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Lenape Colonized by Europeans
Jonas Bronck, a Swedish sea captain, his wife, and a handful of indentured servants (people who signed a contract to work for a certain number of years in exchange for transportation to the U.S.) become the first European settlers in the Bronx. Long before the Europeans came to the Bronx, the Lenape Native Americans lived there. Relations between the Lenape and the new settlers eventually became tense and violent. -
Third Avenue El in the Bronx
The Third Avenue El (Elevated Train) is extended into The Bronx. The Third Avenue El was an elevated railway running from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx. When the Third Avenue line was extended into the Bronx, “the population ... swelled almost fivefold in the two following decades, mostly along the Third Avenue corridor.” The Third Avenue El no longer exists. -
Parks in the Bronx
The City of New York purchases Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx Park, Pelham Bay Park, Crotona Park, Claremont Park, St. Mary’s Park, Mosholu Parkway, Pelham Parkway, and Crotona Parkway. Today, the park system of the Bronx covers 24% of the borough’s land surface, making it New York City's greenest borough. -
First subway connects Manhattan to the Bronx
The first subway connecting The Bronx to Manhattan was built under E. 149th Street, providing cheap rapid transit, which allowed hundreds of thousands of residents during the 1900s-1930s to leave tenements in Manhattan for large new apartments in The Bronx. Irish, Italians, Serbians, Croatians and Armenians, were among those who made the move, but the largest group were Jews from central and Eastern Europe. As more and more people moved to The Bronx, the economy grew rapidly. -
Yankee Stadium Opens
Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a home run, giving it the nickname of “The House That Ruth Built.” -
The Cross-Bronx Expressway is Completed
The 7-mile expressway is completed. The expressway destroyed many neighborhoods and displaced 1,500 families. The author, Robert Caro, said the expressway was "tragic…to the people who lived in or near that right-of-way." -
Fires in the Bronx
Seven different areas in The Bronx lost more than 97% of their buildings to fire and abandonment between 1970 and 1980; 44 areas (out of 289 in the borough) lost more than 50%. By the mid-1970s, the Bronx had 120,000 fires per year, for an average of 30 fires every 2 hours. -
Hoe Avenue Peace Treaty
In 1971, there was a gathering of 40 of New York’s biggest gangs in a Bronx Boys Club to negotiate a peace treaty that basically got rid of gang violence in the Bronx overnight. Joseph Mpa, a member of the Black Panther Party and a senior at William H. Taft High School, visited the Ghetto Brothers headquarters and convinced them to stop fighting other gangs and battle “the true enemy”: The U.S. government depriving them of economic opportunity. -
Hip Hop is Created
On a hot summer night, DJ Kool Herc changed music
forever. At his sister's back-to-school party, he introduced what's now known as hip-hop. "Once they heard that, there was no turning back," DJ Herc told NewYork magazine. "They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks." -
Bronx River Restoration is formed
A small group of community activists formed Bronx River Restoration and began the difficult process of cleaning up and restoring the Bronx River. Eventually, efforts to restore the Bronx River took a tremendous step forward in 2001 when the Bronx River Alliance was created as a permanent organization and voice for the river. -
President Jimmy Carter visits the Bronx
After a summer in which entire blocks of the Bronx burned, President Jimmy Carter visits Charlotte Street in the Bronx, followed by television and newspaper cameramen recording widespread devastation and destruction of the area. -
Community organizations rebuild the Bronx
During the 1980s and 1990s, community organizations like Nos Quedamos ("we stay") and WHEDco advocated for affordable housing, job creation, and other issues of importance to the neighborhoods of the South Bronx.
