During the Cold War, the Bronx was filled with fallout shelters marked by the iconic yellow-and-black signs that still survive on some schools, churches, and apartment buildings, especially near the Grand Concourse and Riverdale.

Built in the 1960s under President Kennedy’s civil defense program, these basements and reinforced rooms were stocked with barrels of water, crackers, first-aid kits, radiation monitors, and even sedatives, meant to keep residents alive during a nuclear attack. One striking example was in the Cornellian apartment building in Riverdale, where a corridor with 20-inch concrete walls stored untouched supplies for decades, frozen in time.

By the late 1970s, the shelters lost relevance, many were repurposed as storage or laundry rooms, and the supplies were discarded, but the signs remained as eerie reminders. Today, although no longer functional, the fading placards across the Bronx stand as haunting relics of Cold War fear and the city’s attempt to prepare for the unthinkable.