The Grand Concourse
A four-and-a-half-mile boulevard modelled on the Champs-Élysées, lined with one of the largest concentrations of Art Deco apartment buildings on earth, and free to walk end to end.
- What it costs
- Free. It's a street.
- Best in
- Any season
- Where
- Grand Concourse from E 138th Street to Mosholu Parkway, Bronx, NY
- Official site
- nycgovparks.org
What you're looking at
Laid out at the turn of the 20th century and explicitly modelled on the Champs-Élysées — 180 feet wide, separated service roads, tree strips down the middle.
Then, through the 1920s and 30s, it filled with apartment buildings in the Art Deco style at exactly the moment that style peaked. The result is a concentration of Deco facades, lobbies, terrazzo, ironwork and mosaic that rivals Miami Beach and gets a fraction of the attention.
Much of it is a designated historic district. People live in all of it — this is a working residential boulevard, not a preserved set.
A walk that works
Start at 161st Street and walk north. In order, roughly:
- The Bronx County Courthouse — vast, limestone, 1930s civic monumentalism.
- The Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 — an Italian Renaissance palazzo built as a retirement home for people who had been rich and lost it. Now an arts space.
- The Bronx Museum of the Arts at 1040 — free, and worth going in.
- The Deco blocks between 165th and 175th — the densest stretch. Look at the lobbies through the doors.
- Fordham Road at the top, for the shopping street and the walk east to Arthur Avenue.
About two hours at a looking pace, and you can drop onto the B or D whenever you've had enough.
Look up, and look at the doors
The detail is in the entrances and the lobbies. Cast-iron and aluminum doors, sunburst motifs, terrazzo floors, mosaic panels, and stepped brickwork in three or four colors on the facades.
Many lobbies are visible from the street through glass doors. They are private buildings — look from the pavement, don't try the door.
Why almost nobody does this
Because it isn't on any list. There's no ticket, no visitor center and no gift shop — it's a boulevard in a residential borough that happens to be an architectural record of a decade.
It is also completely free, walkable, well served by two subway lines, and finishes within reach of Arthur Avenue for lunch.
Getting there
The B and D run directly beneath the Concourse for its whole length, which makes this the easiest self-guided walk in the city — you can join or bail at any station.
Start at 161st Street–Yankee Stadium and walk north, or at Fordham Road and walk south. About 30 minutes from Midtown to either.
The 4 shadows it a few blocks east.
Getting around once you're there
Flat, wide sidewalks with a gentle grade — the whole boulevard was engineered for carriages, so there are no steep sections. Most B/D stations along it have stairs only, so plan your entry and exit points.