Clay Avenue Historic District

This land was once part of Fleetwood Park, an 1871 trotting track owned by William H. Morris, the scion of the landowning family for whom The Bronx town of Morrisania was named. Fleetwood was maintained by the Driving Club of New York (whose members included the powerful Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Whitney families), which was able to thwart the city's consistent efforts to develop the land. However, after the Third Avenue elevated train opened in 1888, property values rose and Morris's heirs closed the track in 1898, eventually selling the land in 1901.

Developer Ernest Wenigmann built twenty-eight semidetached, two-family, Romanesque Revival houses in the district dating from 1901. Designed by architect Warren C. Dickerson, these houses were intended to look like single-family buildings and were rented primarily to white-collar professionals. In 1909 -10, Wenigmann erected three New Law tenement apartment buildings. Designed by the firm Neville & Bagge, they have neo-Renaissance details and were built for working-class renters. A single one-family house from 1906 was built by hardware manufacturer Francis Keil. Over the years, many of the buildings have undergone interior renovations – especially subdivisions during the 1940s and 1950s – but the exteriors remain largely intact. Today, the tree-lined street is largely occupied and well-maintained. ©2014