Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City

14 Lair and Sanctuary in the South Bronx: CAROL ZAKALUK AND JOHN KNOERR IN MOTT HAVEN, THE BRONX (March 18, 2011)

8 3 14 Lair and Sanctuary in the South Bronx Carol Zakaluk and John Knoerr in Mott Haven, the Bronx MARCH 18, 2011 Carol Zakaluk and John Knoerr in her family’s row house in Mott Haven in the Bronx. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times) 8 4 Carol Zakaluk lives on what’s known as the Bertine block in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx, a stretch of ruddy brick and stone row houses built in the 1890s. The strip takes its name from the local developer, George Bertine, but the buildings themselves were the work of a single gifted architect named George Keister. The house at 422 East 136th Street, which Ms. Zakaluk occupies with her husband, John Knoerr, has been in her family for 90 years. And by stepping outside her front door, she can retrace the geography of her childhood. The building next door at No. 420, which she bought at a discount from her parents and now rents to a revolving group of young tenants, is the one in which she was born and raised. “Here’s where my crib was,” Ms. Zakaluk says, pointing to a corner of the dining room. “And here’s where there used to be the round oak table where I did my homework, under a yellow lamp that hung from the ceiling.” The garden-level kitchen also evokes razor-sharp recollections, as if through muscle memory she can retrieve fragments of her past. “When I bend down to collect the recyclables,” she says, “I remember, almost without thinking about it, the kittens who used to live under the staircase .” Across the street stood the apartment house where Ms. Zakaluk’s paternal grandfather, a grocer from the Ukraine named Michael Zakaluk , lived with his wife, Anastasia. The house where Ms. Zakaluk and her husband live had been bought in 1921 for $7,800 by her maternal grandfather, Karel Boekhoff, a Dutch upholsterer. When he and his wife, Harriet, moved in, their daughter, Clara, who would grow up to become Carol’s mother, was 3. A formal family portrait taken around that time shows a dark-eyed man with a mustache, a woman holding a baby in a long white christening dress—that was baby Mary—and Clara, a huge bow in her hair, perched on her father’s knee. Everyone looks deadly serious. The story of 422 East 136th Street, one that spans four generations and involves a sprawling cast of characters, is complex. But the tale is also rich, encompassing both architectural distinction and the experiences of a large and close-knit family that, unlike the vast majority of its neighbors, rode out the turmoil that convulsed this section of the Bronx in the later 20th century. At the heart of the story stands the four-story, single-family house that Mr. Boekhoff bought so many decades ago, one L A I R A N d S A N C T U A R y I N T H E S O U T H B R O N x 8 5 of 10 Queen Anne–style structures whose façades are encrusted with stained glass and ornamental wrought iron and whose low stoops and tall chimneys add an air of domesticity. The strip was built at a moment Mott Haven was a destination for middle-class families seeking a fashionable neighborhood, and the variety of rooftops—rounded, square, peaked, stepped—gives the impression that the architect was showing off. Today, the exterior of No. 422 looks much as it did a century earlier. Irises that Ms. Zakaluk’s grandmother planted still come up every spring in the back garden, near the swing set her grandfather built from old plumbing parts. By 1984, Ms. Zakaluk was living on the top floor with Mr. Knoerr and her daughter, and she acquired the house after the death of her grandmother the following year. And despite the presence of two busy professionals in their 50s—Mr. Knoerr is a sound engineer, and Ms. Zakaluk has had various careers in the arts, including book designer and sculptor’s assistant—the interior is little changed as well. Only three items of furniture aren’t indigenous to the house or to Ms. Zakaluk’s family. “If it’s not broken, don’t throw it away—that was our family’s mantra,” Ms. Zakaluk says.“We were recyclers before they had the...