Pest Control in Belmont, Bronx
Belmont is the Bronx's Little Italy, a tight grid of streets south of Fordham University and just west of the Bronx Zoo. Arthur Avenue and East 187th Street are lined with Italian bakeries, pork stores, cheese shops, cafes and red-sauce restaurants, and the enclosed Arthur Avenue Retail Market has sold produce and specialty foods since 1940. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on 187th Street remains a parish anchor. Belmont's residents are a mix of longtime Italian-American families, a large Albanian community, and Dominican, Mexican and Puerto Rican households, along with Fordham students. Metro-North's Fordham station and buses along Fordham Road and Crescent Avenue provide the main transit links.
Also known as: Arthur Avenue, Little Italy of the Bronx.
About Belmont
The area was once part of the Lorillard family's holdings, and the neighborhood took its name from an old estate here. Italian immigrants began settling in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many working on construction of the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden and nearby rail and road projects. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia built the Arthur Avenue Retail Market to move pushcart vendors indoors, and the neighborhood's village-like character survived largely intact.
Common Pest Problems in Belmont
Belmont's food culture is its pride, and it also creates steady rodent pressure. Butchers, bakeries, fish shops and restaurants along Arthur Avenue and 187th Street produce organic waste every day, and rats nest in sidewalk vaults, cellars and the small backyards behind two-family houses. Mice travel through the shared basements and old stone foundations of the neighborhood's century-old buildings, and German cockroaches spread from restaurant kitchens into apartments upstairs through plumbing and gaps around pipes.
Being next door to the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Garden means Belmont also sees more wildlife than most dense neighborhoods. Squirrels nest in the mature street trees and move into the attics and soffits of frame houses, and raccoons wander over from the parklands to investigate garbage and backyard grape arbors or vegetable gardens. Pavement ants and odorous house ants are common in spring and summer, especially in homes with patios, backyard gardens and cracked concrete near the foundation.