Bronx audiotours

The Bronx is the only New York City borough that sits on the North American mainland, a fact that gives it a slightly different relationship to the rest of the city. It takes its name from Jonas Bronck, a Swedish settler who arrived in 1639 and built a farm on what was then open land. For most of the 20th century it was a dense, working-class place that swelled with immigrants, built Yankee Stadium, produced writers and musicians, and then, in the 1970s, watched blocks of itself burn down in a wave of arson and abandonment that became one of the most photographed urban disasters in American history.

What followed from those ashes was hip-hop.

The South Bronx in the early 1970s gave birth to one of the most influential cultural movements of the century, with DJ Kool Herc's legendary parties at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in 1973 widely credited as the origin point. The Bronx also gave the world the New York Yankees, who won 27 World Series titles at the original Yankee Stadium on 161st Street before moving to the current park in 2009. Pelham Bay Park, the largest park in all five boroughs, covers more than 2,700 acres on the eastern waterfront, and the Bronx Zoo next to Fordham Road is the largest urban zoo in the United States.