#gentrifcation

She cute.

Philadelphia is built on the ruins of the decades prior. When you dig into the ground you dig straight into houses collapsed into their own basements, and covered over with toxic soil. When you excavate the bricks you find remnants of the lives lived and interrupted in each of these spaces. Like chopped up roots left to find their way back to the sun. So too lies the memories of North Philly, starved for oxygen with each demolition and displacement, buried further underground/deeper in the subconscious every time a neighborhood turns over. These psychospatial graves remain ever underfoot and unreconciled.

Around 178 years ago in Philly, Pennsylvania Hall was opened on the corner of 6th and Haines, with the express intention of serving as a local headquarters for the abolitionist movement. Four days later, a mob burned it to the ground while the local fire brigade watched. The hopes and memories of the short lived space were cut off at the root and buried. In 1997, Mierle Laderman Ukeles orchestrated the social art project, Unburning Freedom Hall, an interactive series of conversations/workshops around creating capsulized “unburnings,” or memories enclosed in jars as an act of recovering the lost space.

In a sense, the time capsule that we are seeking to create at the Community Futures Lab is an act of Unburning or Unburying North Philly. With each memory, we’re trying to sift through the rubble and vacant lots to reclaim the past and the tools for determining the future. In my observations, there seems to be a link missing from the past to the present in many neighborhoods where displacement has occurred. There are roots underfoot, but they have been chopped up and gnarled, and it is very difficult to take control of the future when the present is situated so precariously on top of a disconnected past. In many ways, this project feels like an exercise in cultural archaeology, wherein we are able to excavate the intangible memories tied to the shifting geographies around us.

In Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo shares this sentiment that feels appropriate: “Memory is the link between the past and the present, between space and time, and it is the base of our dreams.” The time capsules that Community Futures Lab will create with and within the community give community members a platform to tell their own stories and control how they are represented to others. The offerings of dreams of the future intertwined with the sacrifices of the past.

120 West 180th Street, across from Bronx Community College, is a beautiful, 3,723 square foot mansion (as per public records) has been listed for sale for a mind-blowing $1.1 million. By the way, the real estate agent chose to say that the house is across from the “former” NYU campus rather than saying it’s across from Bronx Community College.

There’s no question that this Univeristy Heights mansion, which according to the listing has been in the same family for over 60 years, is gorgeous and has been well maintained throughout the years but $1.1 million is far more than is supported by the local market in the neighborhood.

In fact, in a 2-mile radius, there haven’t been any sales of single family homes to support this value in the past 2 years. The only transaction was a mansion in Riverdale and clearly we can’t compare Riverdale to University Heights.

The University Heights home is reminiscent of the single family mansions that once dotted the area of which so few remain. There are many large houses such as this one but none in such pristine condition and two-four family homes making this home an outlier in the area.

“If you compare the house to other properties in the University Heights section of the Bronx, the asking is high. However, the condition is significantly better than most of the other homes that I have seen listed in the area,” said Richard Garey, local resident and architect.  “While property shopping in 2014, I looked at 2194 University Avenue. It was listed at $400K. The former NYU fraternity house had been converted to an SRO (Single Room Occupancy)..the house had been essentially run to the ground and required a full renovation.” he added.

Garey went further into detail about the house and the market and said, “While property shopping in 2014, I looked at 2194 University Avenue. It was listed at $400K. The former NYU fraternity house had been converted to an SRO (Single Room Occupancy)..the house had been essentially run to the ground and required a full renovation. The cost to do a proper renovation would probably start around $500K+. Finally, there is the time and headaches of renovation versus having a move-in ready property. ”

In another era and neighborhood, this house would easily sell for the asking or near asking price but we predict University Heights won’t see these prices like these for another 15-20 years.

1982 Morris Avenue, a two family home which is actually landmarked and in a historic district, sold in March for $438,000 with similar square footage to 120 West 180th Street not to mention comparable condition per the photographs. 2-4 family homes tend to sell at higher prices in the market area.

Richard made an excellent point about the neighborhood.”If you take the Mount Hope, Morris Heights, University housing stock, you can basically put it into three categories: (1) Historic wooden houses that need to be torn down because they have been neglected so long and most aren’t worth fixing (2) Historic masonry houses that require full renovations (3) New construction that is new but lacks character and original details. This house is an outlier in the market, it has actually been maintained” said Richard

“If you take the Mount Hope, Morris Heights, University housing stock, you can basically put it into three categories: (1) Historic wooden houses that need to be torn down because they have been neglected so long and most aren’t worth fixing (2) Historic masonry houses that require full renovations (3) New construction that is new but lacks character and original details. This house is an outlier in the market, it has actually been maintained” said Richard

So folks, would you pay $1.1 million for this house if you had the money?

  //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js //

Welcome2TheBronx

An Intersection | Prospect Heights guided tour, October, 2015. Back by popular demand! Join us on one of our upcoming free tours June 11 or June 18.