This Is Hunt’s Point

Hunt’s Point in the Bronx, an enclave relatively cut off from Longwood by the Amtrak railroad cut and Bruckner Expressway, is where auto glass, auto parts, light industry and manufacturing are carrying on without pressure from the city. It also brought FNY a much-needed Bronx tour, a borough that’s been somewhat neglected lately by the FNY camera—it’s not readily reachable from Little Neck without a couple changes of trains.

Hunt’s Point, not to be confused with Queens’ Hunters Point, is easily definable as it’s cut off from the rest of the Bronx by pedal-to-the metal Bruckner Expressway, the East River, and the Bronx River, which divides it from Soundview and Harding Park. It was settled as early as the 1690s by the Leggett and Hunt colonial families, and for many years was a rural enclave dotted with opulent mansions owned by Edward Faille, Paul Spofford, Cuban patriot Innocencio Casanova and Benjamin Whitlock. The only trace of them now, and other colonial-era names, are words on street signs.

In the early-20th century, the coming of high-speed railroad lines, as well as the elevated and subway lines, spelled the conclusion of Hunt’s Point’s rural era of exclusivity. Single-family homes and apartment buildings arose along streets in the northern half of the neighborhood, with industry and railyards along the East River to the south. Two of the largest produce markets in the world, the New York City Produce and Meat Markets, opened in 1967 and 1974 respectively. The old Fulton Fish Market joined them in 2007. They’re now surrounded by the Hunt’s Point Industrial Park, hosting over 800 businesses and a large Con Ed plant at the southeast end of the neighborhood at East Bay Ave.

Like the rest of the Bronx, Hunt’s Point suffered a severe decline in the 1970s and 1980s as poverty, crime, arson and a crack epidemic caused severe privations. The area lost close to two-thirds of its population by 1985. Hunt’s Point continues to struggle out of this malaise as best it can.

The above fortress-like building at Lafayette Ave. and Tiffany St. has produced Mexican, Brazilian, Costa Rican, Ecuadorian and Haitian stock certificates, travelers’ checks and stock certificates, as well as paper money. The company later to become American Bank Note was founded in the 1790s by engraver Joseph Perkins, a Massachusetts native from Newburyport; the company was incorporated in 1858. American Bank Note produced US currency from 1858 to 1879, and for a short time in 1861 produced Confederate money. The company also entered into printing stock and bond certificates in association with the New York Stock Exchange in the later-19th century. Its Bronx factory was built in 1911 and was designated as a NYC Landmark in 2008. Currently it’s a home for local businesses, nonprofits and educational programs.

For many years the ABNC employed an engraver named Joseph Ford, who was a legal counterfeiter. He duplicated various currencies produced here; his successes in counterfeiting banknotes prompted changes in their manufacture. His son, William, became the world’s most successful portrait engraver (the type that appears in The Wall Street Journal).

The Hunts Point railroad station is a relic of a period when local service was offered on high-speed rail lines in the southern and eastern Bronx, and of the days when grand buildings were constructed even on local stops in areas that weren’t necessarily in the center city. This station served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (Amtrak tracks still run underneath Hunts Point Avenue here). It’s designed by Cass Gilbert—the architect of the Woolworth Building—in 1908. This is one of a series of deteriorating rail stations in the Bronx along the old NY, NH & H the Metro-North Railroad hopes to revive, along with Parkchester/Van Nest, Morris Park, and Co-op City, as part of the Penn Station Access project, with potential for initial service by 2027-2028. However, The Metropolitan Transit Authority has yet to reach an agreement with Amtrak about use of the tracks, so the project remains up in the air, and that 2028 date now seems unrealistic.

Many Hunt’s Pointers are unaware that they have a pair of landmarked buildings in their midst—the aforementioned American Bank Note building and the Bright Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church at Lafayette Ave. and Faile St. It was constructed in the 1860s on the Peter Hoe estate, when Hunt’s Point was part of the town of West Farms in the county of Westchester. According to Barbaralee Diamonstein’s classic textbook Landmarks of New York, the building was designed in the Picturesque Gothic tradition, and resembles several of the homes mentioned in Calvert Vaux’ Villas and Cottages, though there’s no known connection between Sunnyslope, as the building was named, and the co-architect of Central and Prospect Parks. The Hoe family business was printing; Peter’s brother, Colonel Richard Hoe, invented the rotary printing press. After Hoe sold the estate in 1864, Sunnyslope passed through many hands, in 1919 becoming the Temple Beth Elohim. It’s been owned and occupied since 1966 by the Bright Temple AME. Sunnyslope is one of the few country houses from wealthy estates still standing in the five boroughs.

While it’s true that many cemeteries in NYC such as Green-Wood in Brooklyn and Woodlawn here in the Bronx were de facto urban parks after their construction in the mid-19th century, Drake Park, at Hunts Point Ave., East Bay Ave., and Longfellow Ave., is one of the few NYC parks that contains a cemetery*: the colonial-era burying ground of the Hunt and Leggett families. Drake Park was created in 1910, surrounding the cemetery.

The park’s namesake, Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) was a poet whose work was mostly forgotten by the 2000s but he made a name for himself in the early-1800s, with his most famous poems “The Culprit Fay” and “The American Flag.” Drake was born in lower Manhattan, but discovered the then-bucolic fields of Hunts Point as a young man; he’d often brave the currents and rowboat here across the East River. While ill with tuberculosis at 25, he requested a burial in Hunt’s Point. One of his best friends was Fitz-Greene Halleck, who’s also little-known today, but in the 1800s had a statue in Central Park cast in his likeness.

Barretto Point Park was constructed in 2007 on five acres of East River waterfront at Viele Ave. and Tiffany St.; its presence is heartening in that even in NYC’s most out-of-the-way, visitor-unfriendly areas, a park with views of the towering Manhattan skyscrapers is available. There’s a beach (“La Playita”), but in winter, no Bronx bathing beauties were in evidence.

Using the zoom lens, I photographed North Brother Island from the park. Look closely and you can just about make out the top of one of the abandoned hospital buildings on the island. In 1886, Riverside Hospital was treated and quarantined people with contagious illnesses. Its mission expanded to include other diseases such as TB, typhus, typhoid fever, and polio. The most famous patient was “Typhoid Mary” Mallon (1869-1938), who was healthy herself but was a virulent carrier of typhoid fever. After infecting several people between 1900-1907 Mallon was quarantined on North Brother but released on the condition she wouldn’t work with food. However, she inflicted typhoid fever on 25 others, and was returned to North Brother Island, this time for life. The ill-fated General Slocum tour boat grounded here after catching fire in the East River in June 1904, taking the lives of over 1000, most Lower East Side German immigrants on a church picnic.

South Brother Island was used by early-20th century Yankee owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert for several years as a personal resort island. Babe Ruth was known to practice his swing, walloping baseballs into the East River. I’m not sure if anything from Ruppert’s era remains. Both islands are now protected bird sanctuaries, but they attract several intrepid urban explorers.

—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013).