Mott Haven
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Mott Haven, formally known as North New York, is a neighborhood in the South Bronx bordered by East 149th Street, the Bruckner Expressway, the Major Deegan Expressway and the Harlem River. The main road through Mott Haven is 138th Street and the local subway line is the 6 Train.
The Morris family who eventually sold it to ironworker Jordan Lawrence Mott in 1849 originally owned Mott Haven. As New York City grew, brownstones were built along Alexander Avenue. In the early 20th century, the neighborhood consisted of German and Irish Americans. Beginning in the 1940s, the neighborhood’s demographic changed to Latino, African American and Central American.
Mott Haven is one of the poorest neighborhoods in America. It is also the birth of hip-hop. Famed early hip-hop artists and DJ, Grand Master Flash attended Samuel Gompers High School in Mott Haven. After high school he was involved in the earliest New York DJ scene. In the 1970s Grand Master Flash (Joeseph Saddler) joined with five other rappers, called themselves Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and soon started performing regularly at Disco Fever in the Bronx. Pioneering the backspin technique, punch phrasing and scratching Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are credited to being the birth of hip-hop. Grand Wizzard Theodore, also a Bronx native, is known to invent scratching.
Mott Haven is filled with factory buildings that are now protected under the Bronx Historical Society. Other historical sites include the Former Bronx Borough Courthouse and the Hertlein and Schlatter Silk Trimmings Factory. Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan, who leads groups of 15 to most Bronx Historical Society sites, leads walking tours around the neighborhood.
In Jonathan Kozol’s book Amazing Grace he interviewed many South Bronx children about their experience growing up in the dangerous neighborhood and going to a segregated school. Describing a South Bronx child’s experience, Kozol explains, “you wonder if poor kids like these have fantasies of breaking in and stealing toys or games, electric trains-whatever children play with nowadays. If they ever did it. If they just went in one night and cleaned the whole place out, you have to ask if they could ever steal back half as much as has been stolen from them.”
Mott Haven and South Bronx still struggles with equal rights in schools and fighting poverty. Street crime and drugs on the streets has gone down significantly in the last 15 years and hopefully equality of education and economic stability will follow.
