Nailed it! Nice going, ALasky and thanks, Tom, for participating as well.
It is indeed W. 231st and Broadway.
The three-story apt. building on the corner is now the home of the “Gold Mine Cafe” and the three adjacent buildings are still standing:
Here’s the view from the street. The overhead train obscures most of the view:
The decorative elements and number of windows match the 1905 photo.
Further down the street are more buildings that are still around (including the one from the tax photo posted by ALasky).
The white and blue painted building is the former home of Fuhrman’s Dry Goods, a department store:
You can still see some of the decorative elements from the facade:
Fuhrman’s was a beloved local store. Here is a section of an opinion piece from the Riverdale News from the late 1920’s:
The trees on the left side of the 1905 photo may seem strange but according to this 1921 map, there were no buildings on the west side of Broadway between 231st and 232nd Streets. There was only one building within that block. The below map snippet has Broadway on the bottom and Church Street is now Kingsbridge Avenue:
The double-culvert sewers run under Broadway. I had always been under the impression that Tibbett’s Brook was buried in tunnels like these under Tibbett Avenue but numerous articles state that the Brook actually runs under Broadway through the tunnels in the 1905 photo:
At the southwest corner of [Van Cortlandt] lake, the freshwater flow of Tibbetts Brook is routed down into a storm drain that leads to the Broadway sewer, where it mixes in with raw sewage and stormwater. “On a dry day, four to five million gallons of water from Van Cortlandt Lake goes into the Broadway sewer,” says Taylor.
That mix leads to a filtration plant. When rains are heavy, the plant cannot handle the flow so the overflow (sewage included) empties into the Harlem River. The effort to daylight Tibbett’s Brook would help solve the problem of raw sewage being dumped in the River. The Times has more info on the buried brook here.
Thanks for reading and participating.