Esplanade, also known as Esplanade Avenue, is a street with a series of green traffic medians in the Morris Park and Pelham Gardens neighborhoods of

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The street was constructed in 1912 atop a covered trench of the

New York, Westchester and Boston Railway The New York, Westchester and Boston Railway Company (NYW&B, also known to its riders as "the Westchester" and colloquially as the "Boston-Westchester"), was an electric commuter railroad in the Bronx and Westchester County, New York from 1912 t ...

that was cut through a hill. Atop the hill, Esplanade intersects with

Pelham Parkway The Bronx and Pelham Parkway, also known formally as the Bronx–Pelham Parkway but called Pelham Parkway in everyday use, is a parkway in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. The road begins in Bronx Park at the Bronx River Parkway and ...

, a road with its own series of green traffic medians designated as parkland.

Transportation

The former

line, which runs under the Esplanade, was acquired by the city in 1940 and is now the New York City Subway's

IRT Dyre Avenue Line The IRT Dyre Avenue Line (formerly the IND Dyre Avenue–East 174th Street Line) is a New York City Subway rapid transit line, part of the A Division. It is a branch of the IRT White Plains Road Line in the northeastern section of the Bronx, n ...

(). At the Esplanade's southern end is the Morris Park station. The platform is elevated at the portal into the tunnel that runs beneath the Esplanade. On the northern side of Pelham Parkway at the intersection of the Esplanade and Laconia Avenue, is the Pelham Parkway station, a former express railroad station that closed in 1937 and reopened in 1941 as a subway station. It is the only underground station on the Dyre Avenue Line.

Memorials

The green spaces on the Esplanade have received designations by the city in honor of local residents who served the country in military service. The triangle bound by the Esplanade, Pelham Parkway and Laconia Avenue is designated in 1993 as the Rudy Macina Peace Memorial Plaza. Macina designed the memorial in the center of the plaza, which contains monuments surrounding a flagpole, honoring the veterans of the

Persian Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, and

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The plaza facing the entrance of the Pelham Parkway station is named

Alfred E. Santangelo Alfred Edward Santangelo (June 4, 1912 – March 30, 1978) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. From 1957 to 1963, he served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Life Santangelo was born on June 4, 1912, in New York ...

Plaza in honor of a former local Congressman. Additionally, the traffic median of the Esplanade at the corner of Astor Avenue, was designated in 1962 in memory of Private Sidney Weissman, a local resident killed in the sinking of the

HMT Rohna HMT ''Rohna'' was a British India Steam Navigation Company passenger and cargo liner that was built on Tyneside in 1926 as SS ''Rohna'' and requisitioned as a troop ship in 1940. ("HMT" stands for Hired Military Transport.) ''Rohna'' was sunk i ...

References

{{Bronx streets Streets in the Bronx Transportation in the Bronx Parks in the Bronx