Parkchester is a planned community and neighborhood originally developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and located in the central Bronx, New York City. The immediate surrounding area also takes its name from the complex. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise, are East Tremont Avenue to the north, Castle Hill Avenue to the east, Westchester Avenue to the south, East 177th Street/Cross Bronx Expressway to the southwest, and the Bronx River Parkway to the west. Metropolitan Avenue, Unionport Road, and White Plains Road are the primary thoroughfares through Parkchester. The neighborhood is part of Bronx Community District 9 and is mostly located within ZIP Code 10462, with small sections in 10460 and 10461. The of the New York City Subway operate along Westchester Avenue. The neighborhood is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 43rd Precinct. The privately owned housing complex is patrolled by the Parkchester Department of Public Safety. History The housing development has the same origins as Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, and Riverton Houses in Manhattan, which were also originally developed and owned by MetLife. The name was later unofficially applied to the entire neighborhood surrounding the apartment complex. The name "Parkchester" itself was derived from the two neighborhoods on each side of the site of the housing development — Park Versailles and Westchester Heights. MetLife displayed an intricate scale model of the proposed development at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The model showed all of the buildings and facilities, and was accurate down to inclusion of each of the 66,000 windows in the complex. The 51 groups of buildings were planned to house 12,000 families. The Parkchester residential development was originally designed and operated as a self-contained rental community for middle-class white families new to home ownership. MetLife chairman Frederick H. Ecker said that black renters were excluded because "Negroes and whites don't mix." It was built from 1939 to 1942 (despite emergency building restrictions during World War II) on the farmland of the New York Catholic Protectory, a home for orphaned and troubled boys conducted by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, which relocated to Lincolndale (and still exists in) Westchester County. Macy's opened their first branch store after their 34th Street flagship store in Parkchester in 1941. In 1974, approximately one-third of the complex was converted to condominiums, with the remaining portion, now Parkchester South Condominium converted later, in 1986.