Lair and Sanctuary in the South Bronx

The house, at 422 East 136th Street, has been in Ms. Zakaluk’s family for 90 years. And simply by stepping out her front door, she can retrace the geography of her childhood.

The house next door at No. 420, which she bought at a discount from her parents and rents to a revolving group of young tenants, was where she was born and raised.

“Here’s where my crib was,” Ms. Zakaluk said, pointing to a corner of the first-floor dining room. “And here’s where there used to be the round oak table where I did my homework.”

The garden-level kitchen evokes similar recollections. “When I bend down to collect the recyclables,” she said, “I remember, almost without thinking about it, the kittens who used to live under the staircase. It feels like walking back in time.”

Across the street stood the apartment house where Ms. Zakaluk’s paternal grandfather, Michael Zakaluk, a grocer from Ukraine, lived with his wife, Anastasia. The house where Ms. Zakaluk lives with her husband, John Knoerr, was bought in 1921 for $7,800 by her maternal grandfather, Karel Boekhoff, an upholsterer from Holland. When he and his wife, Harriet, moved in, their daughter, Clara, who would grow up to become Carol’s mother, was 3.

The story of 422 East 136th Street, which spans four generations and involves a sprawling cast of characters, is undeniably complicated. But the story is also immensely rich, encompassing both architectural distinction and the experiences of a large and close-knit family riding out the turmoil that convulsed this part of the Bronx.

At the heart of the story stands the four-story single-family house that Mr. Boekhoff bought so many decades ago, one of 10 Queen Anne-style structures whose facades were decorated with stained glass and ornamental wrought iron. The strip is one of the most impressive in the borough, and the variety of rooftops — rounded, square, peaked, stepped — makes it look as if the architect were showing off.

By 1984, Ms. Zakaluk was living on the top floor with Mr. Knoerr and her daughter, Ann, and she officially acquired the house after the death of her grandmother the following year.

Today the exterior looks much as it must have a century earlier, when this part of the Bronx was a destination for middle-class families. Irises are coming up in the back garden, just as they did in Grandma Boekhoff’s day. And despite the presence of two busy professionals — Mr. Knoerr, 59, is a sound engineer and Ms. Zakaluk, 55, has had various jobs in the arts, including book designer and sculptor’s assistant — the interior hasn’t changed much either.

“If it’s not broken, don’t throw it away — that was our family’s mantra,” Ms. Zakaluk said. “We were recyclers before they had the word.” Only three items of furniture — a bookcase and desk from Staples and a table from Conran — are not from family members or indigenous to the house.

Even the kitchen, the only room that has seen any renovation, is as vintage as they come. “In 2008 I finally sold the old Vulcan gas stove, which dated from 1921, and the old G.E. refrigerator that my grandparents had used and was at least 50 years old,” Ms. Zakaluk said. But the original sink is still in place, along with the old cabinets and countertops.

“And the dining room looks exactly the way it did when my grandparents lived here,” Ms. Zakaluk said. Dark paper that resembles walnut paneling covers the walls, which are edged with Dutch shelves. An 1891 chandelier that was original to the house, a red and yellow creation with black and gold fringe, hangs from the ceiling.

The elaborately carved oak staircase, a gingerbread-like concoction of spindles and newel posts supporting a banister worn smooth by generations of hands, is also original to the house. An ancient black trunk in the front room holds 150 letters that Ms. Zakaluk’s parents wrote to each other during the Second World War. An ice chest that traveled to innumerable family picnics is stuffed with high-quality children’s records with fetching names like “Peter, Please, It’s Pancakes” to which Ms. Zakaluk sang along as a little girl. “That was the principal thing I did as a child,” she said. “Listen to records, read books and play with the family kittens.”

Starting in the ’60s, the world defined by these talismans would come under siege. “First there was heroin, then crack,” Ms. Zakaluk recalled. “People were literally passed out on the streets. The violence was really in your face — you’d hear gunshots all the time.”

Masking tape still covers the hole in the blue, pink and yellow stained glass window left over from the night a drunken neighbor sent a bullet flying into the front room. All but one of the skylights were closed up when addicts took to racing across the roof.

“To stay or to go,” Ms. Zakaluk said, “that was the recurrent conversation around the dining room table. But my parents had responsibility for their parents. If my parents left, they would have had to move three families.”

And an additional factor was at work. “Our sense of our house has always been as lair and sanctuary,” Ms. Zakaluk said. Only once was that sense of safety violated, when intruders broke in, but they left quickly and no one was harmed.

The years have seen many changes. Ann, 29, lives in San Francisco. Mott Haven has been become significantly calmer and safer, though Ms. Zakaluk will never forget the tumult of earlier years. Her mother died in 2007 at age 90, and her father last March at 91. Yet they and their world are rarely far from her thoughts.

“I talk to my parents periodically,” Ms. Zakaluk said. “They’re my ghosts, and I’m happy to have them. And I’m very grateful to my grandparents for finding and keeping this place for so long.”