North Bronx

The North Bronx is an area of The Bronx in New York City. The North Bronx is hilly and urban to the west of the Bronx River while other parts to the east of it are coastal and lower density/residential.

European contact with the Bronx first occurred almost 400 years ago. In 1609, Henry Hudson, probably the first European to see the shoreline, sought cover from a storm for his vessel the Halve Maen in Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Thirty years later in 1639, the mainland was settled by Jonas Bronck, a Swedish sea captain from the Netherlands who eventually built a farmstead at what became 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue; a small group of Dutch, German, and Danish servants settled with him.

Most of the eastern half of the area now known as the Bronx was bought in 1654 by Thomas Pell (named for Pelham Bay, Bronx) of Connecticut, who invited sixteen families to form the village of Westchester near what is now Westchester Square. Westchester was between 1683 and 1714 the seat of Westchester County (which included the Bronx until the second half of the nineteenth century) and as a chartered borough was the only town in the colony with an elected mayor. In addition, it was the first town without a property qualification for suffrage: settlers chose a representative to the provincial assembly and had their own municipal court. Horses, cattle, sheep and wheat were the main agricultural products and a cottage industry in cloth making thrived.

During English rule most inhabitants were English, of English descent, or Dutch. Anglicanism was the religion sanctioned by colonial law, but Presbyterians, Quakers, and members of the Dutch Reformed church were in the majority. The first blacks, slaves from the West Indies, soon made up 10 to 15 percent of the population. Native Americans left the area soon after 1700.

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