The Grand Concourse is a renowned street in the Bronx that stretches for more than four miles in the western part of the borough. It was conceived in 1890 by Louis Aloys Risse, a French immigrant and chief surveying engineer from New York City, with the vision of creating a grand boulevard that would be the New York version of the Champs-Elysées, although longer. The project was 45 meters wide, with bicycle paths, pedestrian sidewalks and three distinct streets divided by an exuberant landscape. Since its opening in 1909, it has become “the most famous street in the Bronx”, connecting Manhattan to the North Bronx.
The development of the Concourse led to the construction of apartment buildings that surrounded the boulevard and, by 1939, it was already called Park Avenue for middle-class residents of the Bronx. The marked zigzag style of this six-story cream-colored brick building, with horizontal orange bands and deeply recessed and angled windows, makes the most of its location on the Grand Concourse. The opening of the Independent Metro System's Excourse line in 1933 further encouraged its development. When the automobile boom filled the streets of New York City with the new popular form of transportation and the Esplanade became accessible by public transportation, it became an incubator for development in the first half of the 20th century. For most of its length, it is 55 m (180 ft) wide, although some parts are narrower.
The Jerome Avenue Line, owned by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, opened its doors in 1917 just a few blocks west of the Grand Concourse, causing a housing boom among families moving upward. After the wave of Italian and Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century, Grand Concourse has become home to a diverse group of New Yorkers. The Works Progress Administration commissioned artist Ben Shahn to create a series of murals at the Grand Concourse post office. The northern part has a diverse architecture that includes single-family houses, without the high concentration of Art Deco buildings; while “the civic heart of the Bronx” lies between 167th and 149th Streets. In addition, there are several individual points of interest on or near the Esplanade, such as the Bronx Museum of Art and Edgar Allan Poe Cabin. The Grand Concourse remains one of the main fringes of the Bronx, describing its history through its century-old history and making it both a relic of its distant past and evidence of its growth into the future.
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