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This ride travels along the Bronx’s more than 100 year-old Grand Concourse, a majestic boulevard modeled after Paris’s Champs Elysées, initially with separate lanes for separate forms of locomotion. Today, a bike lane lines the entire 4-mile artery, and your journey is framed by ornate Art Deco- and Art Moderne–style buildings. You’ll pass Poe Cottage, where the poet Edgar Allan Poe spent his final years, and an idiosyncratic Queen of the Universe Shrine. The route then leads through the Bronx’s Little Italy, where pastry shops, pasta makers, butchers, and pizza parlors are likely to tempt you to stop off for a taste.

Start: The Heinrich Heine Fountain in Joyce Kilmer Park on the Grand Concourse and East 161st Street

Length: 11.1-mile loop

Approximate riding time: 1.5 hours

Best bike: Hybrid, road, or mountain bike

Terrain and trail surface: The terrain is paved and mainly flat. There’s one steep ascent at East 175th Street toward Crotona Park. It then goes downhill through the park.

Traffic and hazards: Most of this route leads along on-road bike lanes on wide city streets. While traffic is moderate, the streets are wide enough to allow for comfortable biking. The 1.5-mile stretch through Little Italy takes you onto city streets without bike lanes, so urban cycling comfort is required. Remain especially alert for car doors opening and vehicles turning during this portion of the journey, starting at East 188th Street.

Things to see: Bronx Borough Hall, Heinrich Heine Fountain, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queen of the Universe Shrine, Grand Concourse, Little Italy, Crotona Park

Maps: New York City Bike Map, Department of City Planning Bike the Bronx map

Getting there: By public transportation: Take the B, D, or 4 subway to the 161st Street/Yankee Stadium station. Bike east 3 blocks on East 161st Street to reach Joyce Kilmer Park on the north side of the road. Use the pedestrian crosswalk to reach the park. By car: Take the FDR Drive north to exit 18 (at the Willis Avenue Bridge). After crossing the bridge, access I-87 N/Major Deegan Expressway. Take exit 5 onto East 161st Street, going east. Concourse Plaza Garage is at 200 E. 161st St. between Sheridan and Morris Avenues. GPS coordinates: N40 49.641’ / W73 55.394’

THE RIDE

Your starting point for this journey, the Heinrich Heine Fountain, perched high on a knoll in Joyce Kilmer Park, offers prime views of the colonnaded façade of the Bronx’s imposing borough hall just across the street. To begin your journey, you’ll cross to the east side of the Grand Concourse to cycle northward along its on-road bike. Along the way, elaborate façades of five- and six-story Art Deco- and Art Moderne–style buildings frame your journey.

You’ll pass the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which sits in a converted synagogue on your right, and continue northward past innumerable architectural marvels. One of them sits just north of East Fordham Road—the ten-story former Dollar Saving Bank, now the Emigrant Savings Bank, was constructed over a period of twenty years beginning in 1932. Just beyond sits Poe Cottage, where the poet Edgar Allan Poe spent his last years from 1846 to 1849. The modest white-wooden farmhouse was built around 1812 and, when Poe lived here, was surrounded by sloping farmlands that stretched eastward to Long Island.

Continuing north, when you hit Van Cortland Avenue East you’ve reached the end of the Grand Concourse. Use the traffic signal to cross to the boulevard’s west side and bike southward, continuing along the bike lane. Stop off for a quick visit to the Queen of the Universe Shrine, a memorial that commemorates the spot where a 9-year-old boy purportedly was graced with an appearance by the Virgin Mary in 1945. Occurring just at the end of World War II, she told him to pray for world peace. Climb the narrow stone staircase to your right that leads up to the shrine.

Continuing south, you’ll soon leave the Grand Concourse behind to cycle toward Belmont, the Bronx’s Little Italy. Beginning with a left onto East 188th Street and ending with a right onto Southern Boulevard, this 1.5-mile part of the journey has no bike lanes, so stay especially alert. A short stretch along East 188th Street has moderate traffic and soon brings you to Arthur Avenue, the heart of Little Italy, where you’ll find a host of cafes, pasticcerías, and prosciutterías. The Arthur Avenue Retail Market, just south of East 186th Street, is an ideal place to still a craving for the tastes of Italy. The indoor market houses an array of Italian pastry shops, pasta makers, butchers, coffee specialists, and wine connoisseurs, among others. Pick up some provisions here for a break in Crotona Park up ahead. The Madonia Brothers Bakery next door and Dominick’s Restaurant across the road are also Belmont mainstays.

Heading onward, you’ll make a sharp left at Crescent Avenue, bringing you to a series of smaller residential roads. A left onto East 182nd Street then soon brings you to Southern Boulevard, where you’ll find a bike lane once more.

The next jaunt of journey leads through Crotona Park at East 175th Street. A bikeway enters the park at the top of the hill and swerves past a tranquil 3-acre lake, picnic areas, innumerable ball fields, tennis courts, and a pool. Stay left of the tennis courts, going in between the courts and the lake. The lake-side benches are a great spot to take a break and enjoy your Italian provisions. To continue, exit Crotona Park onto the on-road bike lane on Crotona Avenue and follow the bike lane as it zigzags along a series of streets back to your starting point.

MILES AND DIRECTIONS

0.0Use the pedestrian crossing to reach the east side of the Grand Concourse. Then go north along the on-road bike lane.

3.1The former Dollar Savings Bank Building is on your right.

3.2Poe Cottage is on your right.

4.2Make a U-turn at Van Cortland Avenue East, traversing the Grand Concourse to go south along its west side.

5.5Turn left onto East 188th Street.

6.1 Turn right onto Arthur Avenue.

6.4Turn left onto Crescent Avenue, followed by a right onto Hughes Avenue.

6.6Turn left onto East 182nd Street.

7.0Turn right onto Southern Boulevard.

7.7Turn right onto East 175th Street, going uphill. At the top of the hill, enter Crotona Park on your left. Follow the greenway as it curves through the park.

8.2Veer left, with the tennis courts on your right. Take a break by the lake on your left.

8.5Exit the park and turn left onto Crotona Avenue. Crotona Avenue becomes Prospect Avenue up ahead.

9.1Turn right onto East 169th Street.

9.4Turn left onto Franklin Avenue, followed by a quick right onto East 168th Street.

9.9Turn left onto Clay Avenue, followed by a quick right onto East 167th Street.

10.5Turn left onto the Grand Concourse.

11.1Arrive at your starting point.

RIDE INFORMATION

Local Events/Attractions

Bronx Museum of the Arts: A converted synagogue with a three-story glass atrium that displays works by artists of African, Asian, and Latin American descent. 1040 Grand Concourse; (718) 681-6000; www.bronxmuseum.org

Arthur Avenue: The Bronx’s Little Italy is centered around Arthur Avenue in Belmont. www.arthuravenuebronx.com

Poe Cottage: The poet Edgar Allen Poe’s home from 1846 to 1849. 2640 Grand Concourse; (718) 881-8900; www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/poecottage

Restrooms

Mile 8.3: There are restrooms in the park buildings in Crotona Park, next to the tennis courts and on the lake’s shore.

In the 1800s, the Bronx was a rural community of farmland and green space where agricultural swaths of land produced most of the fruit, vegetables, and grain that nourished its neighbors to the south in Manhattan. Considered a pastoral haven, the writer Edgar Allen Poe is just one of many who were drawn to the area for the clean, fresh air that could be found here. The Grand Concourse itself was built in the early twentieth century to give escape-seeking Manhattanites convenient access to the Bronx’s parks and green spaces. Designed by the engineer Louis Risse, a French immigrant, the boulevard was intended to resemble the Champs-Elysées in Paris, with separate arteries for pedestrians, horse carts, and cyclists, and underpasses at each major intersection.

After the Grand Concourse was completed in 1909, affluent Manhattanites began moving to the area, seeking respite from the stifling Manhattan tenements down south. Development throughout the district increased rapidly thereafter throughout the 1920s and ’30s. This building boom was guided by the idea that the architecture of a community greatly affects the character of its residents: elegant urban design would lead to stable communities, with enhanced quality of life and fewer social hardships. The elaborate Art Deco- and Art Moderne-style buildings with ornate façades that line the Grand Concourse are a result of this belief.

A few decades later, during the 1970s, the South Bronx went through a period of social restructuring, with 30 percent of its residents moving away, and poorer residents moving in. This led to an overall decrease in city services, bringing with it a strong sense of social unrest. By the mid-1980s, community advocates and political leaders attempted to revive the area by rebuilding some of the local infrastructure and thus attracting new residents once more. Today, the Concourse closely resembles what it looked like decades ago during the first half of the twentieth century.