A Resurgence in the Bronx Is Finally Putting the Grand Back in the Concourse
During one of the Grand Concourse’s low points, in the 1960’s, the city’s Parks Department decided not to replant grass in the boulevard’s median. Instead, it poured cement and painted it green.
It was an indignity for a street that had once been the Bronx’s most prestigious address — a Park Avenue at middle-class prices.
At 4.5 miles, the Grand Concourse is neither the Bronx’s longest street, nor its busiest, but since it was completed 97 years ago, it has been a barometer of the borough’s economic vitality — its successes and failures reflected in the fading mosaics and fresh graffiti painted on the six-story Art Deco and Art Moderne apartment houses that line it.