I notice on your little pop-up map some of the surrounding streets are named "Watt Avenue," "Radio Drive" and "Research Avenue."

What happened in this neighborhood? I assume some kind of research on radio, amperes, watts and ohms...

Edison? Marconi? Something about the magical aura of early radio made me curious enough to do a little googling. I looked around on the web for historical radio accomplishments that may have happened in this section of the Bronx. The closest I could find was this:

[from Early Radio History]

Electrical Review and Western Electrician, November 18, 1916, page 880:

News and Music to Be Transmitted by Wireless Telephone.--War bulletins and important world happenings, interspersed in a nightly musical program for public benefit are being demonstrated by Mr. Lee DeForest, at the DeForest Radio Experimental Laboratories at Highbridge, N. Y., after a series of experiments in wireless telephony covering the greater part of nine years. Public announcement of this new wireless age, marking a remarkable step forward in the distribution of the world's news and music, was made recently in the form of "an invitation-to-listen" sent out by the high-powered oscillating audion transmitter at the DeForest Laboratories. The notice was entirely "wireless," and was addressed to several thousand amateur wireless operators within a hearing radius of New York, foretelling, according to the inventor of the audion lamp, "the coming of the world's first spoken, or wireless telephone newspaper."

Of course, it turned out that Highbridge is closer to the west side of the Bronx, so I kept searching. And here is the real deal:

Ampere Avenue, located near Radio Drive and Ohm Avenue in the Bronx, is also named for Andre Ampere. The streets were given electric names after Issac Leopold Rice, president of the Electric Storage Battery Company, donated the land near Ampere Avenue to the City.

Gee, imagine a time when the street-naming bureaucrats in NYC had a sense of humor or an appreciation for the nerdy.

In any case, in my little search I came across a funny story about DeForest Radio: one of their milestones was being the first on the airwaves to broadcast:

... ELECTION RESULTS: November 7, 1916. The DeForest Radio Laboratory experimental station in Bronx, NY, broadcast bulletins from the New York American on results of the Wilson-Hughes election for approximately six hours until signing off about 11 p.m. with the announcement that Hughes had been elected. (This was certainly a surprise to Woodrow Wilson!)

Yikes! Shades of 2000! So Wilson stole the election. He was selected, not elected. He was the "Resident."

And WWI was a quagmire! (Oh, wait; it was.)

Wow, Mick! You should have your own blog!

Well, I sure learned a lot from your comment. (And one of the most important things I learned is that block quote commands work in comments as well. I had no idea.)

Thanks for doing all that research. I was curious, I admit...

As you mentioned the borough is always referred to as "The Bronx" rather than just "Bronx", but as I understand it this was because the name of the borough was actually taken from The Bronx River.

The river itself was called the Aquehung by the Native American's in the area, but in 1639 a settler named Jonas Bronck bought 500 acres of land, which other Dutch and English settlers would begin to refer to as Broncksland. As time passed the Aquehung would eventually become known as Bronck's River, which would later have it's spelling altered to Bronx River.

The rest of the area then took it's name from the river, and as such would be referred to as "The Bronx" from then on.

But look at the bright side, at least the folks in this area don't have it nearly as bad in the name department as those poor folks in Mound City, Mo.

I guess that's what happens when all the good names are already taken.. lol..

Never heard that story about the origin of the "The" before, Stepdad. Perhaps the borough's name would have been more mellifluous if they'd stopped at Broncksland.

Come to think of it, there's quite a few local Dutch names that are real honkers -- like Yonkers... and Flushing. Though I'm partial to my borough's original name of "Breukelen."

Lol.. well I come from an area of the country where almost everything is named after someplace else. It's pretty rare here in the midwest for the name of your town to actually be something that wasn't used to name another town further east... lol..

Let us not forget some of the lesser known original Dutch names for some New York neighborhoods:

- Paaksloope

- Treybecker

- Dhumbho

- Tha Villege

- Uhpreeside

- Chainateun

Hi; Ampere Avenue will always have a special place in my heart because that's where my family and I stayed for a few weeks when we came from Italy, until we found a job and a place to stay of our own. It was my aunt's house, and I thought it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I thought that people in New York City lived all in skyscrapers and was surprised to find that many lived instead in pretty houses with backyards, too! I wish you had more pictures of the street, though. It was really nice to relive the memories, however. Thank you so much! Carmela.