Core of the Big Apple
The Bronx may not seem an obvious tourist draw but, finds Christopher Beanland, the New York borough has soul, green spaces - and the Yankees
Graffiti art hangs in front of me. To my left are some thought-provoking installations using sound and video - old televisions and speakers litter the floor. In the next gallery I can see photography highlight-ing the history of New York's grittier streets. A giant mural looks down from the ceiling in the huge white-walled gallery. But this isn't the Museum Of Modern Art in smart Midtown Manhattan - this is the Bronx.
The Bronx Museum of The Arts is 40 years old but - having originally occupied the Bronx County Courthouse - it is now housed in an airy, super-modern building shaped like an accordion and clearly inspired by Frank Gehry's disregard for right angles and squares. It was built by internationally acclaimed architects Arquitectonica - who also designed Cyberport in Pok Fu Lam and Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong. You thought the Bronx was all about burnt-out buildings? Not any more.
Attitudes towards New York's least well-known (and perhaps least loved) "boro" have been shaped by violent movies such as The Warriors (1979) and by images of gang culture. But the truth is that the Bronx is in the midst of a surprising transformation: new buildings, new houses, new parks and new businesses are turning some of America's poorest neighbourhoods from no-go zones into must-visit places. Crime is down, people are moving back. Hope is in the air.
I leave the museum and stroll down Grand Concourse - a 6½ kilometre thoroughfare built to ape Paris' Champs Elysee and connect Manhattan with new suburbs to the north. An address on this wide, tree-lined boulevard was the height of gentility in the first half of the 20th century. The art deco apartment buildings that have survived from that period ooze American glamour and optimism; they revel in capitalist chic.
The rot began to set in after the second world war, when New York's megalomaniacal "master builder" Robert Moses carved six-lane highways through the Bronx - creating noise and pollution. Property prices slumped, the middle classes moved out and the Bronx became a byword for urban deprivation. In the 1970s, landlords paid local children to set light to their own properties for US$100 a pop and the Bronx burned - along with the dreams of the youngsters who lived here.
Among the chaos, hip hop culture was born - thanks in part to Bronx resident Afrika Bambaataa, now seen as the godfather of rap music. The Bronx Museum tells this tale in an exhibition featuring photographs of teenage boys wearing Adidas and gold chains.