City Island: A Seaside Village in the Bronx

For a skinny seaside village set snugly between Pelham Bay Park and the Long Island Sound, the name City Island seems rather ill fitting. The quaint repose of City Island Avenue, the beach bandstands off quiet lanes, and the seafood restaurants clustered by the shore paint a small town portrait wholly incongruent with the popular image of the Bronx. In a borough once synonymous with urban decay and civic unrest, City Island balks at the ubiquity of crumbling highways and tenements. Instead, this isolated outpost of Main Street America offers a weekend excursion of fried fish, trinket shops, and inevitable ironies.

The name City Island derives from the late eighteenth century ambitions of Benjamin Palmer. Prior to the Revolutionary War, Palmer foresaw for his island (hitherto Minneford’s Island) the building of a great port to rival that of Manhattan to the south. He went so far as to apply to the British crown for a patent and lay out plots for city services, industry, and homes. While Palmer’s “city” never came to be, his island nevertheless developed a substantial industry in oysters, fishing, and shipbuilding.

Victorian homes eventually came to dot the quiet landscape off City Island Avenue, and until 1898—when the village was subsumed into the tireless metropolis—its existence typified the tranquility of small town life far beyond the bustle of industry. While much of the Bronx was swallowed by the speculative fervor of the early 20th century, City Island was left relatively untouched. Even its short-lived railway service, dubbed The Flying Lady, was closed in 1919 for want of money and passengers.

Today, City Island is best reached by the Bx29 bus, which sets off from Pelham Bay Park, at the end of the 6 train. During the summer months, the island complements a hot day spent at nearby Orchard Beach. In the fall, however, after the crowds have thinned and the leaves have begun to turn, the journey to City Island offers a refreshing last glimpse at a summer retreat. The bus meanders through the autumn foliage of Pelham Bay Park and across a short draw bridge onto City Island Avenue. The last stop lets off at a dead end fronting the Sound. At left, the perennially busy Johnny’s Reef Restaurant serves fried clams and lobster tails year round.

Johnny’s seating area, which can be blustery in the fall, is dominated by an aggressive flock of seagulls, who sporadically dive to snatch up fried porgy, only to get tangled in the restaurant’s invisible overhead wire. Though the seagull’s efforts may fall short, seafood choices abound for those willing to make the journey to the Bronx’s farthest reaches. From Johnny’s Reef, the mansions of Oyster Bay rise just across the Sound. Binocular stations, lined along the shore outside the parking lot, give the largely working class clientele a glimpse of the other side, or alternately, a chance to gawk at bikini-clad trophy wives tanning seaside in July. Whatever one’s purpose, City Island, far beyond the grid, represents an idiosyncratic last outpost of civilization before the trek upstate.

From the tip of the island, City Island Avenue follows a straight path toward the Bronx. A few small shops sell nautically themed trinkets. Other storefronts have been converted into galleries, convenience stores, and pizza shops. The island’s patchwork proclaims neither kitsch nor doldrum. It is a place where people live, where kids ride bikes and scooters along the sidewalks, and the ice cream parlor has pictures of everybody’s neighbors on the wall. All this, of course, with the standard exception of Staten Island, makes City Island a unique specimen in New York City.

At sunset on City Island, the verdant lanes off the main avenue entice the traveler toward the shore. Each path rises slightly, then gradually descends toward the beach, from which the glow of New York City and the spires of Midtown can be made out in the distance. Before the city high-rises, though, the Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges leap across the sky and the nearby cove takes on dusk’s fresh orange glow. Then, as the twilight sets in and New York disappears, City Island is cast in the shadow of the metropolis and returns to its island solitude.