Highbridge, The Bronx

Highbridge is prewar apartment-house country, and the file on it is entirely unambiguous: 64% of its buildings predate 1940 and the median build year is 1928. What distinguishes it from other prewar files nearby is the building type doing the work — elevator apartment buildings account for 15% of recorded classes, alongside walk-ups at 35% and two-family homes at 16%.

Height tells the same story. The median building stands 3 stories, yet a full 8% of buildings rise past 6 floors — a pronounced tall tail, with the big prewar apartment houses standing well out of a much lower surrounding fabric. Lots are mid-sized by borough standards, at a median of 3,156 square feet, and one in ten spreads to 16,625 or more.

Land use follows the same shape. Multi-family walk-ups cover 33% of the roughly 850 tax lots, one- and two-family buildings 20%, and multi-family elevator buildings 11%, with 74% of lots residential and 14,051 housing units recorded. In practice the mix means two distinct kinds of property records sit side by side here — small-home files and large multifamily files — which is worth knowing before comparing per-building figures across the neighborhood.

The record also shows real turnover inside the old fabric: 23% of Highbridge's stock dates from 2000 or later, against just 2% from the boom decades between 1945 and 1975. Development capacity remains on paper as well — 75% of lots carry floor area below their district allowance, with a median residual floor-area ratio of 2.1 — though, as everywhere, the figure describes allowances rather than anyone's stated plans, and only a lot-level reading says where the slack actually sits.

Flood mapping registers lightly: 2% of lots fall inside the federally mapped floodplain, a figure consistent with a neighborhood perched above the Harlem River rather than beside it — and still one that warrants a per-lot check near the water. No designated historic district appears in the file, at 0% of lots. The adjoining records belong to Concourse-Concourse Village, Mount Eden-Claremont (West), and University Heights (South)-Morris Heights, which share the prewar center of gravity while differing in building type.