Category: Harlemscape
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Cantilever
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but in the last decade, the number of cantilever buildings (exploiting air rights, mostly) seems to have exploded. This proposed building (for lower Manhattan) is particularly dramatic: But uptown is not without cantilever buildings, even if the extra engineering costs rarely justify the design. Perhaps the best known…
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All Saints
The large former Catholic Church of All Saints at the corner of East 129th Street and Madison Avenue is currently under massive renovation – all in preparation for serving as a school in 2023. This scene, from the film Cotton Comes to Harlem, shows the church and the block in 1969 Note the relatively treeless…
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Vote Today!
Make sure to head to the polls today to vote for Governor and State Assembly (among others). Church > Synagogue > Shake Shack On the north-west corner of 5th and 125th Street, the lot occupied by Shake Shack and the check cashing business was, at one point the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church of Harlem. In…
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Morningside Park View
Ebay has a great postcard (sent with a 1 cent stamp to Newark, NJ) that looks down from Morningside Park to… Focusing on a very distinctive complex that takes up an entire block with white massed stonework on the lower two floors, and brickwork above: It’s possible to identify this building as being between 118th…
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City Council Districts to be Redrawn
Here’s How to Have Your Say in the Process: Here are all the slides from the HNBA power point presentation on redistricting of City Council seats. Here is the Redistricting Commission website – The website will have the most up to date information on the process, as it unfolds. The Staff memorandum has a good overview of why they chose…
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Metropolitan Hospital’s Flood Wall Resiliency Project
On May 25, 2022, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), NYC Health + Hospitals, New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Jackie Bray, and community members broke ground for a new flood protection system project at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan in East Harlem. The project includes a perimeter flood…
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Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in 21st Century America
Residential segregation manages to color just about every facet of US life. It fuels the country’s sprawling suburban development and the massive carbon footprint that lifestyle demands. It underpins struggling public schools and the increasingly toxic politics around them. It turns would-be neighbors into feared strangers by politicians like Kristin Jordan who oppose the vision of…
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Poop and Harlem’s Hidden COVID Numbers
In September 2020, New York began to sample and test wastewater at New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) wastewater plants for COVID-19. If you recall an earlier post on wastewater and New York – https://hnba.nyc/where-does-my-sewage-go/ – you may remember that virtually all of Harlem’s wastewater (basically anything that goes down your drain or…
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Memorial Day
As always, this weekend we remember the men and women of Harlem who served in the armed forces. As many of us know, many Harlem service members had (and have) to fight discrimination within their ranks and their country, in addition to fighting the enemies of the United States. The 369th, or Harlem Hellfighters, who…
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Graham Court 1904
At the meeting of Seventh Avenue Drive, St. Nicholas Ave. and 116th St., the largest and most complete apartment house in New York A few vacant apartments, ranging from $1,020 to $2,000 a year, will be for rent from October 1st. The completion of the underground R. R. with a station one block from this…
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His Harlem Wife
eBay has a very rare piece of ephemera, a theater card for the film “His Harlem Wife” (1944), which was a rerelease of the 1938 film, titled “Life Goes On”: The publicity material shows a highly stylized art deco set: Note how the repetitive banding (typical of Art Deco) is placed on columns, shelving, light…
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Invest in Shares (of a Harlem Building)
The Wells Fargo building that sits on Lenox across from Whole Foods sits, of course, on hallowed ground – the site of Lenox Lounge. The latest iteration of real estate news focused on that site involves a unique investment strategy. The building has been taken public as an entity on the stock market, and shares…
