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Neighborhoods · The Bronx

The Concourse: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Museum and the Art Deco boulevard

The twenty-minute Bronx: three subway lines to the stadium, a free contemporary art museum a fifteen-minute walk up the boulevard, and the boulevard itself — one of the largest runs of Art Deco apartment buildings on earth — for an afternoon before or after the game.

The Concourse is the neighborhood around the southern end of the Grand Concourse, the Bronx's great boulevard, and for a visitor it means three things within a fifteen-minute walk of each other: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the boulevard itself. It is the easiest part of the Bronx to reach — the 4, B and D all land at 161st Street–Yankee Stadium in about twenty minutes from Midtown — and it is where most visitors to the borough actually go, on game days, without seeing the other two.

The boulevard is the thing to see. Modelled on the Champs-Élysées and lined in the 1930s with Art Deco and Art Moderne apartment blocks, it is free to walk and the B and D run under it the whole way, so you can walk as far north as you like and ride back. The museum sits on it at 165th Street, four blocks from the stadium, and is free — always, no conditions — with a collection of contemporary work by artists of African, Asian and Latin American descent that is better than its size suggests.

The food around the stadium is stadium food: pizza, chicken, Dominican and Puerto Rican counters on 161st Street and River Avenue, cheap and quick. For a real meal, the Bronx's Italian street is fifteen minutes north on the B or D and then a walk or the Bx12.

What's here

  1. Yankee StadiumPaid

    Concourse · The Bronx

    The anchor, and the cheapest live major-league sport in the city if you buy a midweek upper-deck seat against a lesser opponent. Three subway lines at the door and Metro-North too. On a non-game day the exterior and the blocks around it are ten minutes; on a game day it is the evening.

  2. The Bronx Museum of the ArtsFree

    Concourse · The Bronx

    Fifteen minutes' walk north up the Concourse, or one stop on the B or D to 167th Street, and free: a real contemporary collection in under an hour, the obvious pre-game stop that almost nobody makes. First Fridays are free evenings.

  3. The Grand ConcourseFree

    Concourse · The Bronx

    The boulevard the neighborhood is named for. From the stadium walk north and look up: the Art Deco entrances and corner windows run for miles, densest between 161st and 188th Streets. Free, self-guided, and with a subway station every few blocks for when you have had enough.

  4. Arthur AvenueUnder $25

    Belmont · The Bronx

    Not in the Concourse but the right lunch for a day that starts here: the B or D north to Fordham Road and a fifteen-minute walk east, or the Bx12. The indoor market is cheap and quick; the restaurants are not rushed. Then walk the boulevard back south.

Common questions

What can I do before a Yankees game?

Arrive two hours early and walk: the Bronx Museum is fifteen minutes up the Concourse and free, and the boulevard between it and the stadium is the best Art Deco in the city. Eat on 161st Street or River Avenue, or come from Arthur Avenue on the B or D with a full stomach. That is a better afternoon than the bars by the gate, and cheaper.

Is the area safe around the stadium?

It is one of the busiest, most visited corners of the Bronx, with three subway lines, a courthouse, a mall and a stadium in it, and tens of thousands of people pass through on game nights. Ordinary city awareness applies. The walk north up the Concourse to the museum is on a wide, lit, residential boulevard at any hour the museum is open.

How far is this from the zoo?

About fifteen minutes on the B or D to Fordham Road and then the walk or the Bx12 east, or a bit longer on the 2 or 5 to West Farms Square from 149th Street. The one-day Bronx itinerary does the zoo in the morning and ends here; doing it the other way round works if there is an evening game.

Who should skip this

Anyone who is not interested in baseball, architecture or a small free art museum — that is the whole neighborhood for a visitor, and it is an afternoon, not a day.

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