The Bertine block, was named for developer, Edward Bertine, who built his home and nine other Queen-Anne style row houses between 1891 and 1895 on E. 136th St. in Mont Haven. It was Mr. Bertine’s first venture into building homes, and he managed to hire George Keister as architect, who built many notable structures in Manhattan, like the Selwyn Theatre.
The population of the Bronx was 89,000 when rowhouses of this style were built, mostly below 149th St. when the Bronx was largely farms and single homes. The borough grew to 1,200,000 by 1930, and would become known for its huge apartment buildings with much larger units, and, with cross ventilation The era of rowhouses, designed like the Bertine, and many others below 149th St. ended quickly. Open land, with tremendous population growth, eventually led to apartment complexes, like Coop City, with 35,000 units, to be constructed.
The South Bronx, has long been associated with urban decline. The name itself, South Bronx, was used by sociologists to describe a small pocket of poverty on Brown’s Place, in Mont Haven, not far from the Bertine Block, one hundred years ago. Authentic and unique, the Block, survived waves of urban decline and, now, redevelopment. “Slum clearance” was used to build huge housing projects in Mott Haven, and the expressways, that separated, Port Morris, where the jobs were, and more residential Mott Haven, where people lived. Mott Haven streets disappeared by eminent domain, burning and abandonment that had first established itself here, and began to move north in the 1960s.
The Bertine block, survived the historic rise, and decline of the Bronx, and even its gentrification, with clusters of luxury, residential towers along the waterfront, and new housing all over the borough, signaling another upturn in the Bronx saga.
The block remains as rare living history. Nothing has changed, not just the architecture, but the same type of hard-working owners live there long-term, sometimes generations, and take care of it. Across the street more hard-working people live in a row of now working-class tenements built as fine rentals, and further divided into many more units. The block, unreconstructed, void of gentrification, on an architectural and class level, is still in fine shape with its South Bronx patina untouched, albeit a notch or two down, from when these streets were considered desirable. The Bertine Block remains authentic, providing a clear view on a time when Mott Haven became urban, 150 years ago.
