HUNTS POINT HISTORY

Early Inhabitants and Colonization

The first residents of the land in Hunts Point were the Munsee people, who were part of the Algonquin Civilization. Located between the Bronx River and the East River, this land was a hunting and fishing paradise of saltwater marshland with forests on higher ground. They called it Quinnahung or "Long High Place." They lived in villages in matrilineal societies, meaning that one belonged to the family of their mother. They inhabited the land for centuries prior to contact with Europeans.

Colonization and the aggressive occupation by the Dutch and English displaced the native people from their longtime home. Their descendants now live in New Jersey, the Midwest, Canada, and parts of Long Island and Connecticut. Their history may have faded but is not forgotten. They were highly skilled and regarded the land and nature itself as living entities. Today, the community's fight and demand for green space, fresh air, and access to the waterfront is a way to better Hunts Point and pay tribute to their lasting spiritual legacy.

17th Century: Hunts Point and Wealthy Settlers

In the late 1660s, the peninsula was named Hunts Point after Thomas Hunt, an Englishman. Farmhouses and mansions were built by wealthy individuals such as Paul Spofford, Edward Faille, and Benjamin Morris Whitlock. Streets and avenues in Hunts Point still bear their names. Many, such as John Leggett, who owned the largest estate, built their wealth from the slave trade. A burial ground that was used for enslaved people is located near the Hunt family cemetery, the site of Joseph Rodman Drake Park. The park and Drake Street are named after the famous poet.

Annexation and Industrialization

Hunts Point was officially annexed to the Bronx in 1874. The rapid pace of the Industrial era, and the construction of the New York New Haven Railroad and New York City's IRT, erected in 1908, put an end to the farms and mansions. The rural landscape transformed as single-family homes and apartment buildings were built in the northern part of the neighborhood, along with industrial buildings such as The American Bank Note Printing Plant, built in 1909. Railyards and other industrial buildings rapidly cropped up to the south.

20th Century: Cultural Legacy and Decline

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hunts Point became a working-class, immigrant community. Between 1890 and the 1920s, Hunts Point was a working-class Jewish enclave. Many were socialists and labor unionists. Later, many Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Jamaicans, and other Caribbean peoples migrated to Hunts Point. Along with African Americans, who migrated from southern parts of the United States to escape racial violence, they forged strong roots in the South Bronx. Jazz musicians lived and played at clubs and dance halls in the area, such as the Hunts Point Palace. Salsa and Hip Hop culture were born in the South Bronx. The people of Hunts Point are a part of this immense cultural heritage and legacy.

Spofford Youth House and Social Justice Movements

In 1955, the city made plans to move the overcrowded Youth House for Boys from 12th Street to the corner of Spofford and Barretto Street. In 1957, the move was made, and The Spofford Youth House opened in Hunts Point. It eventually became Spofford Juvenile Center, a full-fledged detention center that was a symbol of pain, abuse, corruption, and neglect, that residents fought to close down.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hunts Point, along with the rest of the Bronx and much of New York City, fell into economic decline. The landscape of Hunts Point transformed yet again as many buildings were burnt down and left abandoned. Many residents fought back to protect the neighborhood. Everyday people, in an attempt to beautify the community, created casitas and community gardens in vacant lots.

1970s and 1980s: Activism and Challenges

Hunts Point has a rich history of fighting for social justice. In the 1970s, spray-painted over the Bruckner Blvd. overpass between Bryant Avenue and Faile Street, the words "Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre" welcomed southbound cars turning the bend on the Bruckner after crossing over the drawbridge. In the early 1970s, cadres of the Young Lords Party (YLP) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) took over Lincoln Hospital and created an acupuncture clinic near Hunts Point to address the heroin epidemic.

In 1980, Richie Pérez and Evelina Antonetty, along with many South Bronx organizations, formed the "Committee Against Fort Apache" to protest the movie Fort Apache: The Bronx and its racist stereotypes. The community believed such negative images would be used to justify and reinforce the criminalization of the people, over-policing, and the prevalence of police brutality.

Economic Decline and Resilience

The 1980s brought dramatic changes caused by inequitable public policies like Reaganomics and the Rockefeller Drug Laws, which spiked incarceration rates. It was also the beginning of the crack and AIDS epidemics. By the early 1990s, before THE POINT CDC was founded, Hunts Point was not known as the home of art and culture in the Bronx. That was about to change.