Parkchester, Bronx
Parkchester is a planned community and neighborhood originally developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and located in the east Bronx, New York City. The immediate surrounding area also takes its name from the complex. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are East Tremont Avenue to the north, Castle Hill Avenue to the east, Westchester Avenue to the south, East 177th Street/Cross Bronx Expressway to the southwest, and White Plains Road to the west. Metropolitan Avenue, Unionport Road, and White Plains Road are the primary thoroughfares through Parkchester.
The neighborhood is part of Bronx Community District 9 and is mostly located within ZIP Code 10462, with small sections in 10460 and 10461. The of the New York City Subway operate along Westchester Avenue. The neighborhood is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 43rd Precinct. The privately owned housing complex is patrolled by the Parkchester Department of Public Safety.
History
The housing development has the same origins as Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, and Riverton Houses in Manhattan, which were also originally developed and owned by MetLife. The name was later unofficially applied to the entire neighborhood surrounding the apartment complex. The name "Parkchester" itself was derived from the two neighborhoods on each side of the site of the housing development — Park Versailles and Westchester Heights.MetLife displayed an intricate scale model of the proposed development at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The model showed all of the buildings and facilities, and was accurate down to inclusion of each of the 66,000 windows in the complex. The 51 groups of buildings were planned to house 12,000 families.
The Parkchester residential development was originally designed and operated as a self-contained rental community for middle-class white families new to home ownership. MetLife chairman Frederick H. Ecker said that black renters were excluded because "Negroes and whites don't mix."
It was built from 1939 to 1942 on the farmland of the New York Catholic Protectory, a home for orphaned and troubled boys conducted by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, which relocated to Lincolndale, Westchester County, where it still exists. Macy's opened their first branch store after their 34th Street flagship store in Parkchester in 1941.
In 1974, approximately one-third of the complex was converted to condominiums, with the remaining portion, now Parkchester South Condominium converted later, in 1986. The complex is best known for its broad, tree-lined walkways between the distinctive red-brown buildings, and for its Works Progress Administration-style terracotta decorations on the buildings, that represent animal and human figures of many types. Many of these are the work of sculptor Joseph Kiselewski.
In 2015 Parkchester celebrated its 75th anniversary with a family event on the Parkchester North Ball Field.
In August 2024, the New York City Council voted to rezone 46 city blocks in Parkchester, Van Nest, and Morris Park, around the Metro-North Railroad's Parkchester/Van Nest and Morris Park stations, as part of the Penn Station Access project. The city government also promised to spend $500 million on infrastructure upgrades around these stations. The rezoning was intended to encourage development around these stations. As a result, up to 7,000 housing units could be constructed in the three neighborhoods.
Demographics
Based on data from the 2020 United States Census, the population of the Parkchester neighborhood tabulation area was 33,602, an increase of 3,781 from the 29,821 counted in 2010. Covering an area of, the neighborhood had a population density of.The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 35.1% African American, 25.4% Asian, 2.7% Non-Hispanic White, 1.4% from other races, and 2.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 33.0% of the population.
The Parkchester apartment complex has a total residential population over 25,000 and a population density over 125,000 people per sq mi. It includes a significant South Asian population: Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, including Catholics, Muslims, and Hindus. There are also a number of Italian, Polish, Irish, Eritrean and Albanian residents. Asian residents include Thais, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Burmese, and Cambodians. Parkchester also is home to a large and longstanding population of Puerto Ricans, like Luis R. Sepulveda who represents the area in the New York State Assembly and has his office on Westchester Avenue. Parkchester has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in New York City, as is it situated between Soundview and Castle Hill, which are also notable for having a significantly denser Puerto Rican population in comparison to other parts of the Bronx or the city as a whole. While the population is approximately over 38% African American and 30% Latino, the complex once had a whites-only policy. The resident population of the Parkchester apartment complex reflects a broad age distribution and the changing ethnic makeup of the Bronx.
The entirety of Bronx Community District 9, which comprises Bronx River, Castle Hill, Clason Point, Harding Park, Parkchester, Soundview, and Unionport, had 188,249 inhabitants with an average life expectancy of 79.7 years. This is about the same as the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are youth and middle-aged adults: 25% are between the ages of between 0–17, 29% between 25–44, and 24% between 45–64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 10% and 12% respectively.
As of 2017, the median household income in Bronx Community District 9 was $40,005.
In 2018, an estimated 26% of Bronx Community District 9 residents lived in poverty, compared to 25% in all of the Bronx and 20% in all of New York City. One in eight residents were unemployed, compared to 13% in the Bronx and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 55% in Bronx Community District 9, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 58% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, as of 2018, Bronx Community District 9 is considered low-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.
Land use
The Parkchester complex is composed of 171 four-sided brick buildings, either eight or 13 stories in height and numbered M through 7 and M through 12, respectively. The 13 story buildings have dual elevators positioned side-by-side, while the eight-story buildings only have one. Some buildings even have Terrace-level apartments that are located on the ground floor and noted by the T in front of the apartment letter, i.e., TA, TB, etc. These apartments differ from all others in the community in that they have an additional screened door in the living room section of the apartment that leads out onto a concrete patio where tenants usually put patio/lawn furniture.The surrounding area, commonly referred to as "Parkchester", is dominated by multi-unit buildings unrelated to Parkchester complex. 78.4% of housing units are renter occupied. Retail locations are interspersed throughout the neighborhood as well as along Starling Avenue, McGraw Avenue, Metropolitan Avenue, Tremont Avenue, Unionport Road, and White Plains Road; the latter four streets are considered the backbones of the area.
Points of interest include:
- American Theater, formerly Loews American, established in 1939, operated by Bow Tie Cinemas as a seven-screen multiplex until it closed in 2013. Converted to a Marshall's store.
- Macy's Department Store, with of selling space, opened in October 1941 as the company's first branch store.
- Zaro's Bakery, established in 1959, temporarily closed in 2015, reopened in 2017 close to its original location.
There are two subsections of the neighborhood. Parkchester Apartment Complex is a subsection of Parkchester. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are East Tremont Avenue to the north, Castle Hill Avenue to the east, McGraw Avenue to the south, and White Plains Road to the west. The apartment complex has recently undergone substantial renovations of many of their apartments. Additionally, Stratton Park is on the west part of Parkchester. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are the Amtrak Northeast Corridor to the west and north, White Plains Road to the east, and East 177th Street to the south. Its zip code is 10460, and its residents consider themselves as part of Parkchester.
At the heart of Parkchester is the Aileen B. Ryan Oval, formerly Metropolitan Oval.
Artwork
Parkchester was designed with aesthetics in mind as evidenced by intricate patterns of brickwork and architectural ornaments. The development contains 500 terra cotta statuettes and 600 plaques, and depict a wide array of figures, including bullfighters, soldiers, mermaids, and Native American chiefs, and animals, including gazelles, puffins, kangaroos, and bears. Sculptures were largely provided by the Federal Seaboard Terra Cotta Corporation. Among the nine sculptors on the project were Raymond Granville Barger, Joseph Kiselewski, Carl Schmitz and Theodore Barbarossa. Their sculptures adorn the entrances and can also be seen high on the corners of the taller buildings. Some are polychromatic, painted in bright colors, and some figures appear within rondels. In the Aileen B. Ryan Oval, a fountain named Fantasia, created by Barger, was installed in 1941 and is often the backdrop of photographs. The former Loew's American Theater is ornamented with figures of two harlequins in the front and a matador, hula girl, flamenco dancer, and other figures in the rear.Approximately 45 of the sculptures were removed from 2018 to 2021; a campaign by history preservationists and architectural historians has launched to preserve the Parkchester sculptures.