Long ago Bedford Park was farmland. It belonged to Leonard Jerome Winston Churchill’s grandfather. He sold it in the 1850s. He and August Belmont Sr built the Jerome Park Racecourse. That’s now the Jerome Park Reservoir.
This is Bedford Park. It’s in the northwest Bronx. It’s next to the New York Botanical Garden. Its borders are Mosholu Parkway Webster Avenue East 196th Street and Jerome Avenue.
Twenty years after the sale developers built a community. They built forty suburban homes. They named it Bedford after a London suburb. Italian and Irish immigrants helped build the Jerome Park Reservoir. They settled in Bedford Park.
The reservoir was finished in 1906. The Grand Concourse was finished in 1914. The subway arrived in 1917. Bedford Park became a Bronx fixture.
Bedford Park has old churches. There’s the Bedford Park Congregational Church. It dates to 1882. It’s a City Landmark. There’s also St Philip Neri. It was for Italian immigrant laborers. They built the Jerome Park Reservoir. The Convent of Mount St Ursula opened in 1892. It’s now an all-girls prep school.
The Educational Mile is in Bedford Park. It has three high schools. There’s also Lehman College. It was Hunter College’s campus. Bronx Science and the High School of American Studies are there too.
Bedford Park is diverse. People of many ethnicities live there. You see national symbols. There are Albanian eagles. Mexican Our Lady of Guadalupe icons are common. You can see Irish shamrocks. Arabic calligraphy is present. Puerto Rican coquí are seen too. Many newspapers are sold. There’s The Irish Echo. There’s Bota Sot from Kosovo. Spanish language papers El Diario La Prensa and El Hoy are sold too.
Bedford Park has five or six story apartment buildings. There are also three story Victorian houses. Tracey Towers are nearby. They are forty-one story subsidized apartments. The architect was Paul Rudolph. They were built in 1972. They are part of a New York City housing project.
Bedford Park is a vibrant place. It’s a place with a rich history. It’s a place of community. It’s a place of many stories. It’s a special place to visit.