Grand Avenue Undergoes Drastic Changes

Be sure to scroll over "Notes" at the bottom right corner of the slideshow for captions.

Dr. Donald Clarke’s home on Grand Avenue in the Bronx is a spacious three-story, seven-bedroom home enveloped by a wrap-around porch and sheltered from the sun’s glare by a large leafy tree out front. A short way down the street is a brick building in the midst of construction, flanked by uneven planks of wood in a graffitied make-shift fence. The structure is without windows or a roof and gives off a toothy grin. Finally, a few houses down on this block of transitions is a multi-family home with a series of bay-windows protruding from the front. There are cars parked in the driveways out front and little kids play outfront.

In recent years the Victorian homes in the Bronx have been slowly torn down and multi-family units are being built in their place. Clarke, who receives one or two offers a week to sell, knows first hand how much developers are salivating for the opportunity to transform these old homes into block units.

A chemistry professor at Fordham University, Clarke has lived in his Grand Ave. home since 1962 when he, his wife and seven kids moved from Queens because their attached house was getting to be a tight fit. Forty years ago, he said the whole block was filled with Victorian homes. Although the development frenzy started before 2000, he said a particularly drastic change occurred last year because many of his neighbors recently retired and developers jumped right in. The change has brought a new feel to the neighborhood, sometimes positive and other times negative.

“There were no children on the block,” Clarke said. “Now there’s much more life on the street.” Now, children play outside their homes and other bike by after school. It’s harder for Clarke to get to know his neighbors in the multi-family homes because of the age gap, but he admits the change is good.

More children in the area might liven up the block, but it has other effects as well. While building more homes in a city with a housing crunch helps alieve that stress, it also means overcrowding, pointed out Greg Lobo-Jost, deputy director of the University Neighborhood Housing Program.

“In some ways it’s great to have more places to live,” he said. “But the downside is over crowding of schools.”

Another quality of life issue Lobo-Jost worries about is more aesthetic. People are attracted to the idea of buying the three-family buildings and then renting out two of the units to make money on rent. However, Lobo-Jost said some buyers rent out all three units and live elsewhere, leaving the tasks of maintenance lingering.

“It’s like a mini apartment building without a super[intendent]. Who’s taking care of the property and upkeep?” said Lobo-Jost. “There’s already a lot of graffiti on some of the garages.”

The change from older architecture, single-family homes to utilitarian, three-family buildings is not unique to the Bronx, or to New York City, and there are many such trends occurring across the United States. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is an advocacy group that provides information on preserving historical homes, offers information about teardowns. The term “teardown” refers to buying a home on a lot, demolishing it and building a usually larger building in its place. In some cases the teardowns result in much larger single-family homes next to more modest, smaller ones, but in the Bronx the result is larger buildings that house multi-family structures.

It might be possible to turn these older homes into landmarks and people can collect information about a particular house and write up a nomination for the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. While the house is on the calendar waiting to be considered, all construction on the house must cease and the process can take years. However, this would stall the inevitable unless the house was actually named a landmark. In the Bronx, though, community members don’t seem to be taking up this option as a means to preserve the homes on Grand Avenue. Whatever the reason, development is continuing to occur rapidly.

One reason for this growth is the improving image of the Bronx over recent years. It is difficult to shake the borough’s history of the ‘70s, but developers have been working on projects outside residential ones, like stores and office buildings. There is even a discernible change in billboards on Fordham Road, the Bronx’s main outside shopping district, where there are more current ads going up.

Amidst borough-wide development, Victorian homes are becoming extinct in the Bronx because of their high cost. For people like Clarke who have long paid off the mortgage, the price of maintenance and repairs are not restrictive and he can afford to stay. Many others, though, are forced to either sell their homes or rent out rooms, which can result in unsafe living conditions if too many people are living in the same space. Clarke recognizes this dilemma but is in a good position to stay, and frustrate more eager developers. If the amount of development occurring on Grand Avenue is any indication, the trend will continue and the area, for better or for worse, will continue to change.

Security Workers Call For Better Representation

Thursday Feb. 8, 2008
Security officer Daniels is now on duty with radio, logbook, keys and clipboard. Conditions are normal at this time.
After changing into his uniform and attending roll-call, James Daniels, 30, security guard at Fordham University, writes this entry in the logbook at the beginning of his shifts. The book is light blue and the pages inside are filled with handwritten entries of things that have happened during the shift, which is from 10:15 p.m. until 6:15 a.m. The logbook contains notes of students giving the guard a hard time or events where the guard on duty had to call the supervisor. It also records things like breaks and sometimes says, “No meals relief. Work through,” for days in a row.

The logbook is a diary of sorts, recording the goings-on in the dorms around campus. They describe in basic detail the duties of a security guard but they do little justice to the relationship some of the guards, like Daniels, have with the students and the part he plays in their lives. Daniels often plays the role of friend, chatting with students about where they have been lately, joking about how late they come back or trying to remember the Yankee’s starting pitcher in 2004. Although the residents of the dorms think they can sneak past him because he’s friendly, they eventually learn they can’t – often after getting caught.

When a girl tried to sneak in her friends without signing them in, Daniels knew what was happening before it even occurred. The girl came in and went upstairs, but he saw on the security monitor a group of her friends standing just outside the door, waiting. So he went to the main entrance and when the girl came down on the other side of the walkway, where the doors lead to O’Keefe Commons, and started beckoning her friends, Daniels was right there, waving to her.

Seven years of working at Fordham, most of them in O’Hare Hall, have seasoned Daniels to the job. Every night from Sunday to Thursday, he takes a 20 minute bus to work, sometimes bringing a “lunch” of spaghetti or steak with rice and peas to save money. His shift is 8 hours long and he makes $11.10 an hour, up from $9.75 when he started, which amounts to just under a 20 cent raise each a year. The attempted sneak-in may be common in the dorms, but it’s not one of the harder things the guards have to deal with; however, despite the stories he collects on the job and the low pay, Daniels says he likes his work.

The people he deals with at Fordham are admittedly less grating on the mind than those at his last job as supervisor at Bellevue Homeless Shelter. There, Daniels dealt with people turning purple from overdosing and dead bodies with needles still stuck in them.

“I had to get away from that environment,” he said.

Now, he describes his lifestyle as “almost good” and says there are things he would like to do for himself but can’t, like go to a movie or a restaurant once in a while. Instead, he said he lives check to check. He doesn’t have a 401k or pension, something he and the other guards are working on getting right now.

“I need that security blanket,” he said. “We protect campus, but nobody protects us.”

A few years ago, he tried babysitting and other off-the-books jobs to make a little extra money, but he only lasted a month, he said, too tired from his night shift at Fordham. He used to work over-time, but too often checks went missing or he wouldn’t get compensated for the hours he put in. He said that doesn’t happen too often, but enough to think, “Is my check going to be right this week?”

Daniels says he has more problems with his employer than with the students, but he doesn’t let it affect his job. Once, another girl who Daniels is friendly with tried to come in with two guys she had met at the bar, all of them very drunk. She pleaded with Daniels to let them in and when he wouldn’t, she cursed him and they went upstairs anyway, forcing him to call the supervisor. He knew where the girl lived and knew her name, so when the supervisor arrived, he found one guy under the girl’s bed and another hiding in the shower. She may have been upset then, but Daniels was worried about her safety with two drunk strangers in her room. The next day, she apologized to him for her behavior, but he knew it was just the alcohol talking the night before.

“We’re like the new parents now,” he said. “We have to tell them things their parents should’ve told them.”

Daniels is not just there to protect students from themselves, though. Once, a man followed a group of students from the bars to their dorm and when they got there, they pulled Daniels aside to tell him they didn’t know who the guy was. He told them to go upstairs and he would take care of it. When the man tried to follow the girls inside, Daniels stopped him and called the supervisor who took over the situation and later discovered there was a warrant out for the man’s arrest. This doesn’t happen too often, though, and most of the time Daniels’s night is occupied by chatting with students or preventing them from sneaking in or sweet talking their guests into the dorm. Despite being their friend, he can’t be persuaded.

“I have a job to do,” he said.

Guardian Angels On Patrol

Recent Guardian Angel graffiti reading founder Curtis Sliwa's name. Only 10% of the time do they make citizen arrests.


Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches. That is unfortunately the mantra of many in the city, but for the Guardian Angels, the opposite is true. For an unarmed volunteer group that aims to provide public safety and goes where it’s called, the Angels rely on people speaking up, which is what brought them to the Belmont area of the Bronx recently.

About six months ago, Curtis Sliwa, one of the group’s founders, received emails from Fordham University students after there were a number of incidents near Fordham’s campus. Since then, members of the organization have “stepped up patrols in Belmont area.” On any given night, particularly weekend nights near Arthur Avenue, the Guardian Angels might be seen in groups of three or four patrolling the streets, wearing their signature red berets, red satin jackets, black camouflage pants and black combat boots. Their aim is to act as a crime deterrent and one of the main ways they do that is with their image.

“The fact of the matter is when people see us the will cease and desist,” said one of the founding members Arnaldo Salinas. “You’d have to be Helen Keller not to see us.”

Although the group may be known for making citizen arrests and following them through the court system, Salinas said they don’t often have to go that far, though they will intervene in a fight if they come upon one. If that happens, the first thing members are instructed to do is call 911. Then, the Guardian Angels would physically place themselves in the middle of the fight and separate people. If someone tried to leave, “we have every right in the world to detain,” Salinas said, up to handcuffing.

Although the Angels are all inclusive and accept people of all genders, races and backgrounds, there is an interview screening process to make sure the new recruit doesn’t want to join for personal vengeance reasons. Basic training is three months long and involves a variety of classes, learning to work as a team and field work.

Zeek Gavares, 38, joined the Guardian Angels last month after witnessing the group break up a fight near his home.

“They caught my attention,” he said. “I liked the way they acted.”

Although Gavares used to be a carpenter, he quit in order to become more involved in the Angels, saying he now has “more time on my hands to lend.” On a recent afternoon, Gavares was campaigning with Salinas and other recruits, but he wasn’t sure what exactly they were campaigning about. When asked about Salinas, he seemed to only know him by his nickname, Thirteen.

The nickname refers to the original 13 members of the organization when they came together in 1979 in a McDonalds on Fordham Road. Around that time, then-mayor Ed Koch decreased the number of transit police, and because Sliwa, Salinas and their fellow employees took the 4 train to work, they decided to pick up the slack. They started patrolling the subways, riding in adjacent cars. Eventually, in order to communicate more efficiently, they began to don red berets they would wave when they popped their heads out of the doors at stops to see one another.

The group functions pretty independently and they have no preconceptions that they are on par with the police department, but are trained citizens. However, Salinas did say that prominent politicians as well as residents have been known to call the Angels to ask for additional help in their neighborhoods and that many Guardian Angels go on to the police department or military. He also mentioned that in New York City, the group sometimes works with local precincts. These claims could not be verified.

One officer reached through the police press office who would not give his name, said he was indifferent to the group.

“We don’t deal with them. They do their own thing. What do they really do? I don’t know,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know of any officers who were once involved in the Angels. Another officer reached through the same line directed the call to John Kelly, who did not respond to multiple emails for comment.

Whether or not the Angels work with the police or politicians, there is not doubt that their two hundred or so members in New York City are active, patrolling drug areas and going where they are called.

“We’re not vigilantes,” Salinas said, “because we’re not judge jury and executioners.”