A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from June 24, 2005
SoBro (South Bronx)
"SoBro" is the "South Bronx." The nickname "SoBro" had been in various uses since at least the 1970s and 1980s, but became a trendy nickname in 2005.


SoBRO
About SoBRO
SoBRO was founded in 1972 by a group of elected officials, business executives, and community representatives. Their mission was urgent: reverse the flight of businesses and jobs from the South Bronx, as a first step toward rebuilding a community whose name evoked images of burned out buildings, crime, poverty, and drugs.

SoBRO soon recognized that community revitalization required a multi-faceted effort, and today SoBRO addresses all facets of community development: assisting businesses to get started and grow, training residents according to the needs of employers, offering opportunities for youth to grow and learn, and creating affordable housing and commercial space that reduces blight in the community.

New York (NY) Times
Goodbye South Bronx Blight, Hello Trendy SoBro
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: June 24, 2005
(...)
Mr. Fatjo is part of a crop of newcomers, many of them refugees from the rising rents of Williamsburg and the East Village, who are making the South Bronx the city's new cutting-edge address.

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

31 August 1983, New York Times, pg. B8:
It was interview times for more than 150 trainees of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, known as Sobro.

1 August 1988, New York Times, "Many No's to Parting 'South' From Its Bronx" by Sam Howe Verhovek, pg. B3:
In place of South Bronx, those pressing for a name change have suggested "Lower Bronx," "Downtown Bronx," or "New Bronx."

"What about SoBro?" suggested Mayor Koch.

That idea, actually, has been embraced by a handful of real-estate agents who have been trying for the last few years, with limited success, to market loft space in South Bronx warehouses to artists.

10 April 1994, New York Times, pg. CY4:
The Antiquing of the South Bronx, uh, SoBro
By THOMAS J. LUECK

27 October 1996, New York Times, pg. CY16:
SOUTH BRONX
Visiting New Art
(And the New Chelsea)

Emerging art communities in Mott Haven and Longwood in the South Bronx and in west Chelsea will be explored in a series of tours that being next Sunday.

The first, a walk through Mott Haven, will be led by Katia Howard, an urban historian and a Bronx native. It beings in midtown Manhattan with an examination of art commissioned for subway stations. After a subway ride, the tour continues with the 19th-century brick houses in Mott Haven and the antiques district of Bruckner Boulevard, In art-speak, the South Bronx is now referred to as SoBro.

Posted by {name}
New York CityNeighborhoods • Friday, June 24, 2005 • Permalink


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