This district includes the cohesive streetscape of apartment houses, private residential structures, and institutional buildings developed along the Grand Concourse, a speedway planned in 1893 to connect Central Park to the verdant parkland of the North Bronx. Often considered the “Champs-Elysées” of the Bronx, it was an incredibly fashionable place to reside in the first half of the twentieth century. The Concourse itself has been radically changed, but many of the structures lining it still visually recall the early decades of the twentieth century.
The edifices along the Grand Concourse were largely designed in Revival styles, including the neo-Renaissance and neo-Tudor. The buildings, of five or six stories in height, are built in brick with trim of stone, cast stone or terra cotta. The stylized neoclassical Bronx County Courthouse, at 851 Grand Concourse, incorporates elements of the Moderne and art deco. The building is enhanced by stylized and abstracted sculptural forms, by such prominent artists as Charles Keck and Adolf A. Weinman, which flank the four entrances to the building and adorn the spandrel panels. ©2014