A Bronx de Chirico

[138 East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

We’re in The Bronx, though at a safe distance from the path of the Cross Bronx Expressway. I chose this photograph for the strangeness of the long, sloping, vanishing building, which makes me think of Giorgio de Chirco’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. The partial face on the billboard adds another kind of strangess. That billboard must be for Chesterfield cigarettes, whose slogan was “They Satisfy.”

This building stands today: it’s a church, the Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque Roman Catholic Church, established in 1923. Readers of James Joyce’s story “Eveline” will remember Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, who was canonized in 1920, post-Dubliners.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Raindrop.io)