Mott Haven East Historic District

This small, two-block enclave between East 139th and East 140th Streets, is a rare island of original construction that survived the massive demolitions of the 1960s and 1970s in the then-economically depressed South Bronx.

The area was named for the industrialist Jordan L. Mott, who located his house and his ironworks factory in the South Bronx in 1828. Mott Haven was connected to Manhattan by rail as early as 1841, but it was the Third Avenue elevated train and the construction of several new bridges across the Harlem River in the 1880s that made real estate development in the Bronx profitable. This district is composed of lower-and middle-income housing groups, constructed between 1887 and 1903 that comprise a sort of “museum” of late nineteenth century speculative housing. There are several groups of two- and one-story neo-Grec, Queen Anne, and Romanesque Revival row houses, as well as Old and New Law tenements in the Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles.

Today, the block fronts of this district retain a high degree of architectural integrity. ©2014