It Was Made in The Bronx

id you know that Patience and Fortitude were made in The Bronx? Not the virtues Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed conquer all things, but the sculptures of the two marble lions that “protect” the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Though the concept was the brainchild of sculptor Edward Clark Potter, the iconic sculptures were carved in The Bronx by the famous Piccirilli Brothers. Their work also includes the Lincoln Memorial and the dome on the United State’s Capitol Building. What else was made in The Bronx?

FRANKENSTEIN Actually Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus was written in 1815 by Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley in Geneva, Switzerland where much of the story takes place. In 1910

invented the Kinetograph, a revolutionary motion picture camera. Edison Studios was then located on Decatur & Oliver Place in Bedford Park, just a few blocks from the New

York Botanical Garden. Here is where the very first film adaptation of Shelley’s Frankenstein’s Monster was shot. The more modern Frankenstein with electric bolts protruding from his neck came much later in Boris Karloff’s 1931 version along with the line “It’s Alive! It’s Alive!”

BATMAN In his book Bill the Boy Wonder, author and comic book historian, Marc Tyler Nobleman, introduces us to DC-Comics legend Bob Kane’s lesser-known partner Bill Finger. Finger, who lived in an apartment near Poe Park on the Grand Concourse,