How We Ranked the Bronx's Best Streets
Bronx average housing score, from HPD violations counted per home. No other borough is under 45
HPD violation records per home on the street
The Bronx posts the lowest housing-condition scores in New York and holds blocks that grade into the eighties. Which of the two describes a particular street is not something the neighborhood name will tell you.
The borough averages 46 overall across 932 graded streets, level with Queens at the bottom of the five. It finishes last on quiet, at 35, and last on housing condition by a distance: 28, where no other borough is under 45. Housing here is built from HPD violation records counted per home on the street, and no other number on this site is as lopsided.
The Esplanade, north of Pelham Parkway, grades 81 and Bartow Avenue in Co-op City 84. Only a handful of blocks in all of Brooklyn grade above Bartow Avenue.
Each street's grade comes from nine measures, six counting friction on the block and three counting what is within reach. In most of the city the friction half and the access half pull against each other. In the Bronx one friction column, housing, does most of the pulling on its own, and it is the column a neighborhood name is worst at predicting.
The Top Tier of Bronx Streets
The Bronx puts 3 blocks at an A, which under our grading means 79 and up, and none of them is in the part of the borough that gets recommended. The top few sit close together, so read them as a tier.
Pelham Gardens. The Esplanade grades 81, the best in the borough, across 85 residential buildings holding 359 homes. Its quiet score is 99, its road condition 99 and its parking score 99. It is neither a single tower address nor a private lane.
Co-op City. Bartow Avenue grades 84 on a perfect quiet score and cleanliness at 100, across 19 buildings holding 11,042 homes. The superblock plan keeps parking and through-traffic out on the perimeter, and every friction column on Bartow Avenue reads like that.
The South Bronx. Bergen Avenue grades 76 and Lincoln Avenue 79. Both are single developments, 5 buildings holding 829 homes on Bergen and 6 holding 2,050 homes on Lincoln, so read them as managed complexes and not as a picture of the surrounding blocks. Powers Avenue, 8 buildings on an ordinary street, sits just under the A line at 79 with a perfect traffic-safety score.
Parkchester and Morris Heights. Metropolitan Oval grades 82, and it is the central street of Parkchester, recorded in the housing file as 5 lots holding 12,143 homes. That is Parkchester's hundred and seventy-odd buildings filed as a handful of parcels behind a private street plan, so the per-home figures below it are the development's, not one block's. West 177th Street grades 70 on a quiet score of 94, cleanliness of 91 and housing of 84, inside a ZIP code whose graded streets average 45.
Mosholu Parkway and Kingsbridge. East Mosholu Parkway North and West Mosholu Parkway North both grade 77, and Johnson Avenue in Kingsbridge matches them on a traffic-safety score of 99 and a housing score of 92, one hill east of the addresses the borough is proudest of.
Riverdale and Fieldston. The prestige addresses do not place. In 10471 the strongest graded block is West 255th Street at 72, with Arlington Avenue at 71, Fieldston Road at 45 and Sycamore Avenue last at 31. Palisade Avenue, on the ridge in 10463, is excellent on everything measured at the curb, above 90 on both quiet and traffic safety, then scores 15 on transit and 18 on food access, which is what holds it to 63.
The best graded block in Riverdale's 10471 grades 72. The borough's best block is an ordinary residential street off Pelham Parkway.
Best Streets by Neighborhood
The overall averages barely move across the borough. Every Bronx ZIP code in the table below lands between the mid-thirties and the low fifties, and inside those same ZIP codes the best and worst graded block sit more than 40 points apart on average. So the neighborhood average is close to useless here. The neighborhood does predict which of the nine measures is holding its blocks down, and that changes completely as you cross the borough.
Read the table down the columns. Housing is the weakest of the nine on about a third of the borough's graded blocks, and it collapses in one belt: Morrisania, Longwood, Tremont and Morris Heights post housing averages in the single digits and low teens while their transit and food averages sit near the borough's best. Cross to Morris Park and Woodlawn and housing recovers while parking falls away. Go up to Riverdale and 10471 posts the borough's best housing average at 59 and pays for it on access: transit 32 against the borough's 56, a little over half the borough figure, and food 43 against 56. City Island is the extreme version of the same trade, with the lowest transit average in the borough and the highest traffic-safety average.
The blocks that beat their ZIP code beat it on the failing column. Bergen Avenue, the 5-building development described above, escapes the South Bronx housing floor with transit at 93, food at 91 and parking at 98. Carter Avenue in Tremont grades 71 on a housing score of 98 and cleanliness of 97, inside a ZIP code averaging 13 on housing. It works the other way too. Aqueduct Avenue West grades 71 on cleanliness 94, traffic safety 98 and parking 100, then scores 1 on housing, and Andrews Avenue South, level with it overall, scores 7. Aqueduct Avenue West and Andrews Avenue South score well on everything measured at the curb and near zero on the buildings.
Three smaller readings sit under the same pattern. Saint Paul Avenue in Morris Park grades 70 with a perfect road-condition score and 13 on parking. Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn grades 64 with cleanliness at 92 and parking at 7. On City Island, City Island Avenue scores 96 on cleanliness and 43 on quiet, while Winters Street one block back scores 95 on quiet. The Bx29 is the only bus either of them gets.
| Area (ZIP) | Streets | Overall | Quiet | Housing | Parking | Transit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kingsbridge and Marble Hill (10463) | 56 | 52 | 37 | 36 | 38 | 65 |
| Mott Haven (10455) | 23 | 49 | 25 | 21 | 51 | 77 |
| Tremont (10457) | 34 | 47 | 21 | 13 | 63 | 61 |
| Fordham and Belmont (10458) | 36 | 48 | 19 | 12 | 52 | 73 |
| Melrose and Port Morris (10454) | 24 | 48 | 39 | 32 | 55 | 74 |
| Norwood and Williamsbridge (10467) | 55 | 48 | 32 | 18 | 49 | 74 |
| Morris Park (10461) | 80 | 49 | 39 | 31 | 26 | 64 |
| Parkchester and Van Nest (10462) | 39 | 48 | 39 | 24 | 38 | 66 |
| University Heights (10468) | 35 | 48 | 22 | 21 | 57 | 73 |
| Concourse (10451) | 19 | 45 | 21 | 19 | 57 | 77 |
| Baychester and Eastchester (10469) | 51 | 47 | 51 | 40 | 42 | 51 |
| Woodlawn (10470) | 24 | 47 | 56 | 34 | 19 | 55 |
| Longwood (10459) | 22 | 45 | 21 | 11 | 54 | 75 |
| Co-op City (10475) | 12 | 46 | 51 | 43 | 45 | 41 |
| West Farms and Crotona Park East (10460) | 35 | 46 | 28 | 13 | 48 | 69 |
| Highbridge and Concourse Village (10452) | 34 | 45 | 17 | 11 | 46 | 76 |
| Morris Heights (10453) | 37 | 45 | 24 | 13 | 48 | 72 |
| Riverdale and Fieldston (10471) | 30 | 46 | 55 | 59 | 27 | 32 |
| Soundview (10472) | 26 | 43 | 29 | 17 | 35 | 58 |
| Morrisania (10456) | 28 | 44 | 23 | 8 | 53 | 64 |
| Wakefield and Edenwald (10466) | 50 | 43 | 45 | 21 | 31 | 55 |
| City Island (10464) | 23 | 46 | 47 | 55 | 51 | 8 |
| Castle Hill and Clason Point (10473) | 36 | 41 | 39 | 41 | 45 | 17 |
| Throgs Neck (10465) | 81 | 41 | 36 | 44 | 32 | 18 |
| Hunts Point (10474) | 10 | 34 | 17 | 12 | 42 | 52 |
Pro Tip: The grade puts a Bronx block in a tier. The column underneath it tells you what you would be living with, and that column is different in every part of the borough.
Quietest Streets in The Bronx
The Bronx averages 35 on the quiet score, the lowest of the five boroughs, and holds 55 blocks scoring 85 or higher, the fewest of the five boroughs.
The calm that exists is concentrated. Bartow Avenue in Co-op City, West 255th Street in Riverdale and Claremont Parkway in Morrisania all post a perfect 100. The Esplanade scores 99, Narragansett Avenue 99, Tiemann Avenue 99 and Arlington Avenue 99, with Knapp Street at 98 and Robertson Place in Country Club at 97.
The northern names most quiet lists reach for split hard. West 255th Street is perfect and Palisade Avenue scores 93, both in Riverdale. Most of the ridge lands near the citywide average of 50, and Fieldston Road scores 28. Our Bronx quiet post has those blocks one by one. City Island averages 47 across its graded streets, a long way from the village hush it is sold as.
At the other end sit the commercial corridors and the blocks under elevated track. East 209th Street is the one worth knowing. It is a residential street, and it scores 9 on quiet because it carries traffic like an arterial.
Safest Streets in The Bronx
Safety here means traffic. The score counts injuries and deaths in NYPD collision records against the homes and businesses on the street. It is not crime data, and this is the borough where confusing the two would do the most damage.
The Bronx averages 49, level with Brooklyn and ahead of Queens, and holds 183 blocks scoring 85 or higher, the third-largest supply in the city.
The strongest blocks are spread across the borough instead of gathered in the north. Powers Avenue in Mott Haven and Gale Place in Kingsbridge both take a perfect score, with Palisade Avenue at 100, Johnson Avenue at 99 and Thieriot Avenue in Soundview at 98.
The weak ones are the roads that carry the region and not the neighborhood, which is why this is the score to read street by street. In every Bronx ZIP code with eight or more graded streets, the best and worst block on traffic safety sit at least 78 points apart, and the average gap across those ZIP codes is 95. Co-op City's 10475 lands on that average almost exactly. Its strongest graded block on traffic safety scores 97 and its weakest scores 2, inside twelve graded streets and one ZIP code.
How to Use This Data
The grades narrow the borough down fast. The Bronx gives you traffic-safety and cleanliness records that hold up against Brooklyn's, in a borough where the building can undo the street.
Work through the real questions first:
- North or south. Transit access averages 77 across the graded streets in Mott Haven's 10455 and 8 on City Island. Quiet runs the other way, 55 in Riverdale's 10471 and 17 in Highbridge's 10452. Decide which of the two your week depends on. Woodlawn's 10470 is the closest thing to a compromise, at 56 on quiet and 55 on transit.
- The housing column. Read the housing score before the overall grade; in the Bronx it is usually the reason a street grades badly. Below 20 on housing, ask to see the building's own HPD record before you sign.
- Parking. The parking score counts 311 parking complaints per home and business on the block. The Bronx averages 43 against 50 citywide, and the two weakest ZIP codes are Woodlawn's 10470 at 19 and Morris Park's 10461 at 26.
- Trees. The tree count does not follow the parks. Soundview's 10472 averages 75 on it, the highest in the borough, while 10471, the Riverdale and Fieldston ZIP code, averages 44.
The friction half of the grade holds up. The Bronx averages 49 on the traffic-safety score, level with Brooklyn, and 48 on the cleanliness score, ahead of Brooklyn's 46. Housing is the exception, at 28, where every other borough is above 45.
If you want strong grades without the guesswork, Pelham Gardens, Co-op City and the South Bronx post the borough's best blocks, and the last of those comes with real access attached: 10454 and 10455 average 77 and 74 on transit. None of these grades reads what an apartment costs.