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Volume XXI • Number 11 • March 13-19, 2014 •
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75 years ago: The Bronx invades ‘enemy’ territory: Marble Hill
By ANDREW WOLF Seventy-five years ago, almost to the day, the Bronx Borough President, James J. Lyons, had his official driver take him over the borough’s borders into a tiny sliver of Manhattan, a piece of that storied borough that would appear to most to have been part of The Bronx all along. In fact, the two men crossed the boundary into Marble Hill, where the publicity savvy Bronx president planted the borough’s flag, into what he termed the Bronx’s “Sudetenland,” a reference to the events of the time in Europe, soon to erupt in a second World War. A published account that appeared in The New York Times the next day referred to the Bronx leader as a “Fuehrer,” the kind of reference one could only use so casually before the war, and before the world had full knowledge of the atrocities that were committed in Europe. But the details shed some light on an incident that reflected the state of government at the time. When told that the residents of the area did not look upon him or his invasion kindly, Lyons noted that some people “didn’t like Lincoln for freeing the slaves.” The Times reported that Lyons got out of his car at the corner of Jacobus Place and West 225th Street. With an American flag grasped in one hand and the beloved Bronx flag in the other, Lyons declared, “In the name of The Bronx of which I am the President, I hereby proclaim this territory of Marble Hill to be part of my borough.” The “invasion” was the subject of a talk by Manhattan Borough Historian Michael Miscione held Tuesday evening at New York University’s Greenwich Village campus. James Lyons was not power hungry, but
This is the account of the Bronx invasion of Marble Hill led by then Borough President James J. Lyons in the New York Times that appeared the following day. The incident was the subject of a lecture held Tuesday evening at New York University. a local booster of his borough, one who readily recognized a publicity opportunity. He was a role model for officials like
The late Borough President James J. Lyons was a leather salesman that, legend has, was the inventor of wingtip shoes.
Brooklyn’s Marty Markowitz, the consummate salesman of his borough’s attributes in contemporary times. He invented the term “Borough of Universities,” a description that was more accurate until N.Y.U. left the borough in the 1970s. When Lyons discovered that the New York Botanical Gardens obtained a sample of the amorphophallus titanium, one of the world’s largest flowers which blooms just once every thirty years, native to Sumatra, he couldn’t resist and declared it the “official Bronx flower.” Unfortunately the plant is commonly known as the “corpse flower” because of its foul odor, reminiscent of rotting corpses. The designation was removed in 2000, at the behest of then Borough President Fernando Ferrer. But on his geography, Lyons wasn’t far off the mark. Marble Hill was indeed physically connected to The Bronx, due to an accident of geography and engineering. The Army Corps of Engineers determined in the 1890s that a canal needed to be
dug to facilitate shipping between the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. This work originally left Marble Hill as an island. In 1914, the engineers got back to work and filled in the sections where the Harlem River once flowed, connecting the island to the United States mainland, of which The Bronx is part. While politically Marble Hill remained part of Manhattan following the old defunct border, in terms of nearly everything else, the neighborhood is well integrated into Bronx life. The area is serviced by the Bronx Post Office (10463), and residents have a 718 area code. It is part of the Bronx Community Board 8, which means it derives its police protection from the local 50th Precinct. James Lyons was born in Manhattan in 1890, and his family moved to The Bronx when he was 3. He became a leather salesman, and was credited by some for inventing wing-tip shoes. He Continued on Page 9