History in a Bronx Intersection
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| RKO Fordham Theatre at Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue, 1940. |
Let's take a stroll down memory lane in the Bronx.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking east, 1951 (The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library). |
It's easy for me to get caught up in Manhattan, because there's so much to see there. However, I do venture out into the "outer boroughs" now and then, and this is one of those times. Let's do a then-and-now of Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue in the Bronx, NYC.
The first thing I want to point out to people unfamiliar with New York City customs is that the avenues are sometimes streets and the roads are sometimes avenues. I know this makes no sense, but the main drag here is Fordham Road and the sidestreet is Valentine Avenue. This isn't Paris and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, but it is a major hub near the Grand Concourse. As Jack would say, that ain't beanbag!
Another thing is that the area had a real small-town feel back in the day. You can spot Whelan's Drug Store, Gorman's fast food joint, Bond's clothier, and the like. If you took that 1951 street scene and transposed it to the midwest of the era, it would not look out of place at all. Believe it or not, there are still scattered sections of the Bronx that have a somewhat similar quaint feel, but it is long gone from Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking east, 1960s. |
Above, we're looking northeast. In the 1951 shot, you can just see the edge of that billboard on the extreme left.
There are quite a few shots available of Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue. It has quite a history, with its shares of ups and downs, and we'll see some of them play out in these scenes. The top photo on this page from 1951 was taken on Fordham Road looking east toward Fordham University. You can see Keating Hall of the university in the 1951 photo and more recent ones because it was built in 1936 and is something of a landmark in the Bronx.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking east, October 2019. You can see Keating Hall at Fordham University, which was built in 1936, in the center of this recent photograph just as in the 1951 one. |
Above, the same view looking east as in the 1951 photo. The billboards are all gone, Woolworth's is gone (bankrupt in the 1990s), and now it all has that dreary suburban strip-mall feel.
I'm going to show all parts of this intersection. While it may get a bit confusing which way we're looking, fortunately, there are certain landmarks such as Keating Hall to help us out.
We've been looking east. Let's turn around and look the other way, toward the west.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, 1926. |
Turning around from virtually the same spot as the original 1951 photo was taken and looking toward the northwest, we see on the right (north) side of the street what later became the grand RKO Fordham Theater in 1926.
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| The RKO Fordham ca. 1929. |
Designed by William H. McElfatrick and opened on 14 April 1921 as Keith's Fordham Theater, it featured vaudeville acts. With vaudeville on the ropes and the talkies luring moviegoers into the theaters, RKO bought it in 1929 and renamed it RKO Fordham. It became one of seven RKO theaters in the Bronx.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, 1940s. |
Looking a little further west, we see how the area looked in the 1940s, with streetcars.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, 1951. |
The RKO Fordham didn't show exclusive films - that was the job of the Paradise - but certainly was successful.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking west, 1950s. |
A random street scene from the area. I love the barbershop pole out on the street. I can remember when they had wooden Indians out there. Those days are long gone, of course.
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| RKO Fordham, ca. 1960. |
Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens on the stage together at the RKO Fordham! Bestill my heart! I don't think they ever starred in a film together, so I'm not sure why they were there. However, I think we can call this the halcyon days of the areas.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, 1960s. |
We're turned around again in the above photograph. I don't have a date on it, but the styles of the cars and what people are wearing make me think it is around 1967-69.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking southeast, mid-1950s. |
A quick look at the southeast corner (I think) of Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue. Looks like the 1950s to me. Imagine being a time traveler set down in some random year in this area, it would be awfully difficult to guess the exact year!
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, 1974. |
In 1974, the RKO Theater was still there, looking a bit worn and tired. It was, after all, over 50 years old by this point and we all show our age over the decades. There are some interesting similarities to how this area looked in 1974 and how it looks recently, however.
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| Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue, looking northwest, October 2019. |
First, I was able to precisely locate the recent shot directly above to the 1974 scene because a few things haven't changed. Namely, that building in the distance with the billboard is still there (though the billboard has shifted position). The red firebox in the 1974 shot just visible on the left is still there, kind of, though in a vastly different form (no doubt slimmed down to improve intersection visibility). The stoplight looks the same, though it looks as though they shortened the pole and removed the street signs to the opposite corner for some reason.
But, overall, a person transported from 1974 to 2019 should be able to recognize that they're in the same place at Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue even though the distinctive RKO Fordham is gone.
And that brings us, as Paul Harvey would say, to the rest of the story.
The Fordham Theatre lasted through the 1970s and was triplexed in 1976. It added a fourth screen in 1980 as cinemas became multiplexes in a bid to survive against television. However, as the recent photos illustrate all too vividly, the area was in decline.
The neighborhood’s business district lost its small-town feel, the nondescriptive chains moved in, and that was that. The Fordham Theatre closed and was demolished in March, 1987. It was replaced by strip-mall style retail buildings populated by the usual banks and pharmacies and random outlets.
Sic transit gloria, as they say, at least the old neighborhood had some style and character even if it wasn't perfect.
I hope you enjoyed this random walk down Fordham Road at Valentine Avenue. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and this intersection does illustrate that in its own way. People shop differently now and are entertained differently, and you can see those changes through the camera lenses.
Thanks for stopping by, and please visit some of my other pages in the Then and Now series!
