Category: History
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Harlem Laundry – 1765
One of the oldest views of Harlem (looking at Harlem from the South Bronx, near the site of today’s 3rd Avenue Bridge, is found in the collection of George III – now housed by The British Museum. The view makes Harlem look like a quiet, sleepy hamlet. Note the church with pointed steeple on the…
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Pneumatic Mail
Untappped New York has a fascinating story about how mail was once sent around New York (mostly Manhattan and Brooklyn) via pneumatic tubes. In 1897, New York City’s postal service began building a pneumatic system to transport mail between its 23 post offices. Forget email: This 27-mile-long pneumatic tube network was NYC’s first information superhighway.…
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International Women’s Day Petition
Get Ready! International Women’s Day (March 8) will be here before we know it! What better way to celebrate and honor the women in your life than to make International Women’s Day a New York State holiday! The Red Carpet for Justice Coalition needs your help in the campaign to get the New York State Legislature to adopt…
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Harlem Eldorado
The classic Central Park West, art deco, dual tower apartment building known as The Eldorado (between West 90th and 91st Streets), has an interesting link to Harlem. The Eldorado’s current tenants include many names that you likely recognize: Alec Baldwin, Faye Dunaway, Moby, Garrison Keillor, Tuesday Weld, Bruce Willis, Ron Howard, Bono, Carrie Fisher and Michael J. Fox. What you may not know is that…
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1940 – Harlem Educator, Activist, and Writer, Willis Nathaniel Huggins
Harlem World has an interesting story about the first black recipient of a PhD from Fordham University. Willis Nathaniel Huggins was a Harlem activist, an educator, and an author. The disturbing end to his life, in 1940, brought an end to his trailblazing life. Domestic and Gender-Based Violence On Tuesday, HNBA had a great presentation…
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Harlem Hospital
While we are all familiar with the Harlem Hospital’s location at Malcolm X Blvd. and 135th. Street, the original Harlem Hospital was located at 120th Street and the East River in 1887 – currently the location of Public School 202. Initially, the hospital served as a holding area for patients to be transferred to Randalls and Wards Islands and Bellevue…
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Malcolm X
The story of Malcolm X is, of course, profoundly intertwined with that of Harlem. As a leading figure in Harlem’s radical scene it may seem incongruous that he was appointed to the 28th Precinct’s Community Council to serve as a community liaison. The chairman of the 28th Precinct’s Community Council was James Hicks the influential…
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Odyssey House – Coming to East 126
Odyssey House is building (first knocking down) 52-54 East 126th Street and reimaginging it as a ~20 single unit supportive housing facility. Graduates of Odyssey House programming will live on East 126th Street who have progressed beyond transitional housing. This new building will act more like a normal rental where tenants have individual and renewable leases. Odyssey…
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Black History Month And Two Pandemics
200 years ago, the population of New York was 123,706. 10,086 of those New Yorkers were a mixture of free or enslaved Black New Yorkers or just over 8% of the city’s population. (New York City was, 200 years ago, home to the 4th largest Black population in the United States. Only Baltimore, Charleston, and…
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Do You Remember the 80’s?
The financial crisis of the 1970s, the ongoing effects of redlining, and the systemic racism in city agencies that prioritized some communities over others, led to an incredible deterioration in Harlem’s infrastructure. The ‘before/after’ images below are powerful reminders of the era: And now: Mask Up! Spotted on Astor Row, a masked gargoyle.
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Negro Church Seeks Madison Avenue Home
Exactly 100 years ago today, this article came out in the New York Times: The “alarm in neighborhood” and “real estate men fear”, of course, is code for white residents. Later in the article, the process of what will later be termed ‘white flight’ is described as contributing to the decline in the white church’s…
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Metropolitan Church 2.0
The Metropolitan Church (126/Madison) and the parish house were knocked down last year. The church sold part of its parcel of lots to a developer (the larger parcel along East 126th Street and facing Madison Avenue at the corner) but retained 3 lots midblock along Madison (where there had been a vacant lot, and the…
