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With photo.

Borough history lives in iron and bricks

By Ross A. Snel, Staff Reporter

Richard C. Mugler Jr. has never lived in the South Bronx, yet he is bound to the area by blood and business.

Mott Haven is where Mugler's immigrant ancestors made a home in the New World. And it is where the 65-year-old engineer has built a successful construction business.

A history and architecture buff, Mugler has been observing the South Bronx ever since the Depression, when he would eat Sunday dinner at his grandfather's home, a row house at the intersection of 135th Street and St. Ann's Avenue that has been replaced by the Major Deegan Expressway.

"It was a crowded kind of neighborhood, but not unpleasant," says Mugler. "A tremendous amount of selling was done from carts."

Like today, Mott Haven was home to a mix of immigrants. Back then, they were European: Germans like Mugler's grandfather, Italians and Irish. Many worked at the factories and rail yards that sprouted along the Harlem River, the Bronx Kill and the East River. They walked to work from the tenements and row houses in the neighborhood. Trips elsewhere were taken in trolleys. "They ran north, south, east, west through the Bronx," said Mugler.

Mugler's grandfather ran an ironworks in Port Morris. "They may have put up the iron gates at Columbia University," said Mugler. "I saw it in an old advertisement."

Mugler's father took over the ironworks before he founded a building foundation and scaffolding company in Hunts Point in 1931. He moved his family out of Mott Haven to the spaciousness of Riverdale, where Mugler grew up.

Mugler studied engineering in college and took over his father's company in 1958. He now lives in Tenafly, N.J.

The history of the borough is more than a family memory to Mugler. It comes alive in the old factory complex at southwest tip of Mott Haven at Third Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard that houses his business.

Mugler's office, garage and storage rooms occupy the original foundry building of the J.L. Mott Iron Works, founded in 1828.

"It's just a one-story truss garage," Mugler said, as he pointed to the weathered wooden beams inside. "That was typical construction 150 years ago."

An industrial leader in the 19th century, Mott invented a coal-burning stove and founded the village of Mott Haven.

Mott was also a leader in the manufacture of porcelain sanitary pottery -- toilets and bathtubs -- and, Mugler says, installed the first porcelain bathtub in the White House. "I saw that in history books -- workmen standing in the tub before it was shipped to the White House," said Mugler.

Mott's five-story, red-brick factory building adjoins the foundry, but Mugler doesn't use it. Instead he rents it out to a piano restorer.

Mugler said a more recent reflection of the borough can be seen in the number of break-ins at his buildings.

Since the 1960s he has meticulously recorded every burglary in a black-and-white composition book that sits on his desk.

"There was a period when we had burglaries two or three times a week," he recalled, as he ran his finger down the margin. "The last break-in was September 1993," when, he said, thieves took $600 worth of mechanic's tools.

Mugler said the decrease in break-ins signals that Mott Haven -- and the r********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************" he laughed.

As he stood in his construction yard looking up at the old factory, Mugler said he wants to keep the building in its original condition. "I've tried to keep the windows," he said. "Although I've replaced some, I've kept the style of the old windows."

After all, for Mugler, the building is a piece of borough history.


The Bronx Beat, April 10, 1995