Bronx Apartment Rental Info:

The neighborhoods of City Council District 16 are among the city's poorest, with the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest median household income. The students in the area attend some of the city's worst performing schools. But those who live there also point out that much is positive and stable about the area, thanks in large part to local organizations, not-for-profit agencies, and houses of worship that help hold the neighborhoods together.

Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, called his estate Morrisania, which is where the neighborhood got its name. Morrisania filled with tenements after the Third Avenue Elevated, entering the Bronx in 1888, made it cheap and easy for workers to commute to jobs downtown in Manhattan. In 1904, the subway crossed southern Morrisania, called Melrose, along 149th Street, intersecting the El at the congested "Hub" (Third Avenue and Westchester Avenue) which rapidly became the entertainment and shopping center of the borough. By 1920, the section had reached the peak of its population (in which Eastern Europeans had joined Italians, Irish, and Germans) and prestige, although residents were already leaving, following the new subway lines north and east. Later Manhattan refugees in the 1950s were Puerto Rican and African-Americans. The Hub is still a thriving shopping center. Housing is affordable and some of it can be quite charming - old brownstones.