between East 138th and East 141st Streets is lined with brownstones built by the 1890s, once known as Doctors' Row. In 1969 these blocks became the first historic district in the Bronx. The 40th Precinct station house, built to resemble a Florentine palazzo, is inside the district. So is the , a Carnegie building from 1905.
Two more districts were designated in 1994. and East 140th Street between Brook and Willis Avenues have brownstone rows designed in 1883 by William O'Gorman and William Hornum. The on East 136th Street is yellow brick, put up between 1891 and 1895.
Jordan L. Mott bought the land from the Morris family in 1841 and 1848 and laid out the hamlet named for him. His ironworks and the other factories went to the southern portion beside a canal dug for the purpose. The northern blocks were kept residential under restrictive covenants.
By one count the Bronx had 63 piano factories by the early twentieth century, and 43 of them were in Mott Haven. Together they produced more than 100,000 instruments a year. The of 1886 still stands at Lincoln Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard with a clock tower on the corner, the oldest left in the borough. The stretch along the Harlem River is now truck yards and storage depots.
is the main cross street, and the 6 train runs beneath it. The and the Willis Avenue Bridge cross the Harlem River at the southwest corner. Most of the neighborhood between the landmark blocks is tenements and public housing.
