“Little Pittsburgh”: Creating an Industrialized Landscape in Hunts Point
By Sam Hege
For New York City residents, the sprawling food distribution compound on the Hunts Point peninsula in the South Bronx is a vital component of the city’s food supply chain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the city and market operators have been praised for establishing a rapid and effective response to protect the essential work of food processors at the Hunts Point Terminal Market.[1] Workers in these markets have fulfilled online grocery orders and kept bodega shelves stocked. Yet, while this response has been applauded, residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the food distribution compound, many of whom work at the Terminal Market, have also experienced disproportionately high rates of COVID -19 infection.[2]
Since the 1950s, New York City has relied on the South Bronx to handle the vital and taxing components of its processing and distribution infrastructures. This strategy began with the decision to relocate the Terminal Market from downtown Manhattan to the Hunts Point peninsula, and has since been used to justify the siting of waste transfer stations, prisons, and industrial processing facilities.[3] This consolidation of waste and congestion to the South Bronx supported the emergence of Manhattan as a tourist destination and financial capital, embodied by the redevelopment of the Manhattan market space as part of the World Trade Center project.[4] However, in the South Bronx, community members experience disproportionately high rates of asthma and pedestrian hospitalizations, among other illnesses and hazards.[5] Despite living in proximity to the world’s largest produce market, residents continually struggle to access fresh and affordable produce.[6] To contextualize the burden placed on South Bronx communities during the pandemic, it is important to consider how all-white coalitions rebranded the peninsula as an industrial landscape in response to the increased migration of Black and Puerto Rican communities during the 1950s.
Prior to the 20th century, the Hunts Point peninsula was filled with farmland and estates. After the construction of an Interborough Rapid Transit line through the area in 1905, Hunts Point began to develop rapidly. While industrial facilities were part of this growth, the initial period of development centered around the construction of apartments and detached houses, designed to attract Manhattan residents from overcrowded tenements.[7] Mostly populated by Jewish immigrants, the neighborhoods throughout Hunts Point grew quickly during the first decades of the 20th century, peaking at a population of over 40,000 during the 1940s.[8]
During the 1950s, the borough’s Board of Trade (BoT), a collective of businessmen and one of the borough’s “most influential bodies,” replaced this residential-oriented growth model with an industrial-centered strategy that framed the area as “naturally suited” for factories.[9] By this point, there was some evidence of population stagnation, but the area had also become a central site for the settlement of Southern Black and Puerto Rican migrants.[10] During this time, Hunts Point supported mixed-race housing and schools and was home to key cultural institutions like the Hunts Point Palace.[11] Gene Norman, a lifelong resident of the Bronx who was raised on the famous Kelly Street, noted that by the 1940s, the music venue had become “the mecca for Latin and mambo music.”[12] The BoT’s strategy shift denied the presence of these communities, reporting in 1952 that the “Hunts Point area has been declining as a residential district in recent years while growing steadily as an industrial area, earning the nickname, ‘Little Pittsburgh.’”[13] By naturalizing a discourse that connected Hunt’s Point to America’s most notorious center of industry, the BoT prioritized a set of development possibilities oriented around vacant plots of land rather than existing communities.
The BoT’s industrial booster strategy was precipitated by a series of public housing and park projects proposed by Robert Moses in 1952 and 1953. For Moses, undeveloped waterfront space in Hunts Point represented an ideal location for displaced residents impacted by his slum clearance efforts in Manhattan. Moreover, Moses’ proposals corresponded with the Bruckner Expressway project, a small highway that would allow access to Hunts Point from the borough’s increasingly vast network of highways. Voicing support for Moses’s projects, Walter Kirschenbaum, community affairs chair of the borough Liberal Party, argued that the park “Places human profit ahead of dollar profit.”[14] These proposals stood in stark opposition to the stance of the BoT and illustrated that the industrialization of Hunts Point was not an inevitable reality, but rather the outcome of an active branding and development project.
In response to Moses’s plans, the BoT organized existing manufacturers from the peninsula to protest Moses’s proposal at City Hall. This group relied on a two-part argument. First, they drew on city leaders’ growing anxiety about the increasing loss of industrial facilities throughout the city.[15] Second, they consistently fostered the idea that Hunts Point was “obviously” an industrial area and that parks and residential projects were “threats” to this status.[16] While the BoT did not oppose them, they argued that these projects did not belong in this part of the city. With pressure mounting from this local collective of business owners, and with the Bruckner project also on the table, Moses backed off both of the Hunts Point waterfront projects and instead focused on getting the highway built.[17]
For the BoT, the success of these protests demonstrated that their strategy had broader appeal throughout the city. In the wake of their battles with Moses, the BoT formed an Industrial Development Committee (IDC) whose mission to “retain and attract” industries in the Bronx focused on confining such hazardous development to “Little Pittsburgh.”[18] The IDC worked with city officials on a range of projects over the next decades. These included increasing bus lines into the peninsula, and the creation of vacancy and zoning regulations that ensured residential zoning throughout the borough was matched with industrial zoning in Hunts Point. However, no project would be more crucial to their efforts than siting a wholesale produce terminal in the peninsula.[19]
As the BoT worked to increase industrial development in Hunts Point, the recently elected mayor, Robert Wagner Jr., hoped to settle a long running debate about how to modernize the City’s wholesale produce system. Since the 1950s, food marketing in New York had been centered at the inefficient and congested Washington Street Market, which had been in operation since the early 19th century. Multiple mayoral task forces had highlighted the market’s waste, corruption, congestion, and lack of sanitation. Nevertheless, no solution had been successfully implemented.[20] By 1953, over seventy percent of all fruits and vegetables sold in the city made their way through the dense streets of the Washington Street facilities, costing the city $130,000 in extra yearly expenses.[21]
To resolve this issue, Mayor Wagner formed a task force in 1954 to identify and implement a solution to the conditions at Washington Street. Quickly, though, factions emerged in support of different plans. Anthony Masciarelli, head of the city’s Department of Markets and chair of the task force, focused on developing a market space that could accommodate food shippers’ increasing use of trucks rather than trains and allow for regulatory oversight to ensure fairer consumer prices.[22] To achieve these goals, Masciarelli argued that the city should construct a new facility in one of its outer boroughs, with the Bronx as the best candidate.[23] An opposing contingent on the task force, led by Robert Moses, advocated revitalizing the Washington Market site. Moses was concerned that investing in new facilities would not entice Washington Street vendors to relocate. Moreover, he feared that moving food wholesale to the Bronx without a redevelopment plan in place would create the possibility of slum conditions emerging in downtown Manhattan.[24] In these initial debates, Hunts Point was not yet on the task force’s radar as a possible location.
Seemingly at a standstill, it appeared that the task force might once again fail to devise a solution. It was not until local interests in both downtown Manhattan and the Bronx took up this issue that the conception of a market in Hunts Point began to gain traction. In 1958, David Rockefeller and the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association published a vision for redeveloping the lower portion of Manhattan, which he referred to as “one of the most valuable and uniquely situated pieces of real estate in the world.”[25] Standing in the way of that project were the “decaying” edges of the lower part of the island, which were being suffocated by the Fulton Fish Market on the east side and the Washington Street Market on the west side.[26] The infusion of Rockefeller and the DLMA into this debate, and their plans for redeveloping the Washington Street site, alleviated some of the resistance from the Moses led faction. Alongside the DLMA redevelopment proposal, the BoT began working with City Planning Commissioner James Felt to have Hunts Point considered a possible location.[27] As Felt noted, the peninsula offered accessible and vacant property, and unlike the other sites considered, Hunts Point provided the possibility for further consolidation of food processing and distribution.[28]
As a coalition of real estate developers, city planners, and vendors in support of the Hunts Point proposal began to form, New Jersey governor Robert Meyner approved a bill to build a rival terminal market.[29] This competition served to help the Hunts Point proposal gain further traction. In order to avoid another industry loss, Wagner’s office went into crisis mode. Masciarelli and the BoT began a letter writing campaign to encourage merchants and public officials to support the Hunts Point Market as it offered the best chance of the city retaining food vendors.[30] The Mayor began doing television and radio segments, justifying the project’s budgets to citywide taxpayers.[31] By April 1960, Wagner was able to push the Board of Estimate to condemn 126 acres of land and expedite approval of the project’s $26 million budget (although the final construction bill would be $38 million).[32]
Photo from Bronxboro Magazine at the groundbreaking of the Hunts Point Meat Cooperative in 1969. Pictured from left to right are: Robert W. De Luca, Executive Officer of the Bronx Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce; Albert Kindler of Wolf & Kindler Co.; Albert J. Devlin, Jr. President of Walter B. Cooke Funeral Homes; Hon. John V. Lindsay, Mayor of the City of New York; Hon. James J. Curtin, Member N.Y.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board; Edward J. Holler, Assistant Vice President of Bankers Trust Company. (Copy of magazine volume available at the New York Municipal Library)
Two years later, this coalition of city planners and developers came together on the peninsula for the groundbreaking of the Terminal Market. Speeches, photographs, and reports released about the market celebrated the project as a boon for New York consumers and produce vendors, highlighted the market as a step towards modernizing food consumption in New York, and applauded the relief this project would bring to traffic problems in lower Manhattan.[33] For residents in the area, particularly for those that were caught between the market and the Bruckner Expressway, the opening of the market marked the beginning of a contrasting reality. Characterized by congestion and pollution, the terminal market established the peninsula’s precedent as an industrial landscape. Edward Duffy, a longtime resident summed up this sentiment, “The City has started a twenty-five-million-dollar food market nearby, and the Hunt’s Point that folks had expected to become a high-class residential section is now on its way to becoming a slum area.”[34]
While the Terminal Market expanded, the community surrounding it increasingly faced rising crime and poverty rates and decreased access to healthcare, education, and sanitation services. The BoT addressed these issues by advocating for increasing security measures and calling for job development through further industrialization. Barbed wire fences were built around the facilities, and additional police patrols were launched throughout the area in order to protect trucks making their way through the local streets.[35] When these efforts did not work, many vendors turned to hire private security forces to police the flow of fruits and vegetables.[36] One writer in the 1980s described the HPTM as follows: “a militaristic-looking complex in a wasteland of auto wreckers and junkyards…” as “convoys of semi-trailers pass through a tollgate opening in the barbed wire and corrugated-tin wall that surrounds the grocery compound.”[37] To promote further expansion, city planners also cut corners at the expense of Hunts Point residents. For example, in the initial cost-analysis report made about the HPTM, engineers commented that market trucks would exacerbate local traffic patterns. While Wagner promoted the HPTM’s connection to the Bronx’s network of highways, the actual report noted that access to the market from the Bruckner Expressway would require the use of local streets and suggested that an alternative be developed.[38] One of the proposals made to alleviate traffic was the construction of a deepwater port. However, this plan was cut by Mayor Beame as a way to save money during the city’s 1974 fiscal crisis.[39] Despite these conditions, the BoT continued its “vigorous campaign for more and more industrial zoning.”[40] With the support of city subsidies, they helped relocate meat and poultry processors to a facility next to the produce terminal, as well as deals with larger food processing companies, Vita and Daitch-Shopwell, to build independent facilities in Hunts Point.[41] By 2004, 77,000 vehicles, including 15,000 trucks, moved in and out of the peninsula every day.[42]
Maps were developed as part of the NYCEDC Hunts Point Vision Plan, 2004.
These maps read together demonstrate how park and residential developments require navigating the heavy traffic conditions produced by the peninsula's continued use as an industrial hub.
Despite these patterns of neglect, communities in Hunts Point have successfully advocated for increased greenspace, better housing, and cleaner air and protested continued industrial siting. By creating residential developments and protecting them from industrial facilities and traffic, these groups confronted the BoT’s logic that the South Bronx was a wasteland suited for industry. While the predominant histories of these organizing efforts focused on community responses to cuts in city services, over-policing, poverty, and drug usage, organizing efforts were also deeply informed by the legacy of “Little Pittsburgh.”[43] Father Louis Gigante, a controversial leader of Hunts Point residential redevelopment, for example, argued that the primary cause of poverty and crime was the “critical problem of industrial sites crowding out the residential sites.”[44] Moreover, in multiple planning projects for the peninsula, Gigante attempted to earmark funds that would relieve the residential sections of the area from the traffic created by the market.[45] More recently, through efforts ranging from the Black Feminist Projects’ Black Joy Farm, an urban garden designed to address racist and sexist policies underlying food inaccessibility, to South Bronx Unite’s campaign against the construction of a FreshDirect warehouse along the South Bronx waterfront, community organizers have attempted to foster a planning ethic in Hunts Point that prioritizes people over property.[46] Yet, as the maps below demonstrate**, city officials consistently limit such changes by insisting that the peninsula also remains an industrialized landscape. This patchwork strategy precludes a deeper reckoning of the legacy of disproportionate industrial siting in Hunts Point that has been central to community advocacy for multiple decades.
The decision to centralize food distribution in Hunts Point was the result of white leaders actively and consistently disregarding the wellbeing of Black and Brown communities, and this choice has set a precedent for development that further entrenched Hunts Point as a site for waste, traffic, and the unwanted byproducts of urban life. As NYC begins to develop a recovery strategy from this unprecedented public health and economic crisis, it must center the essential workers at the HPTM, their families, and those that have lived with the legacy of “Little Pittsburgh” for the past half-century. Reckoning with this legacy begins with requiring a more equal distribution of this burden throughout the city.
Sam Hege is a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University. He studies the history of environmental justice, industrial agriculture, and political economy in the 20th century.
[1] See: Sowder, Amy, “Hunts Point Wholesale Produce Market adjusts to Covid-19 Uncertainty,” The Packer, April 21, 2020 https://www.thepacker.com/article/hunts-point-wholesale-produce-market-adjusts-covid-19-uncertainty; Olumhense, Ese, “Hunts Point Market Plows Through Pandemic, Feeding New Yorkers and Avoiding Firings,” The City, June 23, 2020 https://www.thecity.nyc/bronx/2020/6/23/21301080/hunts-point-market-plows-through-pandemic
[2] Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, Winnie Hu and Lindsey Rogers Cook, “‘It’s the Death Towers’: How the Bronx Became New York’s Virus Hot Spot” New York Times, May 26, 2020
[3] A recent and controversial example of this is the opening of a Fresh Direct warehouse along the South Bronx waterfront, see: Walshe, Sadhbh, “‘Environmental Racism’: Bronx Activists Decry Fresh Direct’s Impact on Air Quality,” The Guardian, March 9, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/09/fresh-direct-south-bronx-clean-air-environmental-racism
[4] For a broader discussion of this rebranding process, see: Greenberg, Miriam, Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World. (New York: Routledge, 2008).
[5] See: Restrepo, Carlos and Rae Zimmerman, editors, “South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy Study: Dissemination Materials and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Tutorial Materials, Final Report for Phase V,” April 2009, https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/publications/6%20NYUWagnerPhaseVIReport1April2009.pdf.
[6] Bikangaga, Samali and D.J. Costantino, “Healthy food remains scarce in local stores,” Hunt’s Point Express, Feb 19, 2016.
[7] Gonzalez, Evelyn, The Bronx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 65-71
[8] Department of City Planning, “Health Areas - 1960: Borough of the Bronx,” November 1960, pp. 30-31.
[9] Gonzalez, The Bronx (2004), 82. Also see: “Hunts Point Park Foes Hopeful After Hearing” Bronx Press Review, August 20, 1953, Scrapbook, 1952-1961, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[10] Department of City Planning, “Health Areas” November 1960. By 1950, 16.5% of the population was Puerto Rican and 5.4% was Black. These percentages would grow over the following decades, contributing to a broader reconfiguration of the South Bronx. While many conflated race, crime, and declining neighborhoods during this period in the South Bronx, the BoT’s use of this language in the early 1950’s and the organizations use of this logic to justify industrial zoning set a precedent in the borough. For a discussion of demographic changes and their connection to white flight, see: Jonnes, Jill, South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), pp. 271-275.
[11] Naison, Mark and Bob Gumbs, Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016).
[12] Naison, Before the Fires (2016), pp. 50
[13] “Housing Ban in Hunts Point Hailed By Foes,” New York Post, November 25, 1952, Scrapbook, 1952-1961, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[14] Ibid.
[15] April 28, 1952, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[16] March 2, 1953 and March 30, 1953, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[17] “Moses to Dine Critics of Hunts Point Houses” New York Post, October 12, 1952, Scrapbook, 1952-1961, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College. Also see September 28, 1953, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[18] November 28, 1955, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[19] March 22, 1957, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[20] For an overview of the Washington Market saga, see: Tangiers, Helen, Movable Markets: Food Wholesaling in the Twentieth Century. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), pp. 161-165 and 201-203.
[21] Letter from Anthony Masciarelli to Mayor Wagner, Sept 13, 1955, Box 302, folder 3570, Wagner Subject Files, New York City Municipal Archive. Also, see: “City’s Food Center Faces Replanning: Legislative Group Will Study Washington Market with Aim of Modernizing It” New York TImes, March 8, 1953.
[22] For an in-depth analysis of the transition from railcars to long haul trucks as the primary mode of transportation for American foodstuffs, see Hamilton, Shane, Trucking Country: The Road to America’s Wal-Mart Economy. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[23] Masciarelli, Anthony, “A Modern Produce Market - A Necessity,” Bronxboro Magazine, Vol. XXXV, 1958, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[24] Letter from Robert Moses to Mayor Robert Wagner, March 28, 1958, Box 302, Folder 3571, Wagner Subject Files, New York City Municipal Archives.
[25] Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, Inc., “Lower Manhattan Recommended Land Use, Redevelopment Areas, Traffic Improvements: 1st Report,” October 14, 1958, pp. 4-6
[26] Ibid.
[27] Based on city and BoT records, it is not clear which side initially conceived of building a Terminal Market in Hunts Point. However, at the opening of the HPTM in 1967, the BoT readily claimed credit for the idea, see: “A Giant Step Forward for the Bronx - The City, and the Nation” Bronxboro Magazine, Vol. XXXXV, Summer 1967, pp. 5, New York Municipal Library.
[28] Felt, James, “The Potential of Hunts Point,” Bronxboro Magazine, Vol. XXXV, 1958, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[29] Bennett, Charles G., “City-Jersey Race for Market Seen” New York Times, Feb 26, 1960.
[30] May 23, 1960, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Volume 21, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[31] Bennett, Charles G., “Mayor is Rushing New Food Market: Board of Estimate to Start Condemnation of Site in Bronx this Week” New York Times, Apr 25, 1960.
[32] “Progress Report” Box 76, Folder 949, Mayor Wagner Departmental Files, New York City Municipal Archive.
[33] Wagner Groundbreaking Ceremony Speech for Hunt’s Point, Mar 27, 1963, Robert F. Wagner Collection, La Guardia and Wagner Archives, box 060066w, folder 11
[34] Duffy, Edward, “I Remember Old Hunt’s Point” Bronx County Historical Society, vol. 1, pp. 33.
[35] July 1, 1968 and November 18, 1970, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Miscellaneous, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[36] Breasted, Mary, “Dealers at Hunt’s Point Market Call It Thieves’ Paradise” New York Times, Aug 17, 1973
[37] O’Neill, Molly, “Working to Feed the City: The Butcher, the Baker…The Marketplace Maker” New York Times, November 12, 1989.
[38] “Preliminary studies for the New York City terminal market at Hunts Point : summary of findings and recommendations” by Madigan-Hyland and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Nov 1, 1959.
[39] “Loss of 8,000 Jobs in Building Seen” New York Times, October 24, 1975.
[40] October 20, 1969, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Miscellaneous, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College.
[41] September 28, 1970, Minutes of Directors Meetings, Miscellaneous, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Collection, 1894-1968, Special Collections, Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College. For an overview of the efforts of the BoT to expand the food wholesale industry in Hunts Point, see: Eisenpreis, Alfred, “Hunts Point - A Dramatic Expansion,” Bronxboro Magazine, Vol. LI, Spring 1974, New York Municipal Library.
[42] NYCEDC, “Hunts Point Vision Plan,” Fall 2004, https://edc.nyc/sites/default/files/filemanager/Projects/Hunts_Point_Peninsula/2004_Hunts_Point_Vision_Plan_combined.compressed.pdf.
[43] For a discussion of this organizing history in the South Bronx, see: Jonnes, South Bronx Rising
[44] “Hunts Point Development Plan Offered,” New York Times, March 26, 1972.
[45] “3 Bronx Neighborhoods Get New Chance to Chart Futures,” New York Times, June 27, 1974.
[46] For information on the Black Feminist Project, see: https://www.theblackfeministproject.org/; for information on the more recent efforts against the opening of the Fresh Direct Warehouse, see: South Bronx Unite, “Campaign Against FreshDirect” http://southbronxunite.org/environmental-justice/freshdirect/. For an account of the most notorious environmental justice campaign in the South Bronx, the efforts of the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition to shut down the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital incinerator, see: Sze, Julie, Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), especially 134-135.