2754 Bronx Park East
It was a wonderful place to make noise. The large, high-ceilinged, lobby had a tile floor and hard surfaces everywhere, so every noise echoed beautifully. We loved to come up the outside steps with our roller skates on and skate across the lobby making a fabulous racket. That tile floor was so perfectly smooth, it was a great place to skate. Of course, this was not approved behavior, but usually there was no one home in the two apartments directly off the lobby, so we got away with our noise. We’d sit down on the few steps between the two levels of the lobby and take off our skates for the climb to the third floor.
We lived in C33, a large, sunny, two bedroom apartment. There were four apartments on each landing, from the second floor to the fifth. Our building was part of what everyone called simply The Coops. Here’s Wikipedia’s entry about them:
United Workers Cooperatives, also known as Allerton Coops, is a historic apartment building complex located at 2700–2870 Bronx Park East in Allerton and the “Commie Coops,[2] Bronx, New York City. The complex includes three contributing buildings and five contributing structures. The Tudor Revival style buildings were built during two construction campaigns, 1926–1927 and 1927–1929 by the United Workers’ Association. The buildings feature half timbered gables, horizontal half-timbered bands topped with sloping slate roofs, corbelled and crenellated towers, and picturesque chimneys.[3]
The complex was built by the United Workers’ Association (part of the Industrial Workers of the World or “IWW”), and was an important early example of cooperative housing for working-class people. Most of the Association members were secular Jews with Communist political leanings who were engaged in the needle trades. The association sought to improve the living standards of its members, many of whom lived in squalid conditions in the tenements of the Lower East Side. It bought a plot of land in an undeveloped section of the Bronx, near the open space of Bronx Park, and envisioned a community of socially and politically engaged residents who would each have an equal say in the running of the complex, regardless of the size of their apartments or the prices that they paid for them. The complex had classrooms, a library, and other amenities and activities that were uncommon in other cooperative complexes that were built for profit. Though considered a social success, the complex failed financially in the Great Depression and was converted to rental housing in 1943. After decades of neglect by a succession of landlords, the complex was purchased and renovated by a new owner in the mid-1980s.[4]
The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991.[1] It was designated a New York City landmark in 1992.[4]
It’s funny to think that I grew up in what is now a National Historic Landmark. It was just home to us. My maternal grandparents, particularly my Zayda, David Gerson, had been involved in the project from the first, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know exactly what his role was. I do know that my grandparents moved there when the first building opened. My mother would have been four or five years old when they moved into C31, a one bedroom apartment on the same landing where I grew up. Mom remembered the early thriving years of the complex – the classes and social activities. By the time we were growing up, all that remained of that social side was the little library on the ground floor of our building.
But if it was no longer the workers’ paradise its founders dreamed of, it was still a wonderful community for a kid to grow up in. If you look at it on Google Earth, you’ll see that our buildings surrounded a large courtyard. What you can’t see is that the gardens were well kept in those days, with barberry hedges and a grove of mulberry trees. There were two big fountains that had been running in my mother’s childhood, but had been drained and left as play spaces by the time we were born – too much maintenance, I think. The physical space was safe and appealing, but what really mattered was the sense of community, of growing up in a village in the middle of a city. People knew us there, they knew my parents and grandparents. I could walk to the apartments of my two best friends without crossing a street.
I’ve been thinking about what my grandchildren will remember about the places where they grew up. I was just a bit older than Asher is now when we moved from The Coops to a garden apartment in Mamaroneck. It was not as dramatic a move as the move Asher just made from San Jose, CA to Pittsburgh, PA, but socially it might have been more of an upset. Where Asher has lived in four different neighborhoods in San Jose, I had only lived in the womb of The Coops, and leaving it was challenging, and mostly a loss for me. Asher has not had the experience I’ve had of being the third generation to live on the same landing. He couldn’t have gone to a school where he had the same teacher for fourth grade that his mother had.
My Bronx memories are all of stability, safety, and freedom. We could cross the street to the big playground – we could just ask a grownup (preferably a woman, or as a last resort a man with a dog) to cross us when we were too young to cross by ourselves. We could play there until we were exhausted, hungry or cold. There were plenty of moms and grandmas there, but the idea of helicopter parents was way off in the future. We were warned not to talk to strangers, and I’m sure my mom gave us more freedom than many kids had, but our level of independence was pretty common in that time and place.
Those early Bronx experiences left me with a sense of confidence in my ability to navigate a big world. The biggest intersection near The Coops was three blocks away, where Allerton Avenue crossed White Plains Road (which was still cobblestoned then). The movie theater was diagonally across this busy intersection, but we didn’t have to cross the streets. The elevated train ran above White Plains Road there, so we could climb the stairs to the station, and climb down on the opposite corner. When I was in fourth grade I would get on the train at that station alone, putting my fifteen cent token into the turnstile, and ride the three stops to my Dad’s factory. I do remember mom walking us to school sometimes, but probably just because she wanted the outing. Mostly we walked to and from school on our own. The population of the city was about 7.8 million in the time I lived there, and around 1.4 million of those people lived in The Bronx. Still, my neighborhood was a safe little village for me.
I grew up in these two wonderful worlds, the urban village of the Coops, and rural Amenia. I had two loving parents who exposed me to different spheres of knowledge, and I had these two homes that taught me to feel at home anywhere. I’m as comfortable walking on a city street as on a dirt road. I have the wonderful diversity of city life and the peace of the country deep in my bones.
This past weekend my 15 year old grandson Cian and I shared a visit to the Exploratorium. One of the exhibits laid out beanbags of different weights for pairs of personal attributes or life experiences. You chose the item in each pair that best represented you and put it into your shopping bag, and you put the other item from the pair into a shopping bag for others. After you separated all the pairs, you lifted your shopping bag and compared its weight to the shopping bag for others. I carry such a light burden compared to most people. The only way the analogy fails is that it should have shown how my life circumstances actually lifted me up. I’ve been aware of the advantages I was given for as long as I can remember, but this gave me a nice way to share my experience of privilege with Cian.
Along with all my other blessings, I have the blessing of a much blended family, a family that chooses each other. Cian is the youngest grandchild of Jay’s late wife, Nancy. We share no DNA, but it couldn’t matter less. It’s a joy to have a chance to lift him up a little, as I have been so generously lifted up.