Grand Concourse/Habitats - His Style? Autobiographical - NYTimes.com THE moment you enter José Stevenson's apartment on the Grand Concourse, you see an image you don't expect to find in this corner of the Bronx. In a moody painting that hangs in the foyer, a herd of hulking golden buffalo chomp happily on a seemingly endless plain. The work by Robert Lindneux, well known for his depictions of Native Americans and their fading world, speaks eloquently to Mr. Stevenson's roots in the Cherokee Nation. On his father's side these roots extend back at least six generations, to George Lowrey Jr., who was known as Rising Fawn and was an assistant chief of the Cherokee Nation. A copy of "A Cherokee Prayer," thanking the four points of the compass for the gifts they bestow, holds pride of place in the bedroom. It was written by José"s father, Gelvin Stevenson. The prayer and the buffalo evoke a distant place. Yet Mr. Stevenson, who is 34 and works as a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is a child of the Bronx through and through. It's no surprise that he ended up on the borough's most celebrated street, a strip lined with glossy Art Deco apartment houses that was a destination for generations of upwardly mobile New Yorkers. His mother, Clara Rodríguez, who is Puerto Rican, was born in the Bronx, and his parents lived in the borough for four decades. "Marry me and marry the Bronx," she told his father before their wedding. José and his sister spent their childhood in East Tremont, at a time the neighborhood was so rough that he remembers using crack vials he found in an alley to make eyes for a snowman. College took Mr. Stevenson to Wesleyan, in Middletown, Conn., and then to the University of Michigan, from which he received a master's degree in public policy. Upon returning to New York, he rented a one-bedroom apartment in East Harlem, and felt a deep connection with the neighborhood's pulsing Latino culture, especially La Marqueta, the local marketplace, and the sound of salsa in the streets. But after seven years of wanting to buy and finding prices beyond his reach, he turned his sights west, specifically to Executive Towers at 165th Street in the West Bronx. "I really ended up in this particular building because of the Wesleyan connection," Mr. Stevenson said. A good friend from college was a broker who had moved to Executive Towers nearly a decade earlier, and in part thanks to his affection for the 24-story white brick building, a dozen Wesleyan grads followed suit. Attractions included spacious, relatively affordable apartments - Mr. Stevenson, who bought his in 2010 for $260,000, has nine closets and a dining room - and the easy commute to Manhattan. "People think we're on the other side of the world," Mr. Stevenson said. But it's just three stops to Manhattan, just 20 minutes to my office near Rockefeller Center. Though not exactly a diehard Yankee fan, he savors a 19th-floor view that includes the stadium, stretching as it does from Midtown to Westchester County. When Mr. Stevenson arrived, he was greeted by an assortment of Victoriana left by the previous residents that included a crystal chandelier and an elaborately carved wooden couch and matching desk. For a while, the couch and the desk were all he had in the way of furniture, and he slept on an air mattress. Busy with his job and with running the TriLatino Triathlon Club, a charitable organization that he and five friends founded in 2009, he didn't see getting the apartment in shape as a priority. Only last November did he finish his major project, laying gleaming red bamboo atop concrete tiles that had been hidden by threadbare carpet. He originally had his eye on Patagonian rosewood but didn't want to take the chance that it had been harvested illegally. Because of some unfortunate measurements, Mr. Stevenson ended up with 200 extra square feet of bamboo that set him back $700, no small sum for a person decorating on a budget. But he is enormously pleased with the results. The wood reminds him of the bamboo that surrounds the house his parents own in Puerto Rico, a regular destination for family vacations. He transformed the second bedroom into a gym, complete with a multipurpose Bowflex machine. But except for the bed and a new sofa, most items are family heirlooms or hand-me-downs. Mr. Stevenson's father grew up in Tarkio, Mo., and when his mother died in 2007, she left a huge house full of treasures to be divided among her survivors. Along with the Lindneux painting, inheritances include a fainting couch upholstered in ivory and chocolate brocade, her Bible, and a wall-mounted telephone, a 35-pound contraption complete with speaking tube. From his mother's family in Puerto Rico come a pair of steel swords topped with ivory handles carved with the heads of birds. The swords were a prized possession of his grandfather Angelo Rodríguez, a 33rd Degree Freemason. A framed certificate identifies Mr. Rodríguez as a lifetime member of the Masonic Lodge. Photos along a hallway trace more recent family journeys. Images of Mr. Stevenson's parents when they were young - his father in a crew cut, his mother in her high-school-graduation mortarboard - share space with images of Mr. Stevenson shaking hands with Bill Clinton, a souvenir of a post-college stint working in the White House. Slowly, the apartment is coming together. With help from his father, Mr. Stevenson reconfigured the closets in the bedroom. Neon-bright AstroTurf carpets the balcony. The dining room glows with cheerful orange walls. The teddy bear he grew up with sits atop his bed. Then came the Super Bowl. "This past February, when the Giants made it into the Super Bowl, I decided I wanted to throw a great Super Bowl party," he said. Which meant that I had to get my home theater experience up to par. Having no TV, he turned to Craigslist to buy a 46-inch Samsung that can pick up signals via an antenna mounted on the wall. He also bought a 100-inch drop-down screen that he hung from the ceiling, on which the game could be shown via a projector. "The images would skip sometimes, and I was very nervous," Mr. Stevenson said. I had 30 people watching the biggest game of the year. But fortunately the two images never skipped at the same time. And I did all this without even having cable. As he pushes ahead with getting the place in shape, he is savoring life on the Bronx's most famous street. But even as the fortunes of the borough continue to improve, the young people who are served by the TriLatino Triathlon Club remind him of the journey ahead. "Most of the kids in our program come from low-income families," he said, "and many of them come to practice on an empty stomach. They help me see firsthand that for many people, the Bronx continues to be a tough place to live.