Welcome to Harlem’s Newsletter
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125th Street BID and Columbia University to Look at a Digital Rethink of West 125th Street
125th Street BID’s Partnership with Columbia UniversityWins $26M NSF Grant to Develop Center for Smart Streetscapes New York, NY—August 10, 2022—The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it is awarding a $26 million, five-year grant to a team led by Columbia Engineering, together with Florida Atlantic University, Rutgers University, University of Central Florida, and Lehman College, for a new Gen-4 NSF…
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View of Harlem from City College
Here are a pair of views of Harlem (looking eastward) from St. Nicholas Park (City College): The photographer is Robert L. Bracklow and the images were taken on August 14, 1909 – 113 years ago today. Note the gardening that is going on in St. Nicholas Park: And the laundry out drying: To see the…
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Bathrooms
As we all know, New York is a terrible place when it comes to finding a public bathroom that you’d actually want to use. This ‘situation’, coupled with the decriminalization of public urination – spearheaded by East Harlem’s Melissa Mark-Viverito – https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-will-soon-be-filled-with-public-pee-ers-according-to-ny-post – has led to a noticeable increase in people (admittedly, almost always men)…
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The Slowest Bus in NYC
Every year The Straphangers Campaign ranks and rates the slowest and most unreliable bus routes in NYC. This year’s “winner” of the dreaded “Pokey” award — given to the slowest ride in the city — was Harlem’s M102 bus. The M102 “beat” the next slowest lines (Bx19, B35, Q32, and the S38) by achieving a…
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Harlem Debutant Ball
The amazing site – BLACK ARCHIVES – has recently published an amazing series of photographs from the ‘Harlem Debutantes’ series by Cornell Capa (1950) via the LIFE Photo Collection: Debutantes Ball Series The images of Black joy emerging from the stiff formality of the event, are fantastic. Patch on Ebay An FDNY/EMS patch for sale…
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119th And Lexington
There is a wonderful view of Lexington Avenue looking north from 119th Street on sale on Ebay: Click HERE to see the listing. The 8″ x 10″ glass negative has a huge amount of detail. Just look at the top image of how the sign for 119th Street wraps around the streetlight so the street…
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KISS
It’s not often you link Harlem and 1970’s heavy metal, but a weird factoid popped up on of those LinkNYC screens the other day that noted that Gene Simmons taught (for six months) grade 6 in East Harlem before his band – KISS – took off in 1973. From Our Georgia Correspondent On a (very)…
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City Surplus
A while back the sale of a “Redbird” (a 1950’s model subway car that was replaced by stainless steel-covered ones in 1963) generated some notice of a little-known site that sells NYC Government Surplus. The site – Public Surplus – deals with offloading stuff that NYC Government no longer wants – maybe they bought too…
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Jamel Shabazz Photography
Make sure to get up to the Bronx Museum to see the fantastic photography show of Jamel Shabazz’s work (1980-2020). https://www.bronxmuseum.org/exhibitions/jamel-shabazz-eyes-on-the-street Jamel Shabazz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of fifteen, he picked up his first camera and started to document his peers. Inspired by photographers Leonard Freed, James Van…
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Family Activities on West 120th Street, Today
All Saints > Capital Prep Last winter I snapped a picture of the Gothic script that made the 130th Street entrance to the former All Saints Elementary School #52 so charming. The gilt letters, hidden behind a protective mesh still glowed. This week I noticed that Capital Prep – the charter school that will occupy…
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CUNY’s East Harlem Restaurant Guide
CUNY has come up with a somewhat pedantic restaurant guide for East Harlem. They’ve covered most of the bases, but oddly have some restaurants that haven’t been open for 2 years now and others are located firmly in Central Harlem. It seems surprising that they didn’t check whether or not the restaurants were still in…
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Harlem Flats (Back Lot Laundry)
In 2011 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens (outside LA) acquired the “Harlem Flats (Back Lot Laundry),” an important early painting made in 1907 by Ernest Lawson, one of a group of Ashcan school artists called The Eight. “Harlem Flats” was purchased for The Huntington by Kelvin Davis. Notice that the boys are…
