Category: History
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Lincoln Houses To Be Built Soon After The War
In July 1945, as WWII was ending, The Crisis reported on a new development for the East Harlem Triangle – Lincoln Houses. To orient yourself in the (above) view, the detail below shows the Metro North bridge over the Harlem River. The view, therefore, is north-easterly. You can also note (below) that Lenox Terrace is…
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Photoville in St. Nicholas Park
Make sure to head over to St. Nicholas Park – St. Nicholas Ave. and 133rd Street – to see a fantastic display of very early photographs of Black Americans during and immediately after the Civil War. The display is hung on the basketball courts’ fencing, and faces St. Nicholas Avenue. All of the photographs are…
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60 Years Ago, Today
On June 13th, 1963, with Kennedy in the White House (just having dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis) Black and Latino construction workers picketed and protested at Harlem Hospital. Why? The new building (now 60 years old) was being built with labor that did not hire Black or Latino workers. New York CORE’s campaigned against…
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When Harlem Was Jewish
The website JewishUnpacked.com has a great article on the history or Jewish Harlem: “Harlem was a microcosm of an entire Jewish community,” Barry Judelman, a Jewish Harlem tour guide and urban historian, explained in an interview.“It was a unique combination of Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and German Jews — by the 1890s, these three groups of Jews were…
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Blumstein’s
90 years ago, Blumstein’s department store, at 230 West 125th Street was the department store on 125th Street. It was also a flashpoint in the civil rights movement, and one which Adam Clayton Powell Jr., managed to turn into a nationally recognized victory. In 1885 Louis Blumstein arrived in the United States from Germany. He…
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Eartha Kitt
Austin Hansen photographed Kitt leading a dance group at the Harlem YMCA in the early 1950’s. Eartha had been a professional dancer, dancing and touring with the Katherine Dunham Company between 1943 and 1948 before she became more widely known as a singer. Note the photo below, and the vents under the windows as the…
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Harlem Hellfighters
A selection of great images of the Harlem Hellfighters from WW1
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Inez Dickens Demands Fair Share for Harlem
The empty and imposing building on Central Park North that began its existence in 1914 as a branch of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association (YWHA) (and housed recently immigrated Jewish women in need of assistance), was sold in 1942 to the U.S. Army and briefly used as a rest-and-relaxation center for local soldiers. After the war it…
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(Un)Common Stock
This rather dull piece of Harlem ephemera – a 5 shares worth of stock in the Harlem Stock Exchange – doesn’t on it’s surface have much going for it. Almost the only thing of interest here is that of the $100,000 total amount of stock, a certain Julius D. Westmoreland owned 5 shares. And this…
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Lost Church – Part 2
A month or two ago I’d mentioned that The Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital, just east of Marcus Garvey Park (between 122nd and 121st Streets and Madison and Park Avenues) replaced a Harlem church (outlined in green below) The fuzzy photo (below) showed the rock rubble in Marcus Garvey park before the depression era work…
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Harlem Rose Garden Tree Tour
Join the New York Botanical Garden’s Levi on an extensive tour of the Harlem Rose Garden identifying trees, noting their diversity, and diving into a range of topics from ecology, plant diversity. Harlem’s Julia De Burgos At Lincoln Center East Harlem’s poet – Julia De Burgos – is currently being celebrated with massive murals and a quote…
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Bill Perkins
Harlem’s 125th Street BID remembers Bill Perkins Pictured l to r: Joyce Stephens (then NYPD 28TH Precinct Commanding Officer, Barbara Askins (BID) William Perkins (City Council) at a BID’ Fund Raiser — Sports and Fashion Gala . Councilmember Perkins was a voting member of the 125th Street BID Board of Directors. He kept the BID…
