Fifth Avenue it’s not, but fans of the Grand Concourse will be swelling with pride over the beloved boulevard tomorrow when it’s considered as the city’s next historic district.
The Grand Concourse, built in 1909 to resemble the Champs-Elysées in Paris, is home to the largest collection of art deco residential buildings in the world, said one of the boulevard’s biggest fans, Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan.
“When it comes to art deco, they like to talk about South Beach in Miami. But nothing compares to the Grand Concourse,” said Ultan.
A section of the Grand Concourse between 153rd and 167th streets, along with side streets and some neighboring blocks, are part of the proposed historic district under consideration by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The commission holds a public hearing on the proposal tomorrow, the last step before voting on the designation.
Long associated with Jewish New York’s upward climb out of the Lower East Side, the Grand Concourse became a coveted address beginning in the 1920s, with new spacious apartments that went up in a building frenzy lasting till the mid-1930s.
“The rooms in these apartments were huge for their times. Think of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing in a Hollywood living room that’s larger than anything you could have imagined,” said Ultan.
“If you lived on the Grand Concourse, it was a sign that you had made it,” Ultan said
Designed by Louis Aloys Risse, an Alsatian immigrant, the 180-foot-wide boulevard was a gateway from uptown Manhattan to a string of parks stretching across the northern Bronx. It pioneered the use of overpasses to clear busy intersections.
By the mid-1960s, suburban flight meant a changing of the guard along the Grand Concourse. Mostly Jewish, middle- and upper-class families were replaced by African-American and Puerto Rican families in a search for affordable housing.
Ultan said landlords along the Grand Concourse cut back on maintenance at the once-glamorous buildings until the late 1980s, when the first conversions to co-ops helped generate new revenues needed to upgrade the properties.