As I said, West Farms has become a great place to settle as a single-family home, and it has many advantages to live in and be part of one of the liveliest neighborhoods in New York. The Storage Post in the Bronx is located just blocks from the Bronx Zoo and houses some of the best and most affordable single-family housing in the city. 

The community is wedged between the Bronx Zoo and the New York State Park System, creating a small urban oasis. Between these two elements flows a stream, which is one of the most beautiful places in the city for outdoor recreation. 

The unique location of West Farms, however, sets it apart from the sprawling city, and it is honestly one of the best places in the Bronx to walk to the zoo. The area is surrounded by the New York State Park System and the West Bronx Zoo, as well as a number of other parks. 

The borders run clockwise from the north: West Farms Boulevard, West 167th Street and West 162nd Street. There is no local subway station, although there is a station on 174th Street from which you can catch one of the many subway lines in the area, as well as a bus line. The bus stop on the west side of West 16th Avenue is located at 172nd Street and 174th Street, which is served every 15 minutes between 9: 30 and 2: 00 pm. Although no buses stop here, there are only two public bus lines that run from Flushing to Jamaica: Q44 (which runs through West Farmings) and Q45 (which connects Queens and the Bronx). 

This mass has created an area of high-rise buildings that stand on the east side of West Farms Road, which forms the western edge of the Bronx River Valley and overlooks the Sheridan Expressway and Bronx River Valley. 

It was not until 1846 that West Farms, Fordham and Morrisania took over Westchester and helped found the Bronx. In 1848, West Farmings was described as “conveniently located” and founded on the banks of the Hudson River north of New York City. With the expansion of the railway, however, the population center moved west along the river and into the city, with the arrival of the railways and the development of industrial facilities in the area. By 1874, the farms of Morrisania West and Kingsbridge, both west of the Bronx, were annexed by the cities. 

West Farms was the site of New York City’s first public school, the Bronx Public School, built in 1884, a few years after West Farmings opened. 

When neighborhood life resumed, West Farms developed a more prosaic problem: housing shortages. Self storage is readily available, but safety is our top priority, so we store seasonal items and outdoor equipment in the self storage room of our western yards. We reduce our ecological footprint with our cozy West Farmings apartments and live in an inexpensive apartment building with roof garden and outdoor terrace. 

In 2012, West Farms was named one of the best affordable places to live in New York City by the Daily News. When it was annexed by New York City in 1873, it had originally been a town in Westchester County. By 1890, the city of West Farmings, now part of Bronx Borough Park, was merged into New Jersey’s West Bronx, a new district within the consolidated New York Bronx. Most of this eastern half of the modern Bronx was bought in 1654 by Thomas Pell of Connecticut, who invited 16 families to found the first city in what is now Westchester Square.

As new homes were built and people moved back, West Farms began to grow again in the 1970s and 1980s. But demand for housing remains strong, meaning that housing groups in Western farms and elsewhere are hard to find – and need to find entirely new ways to develop new affordable housing. 

That’s more than twice as much as in the rest of New York City, and parents and teachers are feeling the stress. The city is closing 10 schools in the Bronx – including at least three that will affect the West Farms neighborhood. 

Moreover, the West Farms neighborhood has the highest percentage of children living in poverty, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. An estimated 31% of the neighborhood’s residents – or about 1.5 million people – live below the poverty line, compared with a median household income of about $35,000 in the rest of New York. One in six residents, or 16%, is unemployed – compared with just 2.2% in other parts of Manhattan and 3.3% in the Bronx. This leaves many people with no choice but to move into privately built homes, as we found in a recent survey of more than 1,500 residents in West Farmingdale.