The reason for their suspicions, he guessed, was that a white face like his was still a rarity among residents of the Concourse neighborhood in the South Bronx. That had been true for 40 years, ever since an exodus that cost the Bronx over 300,000 residents and turned the Concourse into an emblem of white flight and urban disenchantment.
But now Mr. Casari is far less of a curiosity. More middle-class professionals, many of them white, are joining him, buying co-ops with sunken living rooms and wraparound windows for under $300,000 in Art Deco buildings that straddle a boulevard designed to emulate the Champs-Élysées.
The newcomers are attracted by real estate they can afford, an increasingly safe neighborhood where major crime has plummeted over the past 20 years, enhancements accompanying the new Yankee Stadium and a reasonable commute to jobs in Manhattan.
It does not hurt that the southern corridor of the Grand Concourse between 153rd and 167th Streets was declared a historic district last year, or that the city has fixed up the Concourse’s roadways and nearby parks, like Joyce Kilmer Park, named after the young poet who wrote the classic “Trees.”
Sam Goodman, 59, an urban planner for the Bronx borough president’s office who has lived on the Concourse since 1987, added one other factor: an increasing comfort among New Yorkers with people who are different from them.
“My generation, people who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, we don’t place the kind of emphasis as to whether or not the person across the hall prays in a mosque, a synagogue or a church,” Mr. Goodman said. “In my parents’ generation, most of New York’s communities were defined by race or ethnicity.”
The signs of gentrification include such clichés as a yoga studio, arugula and organic spinach at the local Foodtown supermarket, a weekly farmers’ market in the warmer seasons and a new deli that sells croissants and banana-chip yogurt muffins.
Census numbers confirm what residents say. An analysis of three ZIP codes along the southern Concourse shows that from 2000 to 2010 the non-Hispanic white population, though still small, rose by 17.5 percent: to 3,055 from 2,600. The 2010 census was the first in four decades in which that population did not decrease.
Five years ago, Lynn Loosier, a jazz singer raised in Georgia, bought a renovated two-bedroom apartment in a Renaissance Revival building on Walton Avenue, one block off the Concourse, for $250,000, granite countertops included. Now, she said, most of the 140 apartments in the building are occupied by lawyers, professors and other professionals, with whites making up 40 percent of the tenants. The residents, Ms. Loosier added, cleaned out the basement, hauling away four dump trucks’ worth of trash to open up space for the yoga studio, a gym and a room where she gives vocal lessons.
“The one thing we need is good restaurants,” she said.
Ariela Heilman, a real estate broker for Halstead Property in Harlem who lives in Ms. Loosier’s building, said that in addition to migrants from other boroughs, she often sells or rents to Europeans unaware of the Bronx’s reputation, which is still sullied by the arson and crime epidemic of the 1970s.
Several residents pointed out that there have always been black and Latino professionals raising families along the Concourse, proud of having arrived at a symbol of upward mobility even when the atmosphere was harshest.
“Why do people only pay attention when other races move into the neighborhood?” said Marlen Valarezo, 40, a lawyer of Hispanic descent who works at the Neighborhood Association for Intercultural Affairs, which works to prevent evictions. Five years ago Ms. Valarezo moved into a rental apartment off the Concourse with her mother.
A similar resentment was expressed by Amy Moran, 39, a schoolteacher who is white and has lived in the area since 2004. “I’m cautious about a narrative that just because white people move in makes it a livable place,” Ms. Moran said. “This has been a livable place for people who were already here.”
Nevertheless, even a skeptic like Ms. Valarezo appreciates that for whatever reasons, the most recent influx has been accompanied by organic vegetables for her mother, a vegan, and by the yoga classes that she takes.
Killian Jordan, 66, a grant writer and a former editor at Time Out New York, sold a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side for $550,000 and bought a two-bedroom at 1100 Grand Concourse for $200,000. She used the profit to fix up her new home and to finance her retirement.
Ms. Jordan dismissed questions about safety with a wry rejoinder.
“If you walk around wearing gold chains and flaunting an iPhone,” she said, “four 15-year-olds are going to take you down.”
A “red-diaper baby” from a leftist home and a former Vista volunteer on a Menominee Indian reservation, Ms. Jordan walks everywhere and has discovered an excellent Mexican restaurant, Xochimilco, and a pizza parlor with outstanding pasta Bolognese whose identity she will not betray.
She has become a fervent follower of the Concourse’s Bronx Museum of the Arts and also makes her way farther south to the galleries in the small art colony in an industrial neighborhood along Bruckner Boulevard.
Most of the newcomers are single people or young couples. The quality of local public schools, some say, is not yet high enough to attract couples with children. But there are some families.
In 2008, Rebecca and Adam Moore moved into a two-bedroom co-op in the Executive Towers at 165th Street, paying $231,000. Mr. Moore is a Yankees fan — the couple named their 2 ½-year-old son Gehrig after the great first baseman — and was smitten by the view from the apartment into the stadium.
Ms. Moore, a guidance counselor, said that Gehrig was registered to attend a nearby preschool next fall and that she intended to check out local gifted programs. She added that she liked the patchwork diversity of the playground, even if some children want to touch Gehrig’s red hair because they have never seen hair that color. The couple also have 7-month-old twin girls.
“I just feel it’s a great way to raise our children around all different kinds of people, to start them with an accepting outlook in life,” said Ms. Moore, who was raised in suburban New Jersey.
Felix Rodriguez, 44, a filmmaker, bought a co-op eight years ago for $80,000 and said he thought it had tripled in value since then, though not so much because of new amenities. After all, this is still a neighborhood with no bookstore.
Mr. Rodriguez was struck by a comment from a woman in her 70s who paid a nostalgic visit to a building she had lived in decades before.
“The only thing that changed was the people,” he recalled her saying. “The neighborhood is pretty much the same.”
Lynn Loosier, a jazz singer, bought a two-bedroom apartment near the Grand Concourse five years ago for $250,000.
The area around the Grand Concourse in the South Bronx has seen an influx of white, middle-class professionals in recent years.
Amy Moran, who lives near the Grand Concourse, teaches a yoga class in the basement of an apartment building on Walton Avenue.
