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Kingsbridge is a neighborhood in the Bronx, New York. It is bordered by Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Park on the north and west, by Sedgwick Avenue on the east, and by 225th Street and Marble Hill on the south.
Kingsbridge lies in the shadows of the affluent Riverdale neighborhood, located at the bottom of a large hill separating the two neighborhoods. At many points throughout the area Riverdale and Kingsbridge are connected by a series of "step streets" in which stairways with as many as 160 steps built into the hills.
Until the latter part of the 19th century Riverdale, Kingsbridge, and other areas of the northwest Bronx were part of the Town of Yonkers. (Yonkers still exists today as the City of Yonkers.) The areas that are south of the modern-day New York city line broke off to form the Town of Kingsbridge. Later, the City of New York annexed the western half of the Bronx, taking in the Town of Kingsbridge. As the trains to Manhattan were built in the 20th century, a stop in the northwest Bronx along the Hudson River called Riverdale-on-Hudson was created. This gave rise to the Riverdale neighborhood; the remainder of the old Town of Kingsbridge developed into the modern-day Kingsbridge neighborhood.
Kingsbridge shares a zip code with southern Riverdale (10463) are often follows Riverdale's lead of using "Riverdale, NY 10463" as an address rather than the correct "Bronx, NY 10463."
The area known as "Kingsbridge Heights" is the crossroads between Kingsbridge and Bedford Park. Kingsbridge Road is the main thoroughfare of Kingsbridge Heights; the street is named as such because it led to the old Town of Kingsbridge; the area however was never part of Kingsbridge proper.
Kingsbridge was once a predominantly Irish neighborhood, evidenced by the many Irish pubs on Broadway under the 1-train of the New York Subway System (including the famous Piper's Kilt, with branches in Eastchester, New York as well as one just a few blocks south in the Inwood section of Upper Manhattan, also on Broadway.) The northern reaches of the neighborhood border Manhattan College and still remain largely white, working class, and residential, the areas further south are largely black and Hispanic, sharing their character with gritty Marble Hill.
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