The South Bronx is not a brand

Clarification appended.

Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn is the Marie Antoinette of the Bronx. A Manhattan art gallery owner who lives with her investment banker husband in a mansion just off Fifth Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Rohatyn staged last month’s now-notorious celebration in Port Morris that employed images of the burning borough of the recent past as party decorations. 

She simply can’t understand why anyone would be offended that a video of burning buildings served as an invitation to the South Bronx. What, she wondered, could be wrong with adorning the venue with trash fires and with a sculpture fashioned from the carcasses of bullet-ridden automobiles. 

Similarly clueless is the man who footed the bill, Keith Rubenstein, a billionaire developer who plans to build luxury towers on the Harlem River at Third and Lincoln avenues. He thought it would be a fun idea to publicize his plans by inviting a batch of celebrities, fashionistas and well-heeled investors — “a horde of gorgeous and wealthy creatives,” the New York Observer gushed — to swill champagne in an abandoned warehouse. 

Not many Bronxites joined the throng, but — no surprise — Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and Bronx Assemblyman Carl Heastie, the Speaker of the State Assembly, were among the merry-makers. Apparently, they, too, can see nothing wrong with finding in the suffering of a generation of South Bronx residents the makings of an amusing stage set. Nor have they taken exception to Rubenstein’s desire — proclaimed in a billboard near the Third Avenue Bridge — to rename the neighborhood “the Piano District.” What residents call home — Port Morris, Mott Haven, South Bronx — the developer sees as damaged brands. 

Names have meaning. Erasing these names erases from memory the courage of those who endured, those who rebuilt and those who strive today to raise their families and improve their lot in the South Bronx. But that’s not something a billionaire real estate developer would care about.