Customer Reviews

Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx

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As soon as I heard about this book, I knew that I should be one of the first to read it. I grew up on the Grand Concourse, "in the shadow of Yankee Stadium". While there is much that brings back memories, smiles, and some sadness, Constance Rosenblum also provides new information and stories and puts the story of this great boulevard in context and gives it perspective. Why would you read a book about a street, particularly if you didn't live there and may not even know where it is? The answer is simple--the author brings to life a group of neighborhoods, a way of life, a variety of cultures, and two eras (the forties and fifties and its blossoming as a home to the upwardly-mobile middle class; the seventies and eighties and a city in turmoil) and leaves us with a sense of hope as the Grand Concourse is beginning to emerge as a beacon of hope to a new generation of Bronxites. Instead of Ogden Nash's short couplet written in 1931, "The Bronx, No Thonx", you may agree with Nash's observation thirty-three years later: "Now I'm an older, wiser man, I cry 'The Bronx, God bless them'." God bless Constance Rosenblum for bringing "them"--all of the Grand Concourse--to life in its 100th anniversary year. As so many of my neighbors used to say, "The Grand Concourse--what's not to like?"

It is a quick read, but a vivid depiction of the middle-class life in the Bronx centering around the boulevard where so much happened and was so vivid.
In my time living in that part of the Bronx, I saw at least 4 presidents drive down the street. FDR, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and JFK. As a school kid and then a young adult it was all memorable. As big city kids we took it for granted and this book was a great reminder of life and times along that street.

My ex-husband always enjoyed telling me about his childhood in the Bronx. After reviewing, I decided to buy the book for him as a gift. He was thrilled with the book and the scenes and stories that he remembered from his youth. He began telling me about the boy he knew from the neighborhood who had a vision of the Virgin Mary in an empty lot in the Bronx. Then he flipped through the pages and found the author's recounting of the tale. It is a great book for anyone who grew up near the "Grand Concourse" or wants to know more about it's past.

I've got chronic bronxitis and can't stop revisiting my past. I've shelled out plenty of $$$$ over the years to professional guides who helped me tour my psyche. But this book made me understand so much more, the implications of everything--addresses, floor coverings, junior high schools. The author has managed to infuse the book with all the important details without being boring for a minute. I've sent copies to cousins and childhood friends and keep ordering more.

Interesting and informative book on the early 20th Century Bronx though not as comprehensive as possible. The book basically dea;s with how the west Bronx, specifically along the Grand Cocncourse, became a Jewish conclave in the 1930's to about 1960. It deals quite specifically also with prejudice to blacks, consistent with the times, Jews and Gentiles alike. The book does not go into great detail concerning the near-collapse of the Grand Concourse due to immigration changes and social mores that intruded in the 1960's and 1970's, but does give a clearly optimistic outlook for the 21st Century. Early in the book, the author discusses the origins of the borough and the great mass settlement of the borough with the earrly 20th Century with the planning and development of the Grand Concourse. She could have given more coverage to the subway systems that were the actual driving force for openingup the Bronx. I did like the interesting tidbits about famouns people who grew up in the Bronx.

My curiosity peaked when I saw the title of the book. I had always wondered, as a teenager, why no one wanted to visit our old neighborhood in the Bronx. I had heard it deteriorated and was crime ridden.
I was a child who lived on 940 Grand Concourse from 1941 until 1950 when we "moved on up" to Teaneck N.J, which happened to have been "restricted" from Jews and Blacks before the war.
When I was five I vividly remember the Bronx funeral procession for FDR and I cried!
This book brought back so many memories. My parents and grandparents celebrating the birth of Israel, the kosher butcher, the Yankee Stadium and the radios blasting the World Series. It was part of the feel of summer, back then, because there was no air conditioning and all the windows were open to the street. We played hop scotch on the sidewalk and visited Joyce Kilmer Park across the street. The sights, the sounds the smells are all detailed in this book along with the architectural triumph of the Concourse itself.
It was surprising and disturbing to find out that African Americans weren't even allowed to walk on that street, but as I look back, I only remember seeing them at the school. Prejudice was rampant and politically correct then. I am still in the middle of the book and enjoying it tremendously!!

The subtitle of "Boulevard of Dreams" is "Heady times, heartbreak, and hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx". Constance Rosenblum assuredly does bring the reader through all three of these H's throughout the course of the narrative, as promised. This book is, as previous excellent reviewers have noted, a history of the Bronx (brief, at 228 pages) told through the story of the Grand Concourse, an enormously important artery through the Bronx, whose life began as a dream in the mind of a French immigrant named Risse in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Incidentally, I am a Long Island native whose 32 years of experience of the Bronx amounts to trips to Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Zoo and up I-95 to New England. I really have no nostalgia or even memory of the Bronx as a borough, but this book nearly had me in tears followed by beaming smiles in the last third of the telling. That's some indication of how effective and heartfelt Ms. Rosenblum's account is.

The "Heady Times" span the period of 1875 through the 1960s, when the Bronx was transformed overnight from an ethereal wildwood north of the City, to a flourishing minitropolis of NY. Though Rosenblum herself is not a Bronx native, she threw her heart and soul into creating a beautiful, evocative account of the buildup of dreams and the culmination of those dreams for thousands of immigrant Jews, Italians, Irish and others in the first half of the last century. Unfortunately, "Heartbreak" follows, in the form of the fleeing of the middle and upper class residents to the suburbs, followed by an influx of dangerous and frightening criminality, which nearly destroyed the borough. "The Bronx is burning" is Howard Cosell's famous quote upon seeing a school engulfed in the flames of arson during a Yankee's game, and burn it did, for decades. The author creates a particularly moving and heartwrenching picture in this section by taking the beautiful locations introduced in the first section and describing their decay and death in the second. I felt like buildings and parks I have never even seen were falling and crumbling around me, and I felt so sick and saddened by the loss of history and vibrancy. Rosenblum even offers some possible explanations (beyond traditional racial ideas) for the decline of the Bronx, drawing upon scholarship to discuss events that may have contributed: the creation of the concrete megalopolis Co-Op City; Robert Moses' construction of the CBE, etc.

Fortunately, Rosenblum ends on a hopeful (though unresolved) note, by mentioning the hard work recently undertaken by some hard-charging borough presidents and civic associations, in a valiant attempt to make the Bronx great again. She even offers the idea that, no, the borough does not have to "become white" again; the hardworking Hispanics, blacks, whites and others who now form the New Bronx can be the catalyst and indeed the heart and soul of a new world for this region.

great reading.a lot of study and research went into this book.the history about the south west ,bronx and its people.

My Mom grew up on the Grand Concourse and I am always on the lookout for items that will remind her of the great days of the Bronx. This book brought back wonderful memories for her and based on her review I would highly recommend it to anyone for both historical and sentimental reading! Also makes a perfect compliment to the Rick Burns New York DVD Box Set.

Boulevard of Dreams combines the architecture and sociology of the West Bronx early days, through its growth, decline and recent rise in an accurate, charming and insightful way. I never before contemplated how much architecture, and the dreams of builders and architects affected the aspirations of the people they built for. I'm also grateful to Rosenblum for reviving the West Bronx, a place of beauty, style and community life that is not easy to replicate.