by Michelle Mullen<\/p>\n
A historic preservationist by trade, Sarah Eccles is the kind of person who notices buildings that others walk past unassumingly, finding joy in the overlooked details woven into the Bronx\u2019s architectural fabric. <\/p>\n
Through her Instagram account, @Speccles_, the Riverdale resident has become part historian, part preservation advocate, part unofficial tour guide to the masses, using it as a vessel to introduce thousands of followers to corners of the borough they may have never stopped to notice before.<\/p>\n
Her videos, many filmed while wandering through Riverdale, Kingsbridge or the waterfront streets of City Island, blend architectural research with a distinctly personal attachment to places she explores, drawing more than 22,000 followers interested in a side of the borough rarely reflected in the mainstream.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really just don\u2019t like the way people speak about the Bronx,\u201d Eccles told The Press while sitting beneath the famed \u201cThe Tortoise and the Hare\u201d sculpture in Van Cortlandt Park. \u201cI believe there\u2019s so much to see here, and so much beauty and so much diversity, both culturally and geographically. I think people from the Bronx, we all feel that way, and it\u2019s irritating when people dismiss your borough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The account originally started as a personal Instagram page where she occasionally posted photographs of buildings she liked. Last year, while walking through Fieldston, she recorded a short video explaining why she found the neighborhood so architecturally unique. She posted it casually to Instagram and TikTok, not expecting much. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just thought, like, this is so beautiful here, I want to share it,\u201d Eccles said of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
She later posted it on Instagram, where it found its target audience and took off quickly. Soon, strangers were recognizing her videos, celebrities were interacting with her posts and follower counts climbed into the tens of thousands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little surprised,\u201d Eccles said. \u201cAnd then I thought, like, maybe that was just a fluke.\u201d <\/p>\n
She recalled realizing the account had taken off only after her brother-in-law pointed out she was approaching 10,000 followers in a text, a moment she described as surreal.<\/p>\n
Though the account has since grown far beyond what she ever expected, Eccles said the stories she tells online are still deeply rooted in the neighborhoods and history that shaped her own upbringing.<\/p>\n
After immigrating to New York from Ireland in 1985, Eccles\u2019 parents first settled in Pelham Bay before eventually moving to City Island, where Eccles was born and raised for several years. Her mother, she said, had fallen in love with the neighborhood\u2019s maritime character \u2014 the narrow streets, modest cottages and traces of the shipbuilding and oyster industries that once shaped the island.<\/p>\n
As a child, Eccles spent several years living in Ireland before returning to New York and settling in Riverdale. Growing up between Ireland and neighborhoods like Riverdale and City Island, she said, sharpened her awareness of how differently people understood the Bronx from the inside versus the outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would come to visit you, and you drive them home, and they\u2019d be like, \u2018Wait, I thought you lived in the Bronx,\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cLike, this is the Bronx. There\u2019s so much to see here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Places like Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Park also shaped how she understood the borough itself, as both urban and deeply connected to nature and history.<\/p>\n
History, she said, was always present in her upbringing. Her father regularly sought out museums devoted to lesser-told histories, especially Indigenous history, whenever the family traveled. By the time she reached school, history had already become her favorite subject.<\/p>\n
At Fordham University, where her father worked as an electrician and she attended through a tuition benefit, Eccles began connecting the history she studied to the landscape around her and delved into discussions about political history and landmark buildings throughout New York City. Eventually, that fascination led her to graduate studies in historic preservation at the Pratt Institute.<\/p>\n
But unlike many online architecture personalities, Eccles is often less interested in celebrated architects than in the people who physically built the city. Her thesis, for example, focused on the laborers behind New York\u2019s iconic buildings. The stoneworkers, artisans and tradespeople whose names rarely appear in guidebooks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always found labor history to be something that was kind of glossed over,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople will tell you who the architect was and who designed the building, and they skip over any of the labor that went into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That perspective now shapes many of her most popular posts. <\/p>\n
In one video, she explored the history of the Amalgamated Houses cooperative housing complex near Van Cortlandt Park, originally created by Jewish garment workers through union organizing and collective funding. In another, she examined the lives of Irish domestic workers connected to the historic Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum.<\/p>\n
Eccles said Sarah Jessica Parker has liked several of her posts, something she described jokingly as \u201cthe ultimate seal of New York City approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the audience she cares most about remains local.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bronx isn\u2019t the forgotten borough,\u201d Eccles said. \u201cIt\u2019s the dismissed borough. Everybody\u2019s very aware of it, but they have their own idea of what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tSarah Eccles,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx history,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t historic preservation,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Riverdale,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t City Island,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Kingsbridge,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx architecture,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Instagram creator,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx neighborhoods,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t preservation advocate,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Bronx culture\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Michelle Mullen A historic preservationist by trade, Sarah Eccles is the kind of person who notices buildings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,97085,87874,40253,84783,183,8315,97086,12119,9,24,63,97087,1778,77067,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-248510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-bronx-architecture","tag-bronx-culture","tag-bronx-history","tag-bronx-neighborhoods","tag-city-island","tag-historic-preservation","tag-instagram-creator","tag-kingsbridge","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-preservation-advocate","tag-riverdale","tag-sarah-eccles","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}