Mott Haven

If you walk around the South Bronx area known as Mott Haven, you might see old manhole covers or drainage grates made out of iron. They're a remnant left behind by Jordan Mott, the 19th-century inventor of the coal stove and the neighborhood's namesake.

Mott Haven was a relatively prosperous middle-class community for German- and German-Jewish Americans during the first part of the 20th century, but after the Major Deegan and Bruckner Expressways were put up in the 1940s and '70s, many old-time residents moved out. During the 1970s and '80s, Mott Haven was the backdrop for many of the South Bronx's most notorious drug wars. By the 1990s, crime was dying down, but the area never full recovered.

Nevertheless, Mott Haven (or SoBro, as the real estate agents call it) has undergone a big upswing -- even though real-estate prices have remained far lower than in other former industrial areas bordering Manhattan. A studio or modest one-bedroom co-op still hovers around the $100,000 mark. (In the last couple of years, plenty have sold for even less.) More expensive units can run $200,000 and above, while large houses can typically be had for under $500,000.