The Grand Concourse runs wide past Art Deco apartment houses to the limestone courthouse at 161st Street.
What Concourse looks like
Grand Concourse runs about 180 feet wide here, split into three roadways by tree lined medians, with narrower service roads for local traffic on both sides. South of 161st Street the boulevard opens into a divided eight lane avenue. North of that corner it narrows to five lanes, and the service roads take over the local traffic instead.
Five and six storey apartment houses line both sides of the avenue, most dating from the 1920s and 1930s. Setbacks and recessed entries break up the limestone and brick fronts, and several buildings turn rounded corners onto the cross streets. Retail fills the ground floors on the side streets rather than on the avenue itself, and the residential blocks above 153rd Street stay largely intact.
At 161st Street the fills the southwest corner, a nine storey limestone block on a granite base that dates from the early 1930s. Fluted columns run the width of its entrance, facing the avenue. sits opposite, a stretch of lawn and trees between the courthouse and the apartment houses on .
West of the courthouse, past the elevated subway line, the blocks along River Avenue back onto . The stands farther north on Grand Concourse, at 1040. Subway entrances at 167th Street open directly onto its sidewalk, a short flight of stairs down to the platform.
Shot in Concourse
The Bronx County Courthouse at 851 Grand Concourse played two different federal proceedings in The Irishman. It also took in Sherman McCoy after his hit and run in The Bonfire of the Vanities, both productions using the same nine storey limestone building at 161st Street.
Bronx County Courthouse
851 Grand Concourse. Two different productions, twenty nine years apart, used the same limestone entrance and steps.
The Irishman, 2019
Bronx County Courthouse
Played a federal courtroom, Nashville, Tennessee, 1962
The Congressional Hearings into Jimmy Hoffa and his later trial in Nashville were both filmed inside the Bronx County Courthouse. The nine storey limestone building stands in for a federal courtroom in the Nashville scenes. Street View
The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1990
Sherman McCoy is brought here after the hit and run under the Third Avenue Bridge, arrested outside the courthouse on Grand Concourse. The scene plays out on the sidewalk rather than inside the building. Street View
Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard carry the same six storey Art Deco apartment houses, several by the same architects who worked on the Grand Concourse. The scale and the limestone and brick detailing match closely for the 1930s. Washington Heights sits on higher ground, with the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge visible in wider shots that the flatter Bronx avenue cannot show. Try searching Art Deco apartment houses now.
Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile has Art Deco towers built to a similar setback and vertical massing as the Grand Concourse, from the same years. The Wilshire Tower and the Dominguez Wilshire Building both stand on a wide boulevard built for cars. These are commercial office towers rather than apartment houses, and the palm trees and low density around them look like Los Angeles rather than the Bronx in a wide shot. Try searching Art Deco towers boulevard now.
Miami Beach's Art Deco Historic District is from the same decade, with the same stepped massing and corner windows in a low rise oceanfront form. The Carlyle and the National Hotel on Collins Avenue show the style at hotel rather than apartment house scale. Pastel paint and palm trees give away the location immediately, so this only holds for a tight shot of a doorway or a porthole window. Try searching pastel Art Deco doorway now.
