America's 'Worst Slum' Revitalized

"It would be hard to get much emptier than the landscape of Crotona Park East in the late 1970s.

After being eviscerated by highway projects, poverty, public health crises and crime, this square-mile South Bronx neighborhood took its final blow in the form of arson, both by tenants and landlords, which helped to reduce rows of tenements to rubble."

"In the intervening decades, much has changed. Once-desolate lots now have housing, whether rebuilt two-families or luxury condominiums."

"Other burned-out lots in this neighborhood of 33,000 residents have become Charlotte Gardens, a 1980s subdivision of raised ranches with deer lawn ornaments and covered boats in driveways. One resident is Elizabeth Jurden, who said that when she checked out Crotona more than 20 years ago, it didn’t look much different from the way it had when she watched Mr. Carter’s visit on the news.

'Rats were running across the street,' said Ms. Jurden, a retired transit worker, who moved here from a two-bedroom rental on the Upper West Side. 'But I figured if it's the pits now, it can only go one way, and that’s up.'"