Residents & Business Owners of Sector Charlie! Join Neighborhood Coordination Officers Lau & Hackeling for their Build the Block on Mar. 16 at 5pm, @ 85 East 125 Street. Not sure this is your sector? Visit http://ow.ly/iUc250MZFC2 & type in your address to find out.
Set Out Times
Dear Fellow New Yorker,
As part of our commitment to keeping our streets clean, the NYC Department of Sanitation is implementing:
A new rule to reduce the time that trash, recycling, and curbside composting will sit on sidewalks. The new rule goes into effect April 1, 2023.
We invite you to join us for an upcoming Info Session to learn more about these exciting changes! Please register at the link below. If you are unable to attend, you can learn more at nyc.gov/SetoutTimes and nyc.gov/curbsidecomposting.
Three decades after legislation pushed for the return of Native American remains to Indigenous communities, many of the nation’s top museums and universities still have the remains of thousands of people in their collections.
ProPublica has a fascinating project to map any remains of indigenous first peoples. It’s amazing to see the numbers:
And the map of the issue:
The reason this is appearing here, in a blog on Harlem is that we too have indigenous first-peoples’ remains held here in Harlem:
Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology has acknowledged 14 Native American remains. All 14 come from North Dakota:
To see the full map, and learn more about the project, see:
60 years ago (admittedly in the summer) Robert Kennedy came to Harlem. He spoke at Columbia, visited a summer reading program for youth, and then walked with children in the reading program along West 125th street into the heart of Harlem.
Jet covered the visit and put this image on its cover:
Summer Plans? Broccoli
BROCCOLI CITY FESTIVAL IS BACK!!
JULY 15-16TH 2023 RFK STADIUM GROUNDS DC
BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT PRESALE TICKETS, LINE-UP & OTHER FESTIVAL UPDATES.
New York City’s 311 app wants to hear from you. Specifically, they want to hear about your experience using the 311 App and so are inviting you to participate in a survey
To tell them how you love/hate the 311 App, click the button below.
If you remember the McDonalds on 125th Street, under the 1 Train, and on the corner of Broadway, that site (600 West 125th Street) is the location of a large new sustainable and eco-friendly designed building that Columbia University is putting up.
The new building will include elements like a high-performance façade, vegetated roof space, storm water collection and retention, optimized equipment efficiency, and an enhanced Clean Construction program. Amenities include a 150-bicycle storage room, storage space, a fitness center, and lounges on the second and sixth floor with adjoining outdoor terraces. It will have commercial space, and 142 residences for Columbia graduate students and faculty.
And, maybe, just maybe, a McDonald’s franchise would return to occupy the tower’s ground-floor retail space.
Harlem Wellness Fest TODAY
IT’S A MOVE & STRETCH PARTY! Join us for Harlem Wellness Fest @harlemwellnessfest — where you can get to know Harlem’s homegrown fitness & wellness businesses, and map out your wellness routine for fall.
Harlem has seen enormous growth in our fitness and wellness scene over the course of the past decade. While we were hit hard by COVID-19, we’ve built a strong network of minority-owned and women-led small businesses — with amazing teachers and trainers who are expanding and energizing our community culture of fitness & self-care.
Save the date for TWO BIG TENTS with a lineup of FREE classes ranging from dance to yoga, boxing to strength training, and kettlebells to meditation. You can also explore the Humana Pavilion, where you’ll get to know each small business and sample wellness offerings including massage, acupuncture and plant-based nutrition.
REGISTER ON EVENTBRITE IN ADVANCE TO CLAIM YOUR FREE SWAG BAG! (While supplies last, and link in our profile.)
Participating businesses include: Harlem Cycle @harlemcycle Harlem Wellness Center @harlemwellnesscenter Harlem Yoga Studio @harlemyoga Harlem Kettlebell Club @harlemkettlebellclub Women’s World of Boxing @wwboxnyc Cliffs of Harlem @thecliffsharlem Harlem Pilates @harlempilates Benswic @benswic Hurricane Fitness @hurricanefitnessnyc Uplift Spa @upliftspa Harlem Chi Community Acupuncture @harlemchiacupuncture Spa Boutique & Wellness Lounge @spa_boutique_2go Art of Massage @artofmassage_nyc The Juicery Harlem @juiceryharlem Juice Max Eatery @juicemaxeatery
With thanks to Humana @humana, lululemon @lululemon, and our partners at Uptown Grand Central @uptowngrandcentral & TBo Harlem @tbo.harlem.
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 Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Smart Streetscapes(CS3).
“The most exciting thing about this project is the community involvement at the early-on stage, when we’re planning out what Harlem should have as it relates to technology,” said Barbara Askins, President and CEO, 125th Street Business Improvement District. “For the businesses, the arts and culture, the community organizations, the universities, the office tenants, you name it, this project brings all of that together in a way that will take us into the future through technology.” This win represents a giant step forward for 125th Street and the Harlem Community. We now have a great go to place to develop solutions for numerous monumental problems that we have been struggling with for decades in our streetscape.
CS3 develops hyper-local real-time, interactive, high-precision applications on the streetscape to improve the quality of life by advancing livable, safe, and healthy communities.
CS3 will explore new technological innovations determined by community engagement that reflect their needs within the initial context of these five applied themes: Mobility(Pedestrian, cyclists, vehicles and autonomous systems, trash collection) Ethical security in public spaces(Retail, urban planning-parks) Assistive technologies for people with disabilities(Street crossing, real time assistance wayfinding Future outdoor work(Emergency response, sidewalk logistics for deliveries, impacts of construction) Hyper-local environmental monitoring(Street flooding, infection modeling, drones)
Landmark East Harlem is Awarded $12,000 for an East Harlem Historic Survey
Landmark East Harlem has been awarded a $12K grant from the Preservation League of New York State – their fiscal sponsor and coalition member, Ascendant Neighborhood Development, received the grant to fund a reconnaissance level survey of historic resources in the northern portion of East Harlem.
This project will complete their comprehensive historic/cultural resources surveying for all of East Harlem.
East-Central Harlem survey area (Purple); East Harlem Historic District (Teal); East Harlem South/El Barrio survey area (red)The final EH historic survey (blue) will complete LEH’s reconnaissance for all East Harlem properties.
Patch.com is reporting that plans to revive Lincoln Jail (on 110th Street between 5th and Lenox) a women’s “trauma informed” jail has run into opposition from local and national activists.
Most prominent among them is, perhaps, Angela Davis, who has signed a letter opposing the creation of a Lincoln Jail for Women as have hundreds of others. You can see the signatories here:
Looking at the photo above it’s hard to imagine that this is Harlem – 123rd Street and Broadway – even if it was taken in 1895. The photo was taken by Robert Bracklow (1849-1919) and shows street car tracks (look in the bottom left) which means that this would be Broadway, vs. the street running up to the right in the photo that must be 123rd Street.
Note the lamp post – rather short, but a nice cast iron item. The trees, on the left-hand side help us orient as well. The shadows are on the left, thus north. Going to the left would take you further uptown, and going to the right on Broadway would take you towards Columbia University and beyond.
In a second photo taken at the same session, Bracklow shows us not only the rural looking wooden home and driveway, it also takes in some brownstone row houses on 125th street (at least the back of them):
Here you can more clearly see the street car/trolly tracks on Broadway, as well as the cobbles that surfaced this major thoroughfare.
The hill, behind the wooden home, is where Morningside Gardens now stands. Note, however, that there is an outhouse, seemingly at the top of the driveway, between the home and the hill, behind.
A couple of years ago HNBA learned that a developer was going to build a new residential building on Park Avenue between East 126 and East 127, on the west side. For over two years now the vacant lots have just sat there. In the summer of 2019, there was a flurry of activity to do test borings which seemed to portend that development was imminent.
Recently it appears that plans for any development have been scrapped and parts of the lots have now been paved over, and are being used for large truck storage/parking.
Anyone familiar with this property knows that it’s a convenient location for many of the M35 homeless people who hang out on East 126th street between Lex/Park to urinate, defecate, and use drugs with no prying eyes on the street (Jane Jacobs) so it’s a shame this potential site for more housing remains an underutilized parking lot.
Article in The Columbia Spectator
The issue of medical redlining, the oversaturation of addition programs in communities of color, and the evidence that Black and Hispanic New Yorkers are steered towards methadone at greater numbers than white New Yorkers, all came up in a recent article from The Columbia Spectator.
“The opioid addiction is a national crisis. It transcends class; it transcends race; it transcends gender; it transcends geography; and yet time and time again, the location of those facilities is not transcending those factors. The location is always in low-income communities of color,” Hill said.
Harlem Cycle @harlemcycle
Harlem Wellness Center @harlemwellnesscenter
Harlem Yoga Studio @harlemyoga
Harlem Kettlebell Club @harlemkettlebellclub
