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| Re: [PHOTOS] Polo Grounds Shuttle - Part 2 (1464926) | |||
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Re: [PHOTOS] Polo Grounds Shuttle - Part 2 |
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Posted by JOE @ NYCMTS - NYCTMG on Thu Feb 8 20:24:56 2018, in response to Re: [PHOTOS] Polo Grounds Shuttle - Part 2, posted by Q4 on Thu Feb 8 16:04:41 2018. Hello Q 4The area in 1958 was a so low to almost no crime group of neighborhoods, safe, and well kept...a pleasure to live and socialize in back then. To safely walk thru day or night. I know first hand... I was there a lot. The area by 1970 was very already on the rise becoming a very dangerous neighborhood / area -- a complete residents and social mores change. Drug and Dope addict culture abounded. Robberies, muggings, homicides and assaults were rising tremendously -- my father got robbed 2 times in 6 weeks in the lobby of his apartment building on Anderson near the Shuttle station. The 2nd robber who, had a gun, my father later saw the same person - whose photo and news article was in the NY Daily News - was captured a few weeks later as a wanted-fugitive from a homicide investigation ! And later was convicted and sent to jail for 2 homicides caused by him Most people already used the IND Station at 8th Ave & W. 155th Street to get to the Bronx and to the "original" Yankee Stadium and up or down along the Grand Concourse, or to the IRT Jerome Line El station at W. 161st Street (free transfer) or alternately to downtown points via the IND train on the Manhattan side at W. 155th street station --- all for a fast one-seat main-line IND train ride. The shuttle was only an asset to those few residents of Anderson Ave. or Sedgwick Ave. Stations whose homes, apartments, were right along that stretch of, and nearby, streets. And that ridership was not enough at all, by far, in 1958 and as such even after, to keep the shuttle running profitably. Most residents already had automobiles, as like my father did and his neighbors. Parking was no problem back then. getting around in the Bronx BY CAR was no problem either -- I know -- I drove thru it since 1965 ! My father and his then elderly father moved out, actually in fear for their lives, in 1971, to upper east side Manhattan. Most of the other long term residents from the 1930's-1950's like my father and many neighbors he and I knew for decades, had previously gradually fled the area -- while many more remaining ones eventually fled the neighborhood by 1975-76. I drove thru it a few times (the area) on, heh, "nostalgia" visits in the 1970's and 80's and it looked like a min-war zone. Saw numerous abandoned cars, some likely stolen, some stripped, some wrecked and burned out, trash all over in the streets and sidewalks, graff all over, some buildings and private homes burned out, etc. Not as really bad as many other sections of the Bronx nor as bad as the area named " Bronx Fort Apache ", as one large section was then called. In these now present times the area has visually rebounded and has much improved, is fully much cleaner, nicer appearing, from those sad earlier decades. And new real estate has replaced many of the long ago burned out, abandoned properties. I don't know how the Polo Shuttle would have survived passenger-wise in the 1970's-80, etc., with the Polo Grounds and the Putnam RR branch gone. The immediate area by the Sedgwick Ave. Station was in a semi-desolate area by 1970 -- mainly caused by the Deegan Highway above it - with the steep hillside at the west side of the Deegan Highway down to the NY Central (or Penn Central) tracks below and the Harlem River shoreline. And the steep Hillside upward to Summit Avenue to the east of the Deegan along Sedgwick Avenue. A muggers paradise to any late night or off peak hours residents on the streets or passengers waiting for a "shuttle train"- had it still been operating there in the 1970-'s-90's! The nearby Police precinct at I think W.167th Street & Sedgwick was a very active place then (1970-1990 decades) Well, that's my opinion -- from someone intimately familiar with the neighborhood and entire area since the early 1950's. regards - Joe F |
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