Bronx Apartment Rental Info:

Pelham Parkway, one of the city's most beautiful boulevards, runs for 6 miles from the Bronx Park to Pelham Bay Park. You'll find many apartment buildings along the two important commercial streets: White Plains Road and Allerton Avenue. On the eastern edge of the neighborhood, smaller houses become the predominant building type. The neighborhoods along Pelham Parkway are some of the safest and nicest residential areas in the city. Once overwhelmingly Jewish, the neighborhood now embraces immigrants from Pakistan to Kosovo, Jamaica to China, as well as all-American Puerto Ricans. This is a conservative, family neighborhood, teeming with children.

The patent for West Farms was granted to John Richardson and Edward Jessup on April 25th, 1666. Edward Jessup had a daughter who married Thomas Hunt, for whom Hunt's Point is named. In the 1990s, West Farms had more vacant lots than any place in the city. Community groups appealed to City Hall to do something about it. And City Hall did. Ten years later, all that has changed. Now those empty lots have more than a hundred handsome dark gray three-story townhouses in their place. The commercial strip along nearby 180th Street is coming alive, albeit slowly. Driveways are filled with minivans, and the sidewalks are crowded with mothers with baby strollers.

The first European settlers were members of the family of Pieter Pietersen Van Neste, who settled in the area in 1647. The area remained farmland until the 1870s, when it was developed by the Van Nest Land Improvement Company. (Ever notice how many neighborhoods are named by real estate developers?) The new single-family frame houses attracted Italian immigrants and the streets were named for members of the Van Neste family. The first apartment buildings were constructed in the 1920s. In addition to a large Italian and Irish population, in the 1980s Van Nest and its environs attracted some new immigrants from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, India, and China. To the east of Van Nest is Morris Park. From 1890 to 1913, this area was the site of Morris Park Racetrack, an elegant facility built by horse fancier John A. Morris; the Belmont Stakes were run here until 1905. After a fire destroyed the track in 1910, streets were cut through and small one-family houses and two- and three-story apartment buildings were built. As Italian immigrants became more affluent, Morris Park with its private homes and quiet streets was the neighborhood they aspired to live in. As the population grew, many fine stores opened to cater to the needs of the new residents.