Mott Haven, the Bronx: Alexander Avenue and St. Ann's Church

East 138th Street is the primary east–west thoroughfare through Mott Haven. The neighborhood was a mixed German-American and Irish-American one, the German households north of East 145th Street and the Irish south of it. The Star of Munster Ballroom was at the northeast corner of Willis Avenue and East 138th Street. Irish Republican Army veterans organized a large parade here in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

The first Puerto Rican settlements came in the late 1940s, along the length of Brook Avenue.

Before the term "South Bronx" emerged, the area was known as "the North Side" or "North New York." Wikipedia attributes that older naming to Mott Haven together with Port Morris rather than to Mott Haven alone, and this page does not claim it for one neighborhood. A trace of it survives in a building: the Chase Manhattan Bank building at Third Avenue and East 137th Street was originally the North Side Board of Trade Building, of 1912.

Wikipedia gives the neighborhood a 2020 population of 54,163 residents over an area of 1.180 square miles.

Three historic districts carry New York City Landmark designations here. The Mott Haven Historic District runs along Alexander Avenue between East 138th and East 141st Streets, 11 acres of four- and five-story row houses from the last half of the nineteenth century in Gothic, Queen Anne and Romanesque styles; some of its row houses were known historically as "Doctors' Row" and "Irish Fifth Avenue." It was designated on July 29, 1969 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 25, 1980. Two more were designated on the same day, April 5, 1994: the Mott Haven East Historic District on East 139th and East 140th Streets between Brook and Willis Avenues, designed by William O'Gorman and William Hornum in 1883, and the Bertine Block Historic District on East 136th Street between Brook and Willis Avenues, designed by Edward Bertine between 1891 and 1895.

The Mott Haven district takes in two institutions and a police station: the 1905 Mott Haven Branch of the New York Public Library, Saint Jerome's Roman Catholic Church, and the 40th Precinct. That matters for how the library's landmark status is described. NYPL's own page says the branch was declared a landmark in 1969, and the boroughwide landmarks list carries no separate entry for the library — so what the building holds is the district's July 29, 1969 designation, not an individual landmarking of its own.

St. Ann's Church and Graveyard was designated an individual landmark earlier still, on June 9, 1967. Built in 1841 and dedicated to Gouverneur Morris's mother, Ann, it holds the graves of Gouverneur Morris and of Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Wikipedia's Mott Haven article calls it the Bronx's oldest church; that is the article's own characterization.

The Bronx General Post Office at 558 Grand Concourse carries two designations, exterior and interior. One more designation covers a building nobody visits: the firehouse at 341 East 143rd Street, which houses Engine Company 60, Ladder Company 17 and Battalion 14, was designated on June 20, 2000. It is a working firehouse and is not written up here as a place to go.

The IRT Pelham Line, carrying the 6 and <6>, runs along East 138th Street.

Wikipedia's Mott Haven article names seven subway stations for the neighborhood: 138th Street–Grand Concourse on the 4 and 5; Third Avenue–138th Street on the 6 and <6>; Brook Avenue, Cypress Avenue and East 143rd Street–St. Mary's Street on the 6; 149th Street–Grand Concourse on the 2, 4 and 5; and Third Avenue–149th Street on the 2 and 5. The article lists them without saying where any of them physically sits, and East 149th Street is the neighborhood's own stated northern boundary, so the last two are on that line and no station here is described as being inside Mott Haven.

For Metro-North the article names Harlem–125th Street and Yankees–East 153rd Street as the closest stops. Neither is in the neighborhood: Harlem–125th Street is in Manhattan, and Yankees–East 153rd Street is north of the boundary Wikipedia gives.

The bus routes the article lists for Mott Haven are the Bx1, Bx2, Bx4, Bx17, Bx19, Bx21, Bx32, Bx33, Bx41 and the M125.

This page does not name an NYC Ferry landing for Mott Haven.

Five bridges are named as serving the neighborhood: the Triborough, Third Avenue, Madison Avenue, 145th Street and Willis Avenue bridges. The Third Avenue Bridge is a swing bridge over the Harlem River between Manhattan and the Bronx and carries southbound, Bronx-to-Manhattan traffic. It opened on August 1, 1898 and was converted to one-way southbound operation on August 5, 1941. The original span was removed in 1955 and the rebuilt bridge reopened in December 1956; a reconstruction ran from 2001 to 2005, with the new swing span floated into place on October 29, 2004.