In 1828, Jordan L. Mott, inventor of a coal-burning stove, established a factory near what is now Third Avenue and E. 134th Street. The Mott foundry, in operation into the twentieth century, became one of many notable ironworks in the Bronx, along with the nearby Janes, Kirtland and Company, which cast and built the iron dome of the Capitol in Washington, 1863. In 1850 the owner of the works, a vigorous promoter of his land and himself, established a village unembarrassedly named Mott Haven. One rival joked that the Harlem would shortly be rechristened the Jordan River. But commuters were attracted from Manhattan, and soon the name was being applied to the southwest corner of the borough, below 149th Street between the Harlem and East Rivers. Here, from the late nineteenth-century into the nineteen-forties, residential streets with elegant row houses, some now preserved in the Mott Haven Historic District, flourished in the midst of an industrial area, notable for its many piano factories.


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