Pelham Bay & Schuylerville Neighborhood Guide

I’ve been visiting every NYC neighborhood, trying to explore my own city the way I do when I travel. I’m 212 (!!!) neighborhoods deep now and have documented it all on TikTok.

Now I’m on a mission to write it all out. Next up: Pelham Bay & Schuylerville

I asked one of my friends who grew up in this area for all these recs, so let’s get into it.

I first started my walk in Schuylerville. It’s a very local neighborhood, quiet streets, many families who have lived there for generations, strong Italian-American roots. Which brings me to my first stop, Louie and Ernie’s, open since 1959. They’re definitely known for their sausage pie, but I always have to try a plain to compare. I’m literally not exaggerating when I say this is one of my favorite pizza spots that I’ve ever had in New York, and I’ve had tons of them. I feel like after I do all the neighborhoods, I’m gonna need to do a roundup of all the pizzas that I tried.

Then grab a coffee at Sunday’s Off Cafe. It’s a little to-go coffee shop. You could just tell the owner put a lot of love into the decor and aesthetic of it, and the coffee tasted really good.

Not even a couple blocks away is Third Eye Throwbacks. It’s a curated vintage store that definitely focuses on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia. They have really cool vintage movies, toys, and he has his own fashion brand, which he sells there as well.

We’ve already entered Pelham Bay at this point. It’s also a residential neighborhood in the East Bronx. It was originally made up of farmland and large estates, and then when the transit came, so did the urbanization. There is a long-standing Italian community. You can see this Italian heritage through places like Zeppieri & Sons, a classic Italian bakery where you can pick up some cannolis or rainbow cookies for the park. And over time it definitely diversified, with a large Latin American and Albanian population.

The main thing to do in this area is, of course, to go to Pelham Bay Park. It’s the largest park in New York City, spanning nearly 2,800 acres, more than triple the size of Central Park. It was once home to the Siwanoy, an Algonquin-speaking Native American tribe who lived here peacefully until an English settler, Thomas Pell, signed a land deed with them. They, of course, did not really know what they were signing.

You actually can go to the Bartow-Pell Mansion. It is recreated with actual pieces from the time period, and it’s really cool to walk around and look at this period piece. It’s in the Greek Revival style. Actually, there was once a really large estate, and this is the last remaining 19th-century country house in the Bronx.

The land was very abundant. The Siwanoy Native Americans lived off of it, and today the biodiversity is still visible. You can see turkeys, deer, really unique plants, birds, and just in general the entire park is really interesting for this. There are parts of the park that are almost completely wild. You can walk through old-growth forests past massive glacial boulders that date back over 10,000 years, and it’s definitely a place where the legacy of the land’s original stewards, the Siwanoy, still lives on today.

As the park is massive, there is a range of outdoor activities. There are trails for hiking, biking, horseback riding, there’s the Bronx Equestrian Center where you can take lessons, there is kayaking, canoeing, birdwatching, of course. You can play sports, there is a golf course, picnicking, barbecuing.

There’s also Orchard Beach, known as the Bronx Riviera. It’s a man-made beach that was built in the 1930s by Robert Moses. I will go there when I do my City Island post, as it is quite difficult to do this park on foot. So I definitely recommend bringing a bike if you can.

But that is my perfect day in Pelham Bay, Pelham Bay Park, and Schuylerville. Let me know what I missed and what neighborhoods in the Bronx you want to see me do next!