As a shopping district, it's no Fordham Road, but 183d Street in University Heights hums with commercial activity.
Many of the businesses are run-of-the-mill take-out Chinese and Spanish-American restaurants, grocery stores and video rental shops. But nestled among them are a few that answer the special needs of the neighborhood's newest residents, who include immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana and West Africa.
The new shops of 183d Street, many of them run by immigrants, serve a neighborhood whose diversity mirrors that of the borough.
Until the 1970s, most people in University Heights were Jewish or Irish.
The faces are now predominantly Hispanic and black, but the neighborhood's wealthy residents still live on or near the Grand Concourse, and the poor live down the hill, closer to Jerome Avenue. "That's always been the same," said Frank Vardy, a demographer with the City Planning Department.
Hilda Valentin, 42, from Puerto Rico, has owned Roldan Hardware at 125 East 183d St., about halfway down the hill, for 18 years. "I've grown with the kids," she said.
When people streamed into Valentin's shop last week, she knew them all by name. Because many of her customers haven't mastered English, Valentin said she occasionally helps them read or answer their mail. For the same reason, every item she carries is displayed, so customers can recognize what they need even if they don't know its name.
"They feel comfortable coming in," she said.
Immigrants from the Dominican Republic are the largest group of newcomers in University Heights, according to the city Planning Department. Most of the telephone calling centers and travel agencies on 183d Street advertise primarily in Spanish, offering bargain flights to the island country.
A few doors from Valentin's shop, Patricia Baker, 50, from Jamaica -- the second-biggest source of immigrants to University Heights -- sat in a salon chair. She was having her hair braided at Masidi Hairbraiding and Tailoring by women from the West African country of Guinea.
The process of working dozens of long, fine, braids of hair into Baker's own began at about 11 a.m., she said. A little after 6 p.m., with two sets of fingers flying, it was still far from done.
"If you want it to grow, you braid it," Baker said.
Maria Dione Sire, 31, opened the shop at No. 167 two years ago. She and her husband live on Roosevelt Island, but University Heights, she said, had "more people interested in African tailoring and hair braiding."
Next to her salon is a specialty grocery store that carries halal meat, slaughtered according to Islamic law. Muslims from Guyana tend the store.
Guyana is the fourth-largest sender of newcomers to University Heights after Vietnam, the planning department found. Most of the Guyanese in the borough are descended from people from India. They, along with immigrants directly from India and "Africans from all over" keep the store in business, said Jake Mohamed, 23, a clerk.
Old-time neighborhood residents might not recognize 183d Street today, but Vardy said the pattern is as old as the hills, with "the wave of succession that you get in any neighborhood of any city being played out in University Heights."