations within the Bronx, by Census Tract.

At the 2010 Census, there were, 1,385,108 people living in Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000. As of the United States Census^[72] of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 31,709.3 inhabitants per square mile (12,242.2/km²). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 11,674.8 per square mile (4,507.4/km²). There were 463,212 households out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.

The age distribution of the population in the Bronx was as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 87.0 males.

Individual and household income[link]

The 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over.

Government and politics[link]

Local government[link]

Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the Bronx has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a mayor-council system. The centralized New York City government is responsible for all municipal functions.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 with powers mostly derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate. The 1989 Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris case declared the Board unconstitutional, and since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations.

On February 18, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed the former Bronx Borough President, Adolfo Carrión, Jr., to the position of Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy.^[73]

On April 21, 2009, a special election was held to choose Carrión's successor. Democratic New York State Assembly member Rubén Díaz, Jr., running on the "Bronx Unity" ticket, won this election with 29,420 votes (86%) against 4,646 votes (14%) for the Republican Anthony Ribustello ("People First") and 11 votes for write-in candidates.^[74][75][76] On May 1, 2009, Assemblyman Diaz was sworn in as the 13th Borough President of the Bronx (For his predecessors, see the List of Bronx Borough Presidents.)

Every currently-elected public official in the Bronx has first won the Democratic nomination (whether or not also nominated by other parties). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and the alienation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.

Since its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own directly-elected District Attorney, the county's chief public prosecutor.^[5] Robert T. Johnson, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Bronx County since 1989. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.^[77]

Eight members of the New York City Council represent districts wholly within the Bronx, while a ninth represents a Manhattan district (8) that also includes a small area of the Bronx. (All of them were Democrats in 2008.) One of those members, Joel Rivera (District 15), has been the Council's Majority Leader since 2002.

The Bronx also has 12 Community Boards, appointed bodies that field complaints and advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions. (They are listed at Bronx Community Boards).

Legislative and congressional representatives[link]

In 2008, three Democrats represented almost all of the Bronx in the United States House of Representatives.

• José M. Serrano (first elected in March 1990) represents New York's 16th congressional district, which covers much of the South Bronx. It was, in 2000, the poorest of the nation's 435 districts (42.8% below the poverty line); it was also the most Hispanic of New York state's 29 congressional districts (62.8%) and the youngest (34.5% under 18 years old; 6.7% over 65).
• Eliot Engel (first elected in 1988) represents the 17th District which includes parts of the northwest Bronx as well as parts of Westchester and Rockland counties.
• Joseph Crowley (first elected in 1998) represents the 7th District which spans the East Bronx and includes Co-op City, City Island, Pelham Bay, Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Parkchester, Castle Hill and Throgs Neck, as well as parts of northwest Queens.
• (Riker's Island, the city's main jail complex, is included in the 15th District, which covers Upper Manhattan and utilities facilities in Astoria, Queens. It is represented by Charles B. Rangel, first elected in 1970. In 2006, the Congressional election returns in this district included no votes from the Bronx or Queens.)

All of these Representatives won over 75% of their districts' respective votes in both 2004 and 2006. National Journal's neutral rating system placed all of their voting records in 2005 and 2006 somewhere between very liberal and extremely liberal.^[13][14]

11 out of 150 members of the New York State Assembly (the lower house of the state legislature) represent districts wholly within the Bronx. Six State Senators out of 62 represent Bronx districts, half of them wholly within the County, and half straddling other counties. All these legislators are Democrats who won between 65% and 100% of their districts' vote in 2006.^[78]

Votes for other offices[link]

In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John F. Kerry (Democratic/Working Families) received 81.8% of the vote in the Bronx while President George W. Bush (Republican/Conservative) received 16.3%.

A year later, the Democratic former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer won 59.8% of the borough's vote against 38.8% for Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Republican/Independence) who carried every other borough in his winning campaign for re-election. In 2009, the Bronx voted slightly more strongly against the successful re-election of Mayor Bloomberg, who received 37% of the Bronx vote (as an independent supported by the Republican and Independence Parties) against 61.2% for New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson (Democratic and Working Families).

In 2006, successfully-reelected Senator Hillary Clinton (Democratic, Working Families & Independence) won 89.5% of the Bronx's vote against 9.6% for Yonkers ex-Mayor John Spencer (Republican and Conservative), while Eliot Spitzer (Democratic, Working Families & Independence) received 88.8% of the Borough's vote in winning the Governorship against John Faso (Republican & Conservative), who received 9.7% of the Bronx's vote.

In the Presidential primary elections of February 5, 2008, Sen. Clinton won 61.2% of the Bronx's 148,636 Democratic votes against 37.8% for Barack Obama and 1.0% for the other four candidates combined. At the same time, John McCain won 54.4% of the borough's 5,643 Republican votes, Mitt Romney 20.8%, Mike Huckabee 8.2%, Ron Paul 7.4%, Rudy Giuliani 5.6%, and the other three candidates 3.6% between them.^[79]

In the Presidential general election of November 4, 2008, Sen. Obama won 87.8% of the Bronx's vote (338,261) on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines of the ballot, Sen. McCain won 10.8% (41,683) on the Republican, Independence and Conservative Party lines, and other candidates won 1.3% (1,342) between them. The Democratic candidate's percentage of the Presidential vote increased by 6% from 2004, while the Republican presidential candidate's percentage declined by 5.5%.

After becoming a separate county in 1914, the Bronx has supported only two Republican Presidential candidates. It voted heavily for the winning Republican Warren G. Harding in 1920, but much more narrowly on a split vote for his victorious Republican successor Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (Coolidge 79,562; John W. Davis, Dem., 72,834; Robert La Follette, 62,202 equally divided between the Progressive and Socialist lines).

Since then, the Bronx has always supported the Democratic Party's nominee for President, starting with a vote of 2–1 for the unsuccessful Al Smith in 1928, followed by four 2-1 votes for the successful Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Both had been Governors of New York, but the Bronx voted against two former Republican Governors who ran for President: Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948.)^[80]

The Bronx has often shown striking differences from other boroughs in elections for Mayor. The only Republican to carry the Bronx since 1914 was Fiorello La Guardia in 1933, 1937 and 1941 (and in the latter two elections, only because his 30–32% vote on the American Labor Party line was added to 22–23% as a Republican).^[81] The Bronx was thus the only borough not carried by the successful Republican re-election campaigns of Mayors Rudolph Giuliani in 1997 and Michael Bloomberg in 2005. The anti-war Socialist campaign of Morris Hillquit in the 1917 mayoral election won over 31% of the Bronx's vote, putting him second and well ahead of the 20% won by the incumbent pro-war Fusion Mayor John P. Mitchel, who outpolled Hillquit city-wide by 23.2% to 21.7%.^[82]