This old house is no more. It stood in the same location in
the Bronx for close to a century and, it’s fair to say, witnessed innumerable
and seismic changes. If this old house could only have spoken before it was
demolished, it would have had a lot to say. The home’s original owner built the
structure with his own two hands, which wasn’t unheard of in the Bronx of
yesteryear. People who had the privilege of crossing its threshold
reported that the rooms were small and the ceilings, low. It was a dwelling for a
different time and place. Pat Mitchell, a renowned local grocer, rented a furnished room
in the house’s attic after World War II. While an average-sized adult couldn’t stand up
straight there, rooms were really hard to come by after the war.
I am old enough to remember the builder’s then-elderly
daughter living in the house with her grown son, who was called “Buddy.” Buddy, who bore a striking resemblance to actor Jason Robards, had a faithful German shepherd. Buddy was not what you would call a conversationalist. Outside of walking his dog or silently lounging around in his
windowed front porch with a can of beer in his hand, he was rather nondescript. Buddy most likely used his car, which was parked in a driveway next to the house, to do his grocery shopping and keep the refrigerator stocked with
his preferred brew. The neighborhood’s nastier wagging tongues considered Buddy
something of a slacker. He never appeared to be duly employed and was never
without beer money—a deadly one-two punch as far as they were concerned. And,
too, the family had a summer place in the Catskills, where Buddy and his mother vacationed
and eventually moved to after selling this old house.
What was most fascinating about the house—a true original in every respect—was that its foundation was laid atop the recently covered-over
Tibbetts Brook, which meandered through this area of the Bronx until the early part of the twentieth century. When it was first ready for occupancy, there
were still vestiges of the stream at the surface. Initially, this old house’s
builder had a swimming hole in his backyard—water in which he actually swam, or at least wallowed in. Its basement was quite often flooded.
When my grandparents moved to Kingsbridge in 1946, the old
man's wife was still among the living. There were empty lots in neighborhood at that time and people planted what they called “victory gardens” in some of them, even
after the war. My grandfather tilled a plot in close proximity of this old
house. Approximately ten years later, he and fellow gardeners were asked to vacate the
premises in the name of progress. The original developer of the
property—directly behind this old house—went bankrupt after running into
unforeseen water issues courtesy of the underground, but ever-tenacious
Tibbetts Brook. Two tall buildings were subsequently erected, which were dubbed
Tibbett Towers. And this old house now had a parking lot alongside it.
Happily, my grandfather and a few friends found a new site in which to indulge their penchant for gardening. It was not too far from their old garden space—walking distance in fact—and just to the north of this old house. A makeshift fence promptly enclosed the new garden and a well was dug that tapped into Tibbetts Brooks, which supplied the place with a regular source of water. It was this garden that I came to know
during my youth, before it, too, was plowed under. I recently learned that
the old man who built this old house planted a Sycamore tree in his backyard.
It’s still there now and probably over eighty years old. No surprise: The
developer is going to cut it down—in the name of progress, naturally.
(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)