Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx

Introduction

This page intentionally left blank vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 I A Promenade for the Bronx 2 1 “A Drive of Extraordinary Delightfulness” 15 2 “Get a New Resident for the Bronx” 41 3 “I Was Living in ‘a Modern Building’” 59 II The Golden Ghet to 2 4 “Something That Everybody Had in Awe” 87 5 “An Acre of Seats in a Garden of Dreams” 125 6 “By the Waters of the Grand Concourse” 141 7 The Grand Concourse of the Imagination 159 III To Hell and Back 2 8 “The Borough of Abandonment” 177 9 Who Killed the Concourse? 201 10 “Bends in the Road” 215 Sources 229 Bibliography 243 Index 253 About the Author 267 This page intentionally left blank ix Acknowledgments T h I S B o o k e x I ST S because countless people were kind enough to share their insights and expertise with me over the years. I’d especially like to thank Sam Goodman, Mark Caldwell, Thomas Mellins, Lloyd Ultan, Evelyn Gonzalez, Mark Naison, Jerome Charyn, Marshall Berman, Leonard Kriegel, Arthur Gelb, Avery Corman, James Crocker, Gelvin Stevenson, Deborah Dash Moore, and Robert Caro, all of whom were exceptionally generous with their time and did a great deal to help clarify my thinking about the evolving world of the Grand Concourse. I am indebted beyond words to Stephen Sinon, head of information services and archives at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden, who served as my research assistant. Stephen not only unearthed every document I asked for, he also directed me to countless others that made this book richer and more informative. And given his yeoman work collecting images and acquiring the sometimes elusive rights to them, he is the one most responsible for the illustrations. I am also deeply indebted to those who were kind enough to critique all or parts of my manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions; in addition to Mark Caldwell, Sam Goodman, Thomas Mellins, and Lloyd Ultan, they include Jim Rasenberger, Manette Berlinger, and my New York Times colleagues Mitch Keller and John Oudens. I’m grateful to Mimi Vang Olsen for sharing the story of her father, Kourken Hovsepian, and his priceless photographs of generations of West Bronx families, a collection that I hope someday finds a public home of its own. I’m also grateful to Robert Billingsley for sharing documents and memories about his father, the developer Logan Billingsley; to John Ginsbern for memories of his grandfather, the architect Horace Ginsbern; to Sonia and Paula Kessler for recollections about the poet Milton Kessler; to Suzanne Callahan and Maury Brassert for family memories about the theater designer John Eberson; and to James Crocker for sharing a scrapbook x Acknowledgments about Andrew Freedman that provided a vivid portrait of a man, an institution , and an era. At the Bronx African-American History Project, in addition to Mark Naison, I’d like to thank Brian Purnell and the individuals whose descriptions of life in the borough enriched my understanding of Bronx life, among them Leroi Archible, Beatrice Bergland, Jesse Davidson, Joan Tyson Fortune, Robert Gumbs, Allen Jones, and Cyril DeGrasse Tyson. At the Bronx borough president’s office, in addition to Sam Goodman, I’d like to thank Daniel Donovan and Wilhelm Ronda. I’m also grateful to three former borough presidents—Robert Abrams, Fernando Ferrer, and Herman Badillo—all of whom shared their insights about the strengths and troubles of the West Bronx, as did current and former staff members of the New York City Planning Department, among them Robert Esnard, Lloyd Kaplan, Larry Parnes, and Rachaele Raynoff. Staff at libraries and other institutions around the city went far beyond the call of duty in helping me with my research. I’d especially like to thank Laura Tosi, Peter Derrick, and Gary Hermalyn at the Bronx County Historical Society; Janet Munch at the Leonard Lief Library of Lehman College of the City University of New York, and her colleague William Bosworth, director of Lehman’s Bronx Data Center; Melanie Bower at the Museum of the City of New York; Janet Parks at Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, home of the Horace Ginsbern archives; Sergio Bessa, Holly Block, and their colleagues at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; William Casari at Hostos Community...