Three years ago, Orlando Marrero was newly divorced and taking comfort at Patricia’s of Morris Park, a maternal hug of an Italian restaurant in this eastern Bronx neighborhood. Mr. Marrero, who is now 54 and works as a marketing specialist for a health insurance company, mentioned to his server that he was looking for a new home. She introduced him to a real estate agent who found him a convertible two-bedroom apartment in a brick multifamily house on Hone Street, for $1,150 a month.
An older Italian-American man across the street welcomed him with coffee and cake. “There is no barrier here to where you come from or who you are,” said Mr. Marrero, who was born in the Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, and had previously lived on Pelham Parkway, just north of the neighborhood. Referring to his new block, he said, “I think I’m the only Hispanic here, and I’ve been very well received.”
Morris Park is a place where village-like congeniality continues to flourish among urban asphalt and flux.
First the site of a racetrack and airfield, then an Italian-American stronghold with pizza and calamari to rival that of Arthur Avenue, Morris Park presents changing faces in a largely unvarying streetscape.
CROSS BRONX EXPWY.
The neighborhood has lost its Orthodox Jewish community and acquired large Latino and Albanian ones, but looks much as it did when Bronx sons like the boxer Jake LaMotta and the television host Regis Philbin lived in the area. Brick and vinyl-sided houses are scaled for one to three families, and the many independent shops lining Morris Park Avenue include Italian bakeries and candy stores that might have served the great-grandparents of today’s young customers.
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