Harlem

Harlem
For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation).
Harlem, New York
—  Neighborhoods of New York City  —
The Apollo Theater on 125th Street; the Hotel Theresa is visible in the background.
Country United States
State New York
County New York
Founded 1658
Named for Haarlem, Netherlands
Area[1]
 – Total 3.871 sq mi (10 km2)
Population (2008)[1]
 – Total 215,753
 – Density 55,735.7/sq mi (21,519.7/km2)
Economics[1]
 – Median income $28,111
ZIP codes 10026, 10027, 10029,
10030, 10031, 10035,
10037, 10039
Area code 212

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658,[2] it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem was annexed to New York City in 1873.

Harlem has been defined by a series of boom-and-bust cycles, with significant ethnic shifts accompanying each cycle. Black residents began to arrive en masse in 1904, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood was the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic and professional works without precedent in the American black community. However, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.

New York's revival in the late 20th century has led to renewal in Harlem as well. By 1995, Harlem was experiencing social and economic gentrification. Though the percentage of residents who are black peaked in 1950, the area remains predominantly black.

Contents

Location and boundaries

The boundaries of modern Harlem; some landmarks are noted.

Harlem stretches from the East River west to the Hudson River between 155th Street; where it meets Washington Heights—to a ragged border along the south. Central Harlem begins at 110th Street, at the northern boundary of Central Park; Spanish Harlem is in Eastern Harlem and extends south to 96th Street, while in the west the neighborhood begins north of Upper West Side, which gives an irregular border west of Morningside Avenue. Harlem's boundaries have changed over the years; as Ralph Ellison said, "Wherever Negroes live uptown is considered Harlem."[3]

The neighborhood contains a number of smaller, cohesive districts. The following are some examples:

The New York City Police Department patrols five precincts located within Harlem. The areas of West Harlem are served by the 30th Precinct,[5] the areas of Central Harlem are served by the 28th[6] and 32nd Precincts,[7] and the areas of East Harlem are served by the 23rd[8] and 25th Precincts.[9]

Harlem is represented by New York's 15th congressional district, the New York State Senate's 30th district, the New York State Assembly's 68th and 70th districts, and the New York City Council's 7th, 8th, and 9th districts.

History

1637–1865

Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the area that would become Harlem was inhabited by the Manhattans, a native tribe, who along with other Native Americans, most likely Lenape[10] occupied the area on a semi-nomadic basis. As many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands.[11] The first European settlement in the area was by Hendrick (Henry) de Forest, Isaac de Forest, his brother, and their sister Rachel de Forest, French – Dutch immigrants in 1637.[10] Early European settlers were forced to flee to New Amsterdam in lower Manhattan whenever hostilities with the natives heated up,[12] and the native population gradually decreased amidst conflict with the Dutch.[10] The settlement was named Nieuw Haarlem, after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660[13] under leadership of Peter Stuyvesant.[14] The Indian trail to Harlem's lush bottomland meadows was rebuilt by black laborers of the Dutch West India Company,[15] and eventually developed into the Boston Post Road. In 1664, the English took control of the New Netherland colony and tried to change the name of the community to "Lancaster," but the name never stuck,[16] and eventually settled down to the anglicized Harlem. The Dutch took control of the area again for one year in 1673.[17] The village grew very slowly until the mid 1700s, and it became a resort of sorts for the rich of New York City.[18] Only the Morris-Jumel Mansion survives from this period. Harlem played an important role in the American Revolution. The British had established their base of operations in lower Manhattan, and George Washington fortified the area around Harlem to oppose them. From Harlem, he could control the land routes to the north, as well as traffic on the Harlem River. The Provincial Congress met there, as did the convention drafting the constitution for New York State.[19] On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Harlem or Battle of Harlem Plain, was fought in western Harlem around the Hollow Way (now West 125th St.), with conflicts on Morningside Heights to the south and Harlem Heights to the north. The American troops were outnumbered, 5000 to 2000, and were ill-equipped compared to their opponents, but outflanked the British and forced them to retreat to the area around what is now West 106th Street. It was Washington's first American victory.[20] Later that year, the British would avenge this defeat by chasing Washington and his troops north, then turning back and burning Harlem to the ground.[21]

In 1765, Harlem was a small agricultural town not far from New York City.

Rebuilding took decades, and infrastructure was improved much more slowly than was happening in New York City proper.[22] The village remained largely rural through the early 19th century and, though the "grid system" of streets, designed downtown, was formally extended to Harlem in 1811, it does not seem that anybody expected it would mean much. The 1811 report that accompanied the establishment of the grid noted that it was "improbable that (for centuries to come) the grounds north of the Harlem Flat will be covered with houses."[23][24]

Though undeveloped, the area was not poor. Harlem was "a synonym for elegant living through a good part of the nineteenth century."[24] The village remained largely farmland estates, such as [Conrad] Van Keulen's Hook, orig. Otterspoor, bordered north of the Mill Creek (now 108th St., orig. Montagne Creek at 109th St.), which flowed into Harlem Lake, to the farm of Morris Randall, northwest on the Harlem River, and westward to the Peter Benson, or Mill Farm.[25] This former bowery [of land] was subdivided into twenty-two equal plots, of about 6 to 8 acres (32,000 m2) each, of which portions later owned by Abraham Storm, including thirty-one acres (east of Fifth Avenue between 110th & 125th St.) were sold by Storm's widow Catherine in 1795 to James Roosevelt (great grandfather of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1760–1847). This branch of the Roosevelt family subsequently moved to the town of Hyde Park, but several of Roosevelt's children remain interred in Harlem.[26]

As late as 1820, the community had dwindled to 91 families, one church, a school, and a library. Wealthy farmers, known as "patroons",[24] maintained these country estates largely on the heights overlooking the Hudson River. Service connecting the outlays of Harlem with the rest of the City of New York (on the southern tip of the island of Manhattan) was done via steamboat on the East River, an hour-and-a-half passage, sometimes interrupted when the river froze in winter, or else by stagecoach along the Boston Post Road, which descended from McGown's Pass (now in Central Park) and skirted the salt marshes around 110th Street, to pass through Harlem.

The New York and Harlem Railroad (now Metro North) was incorporated in 1831 to better link the city with Harlem and Westchester Co., starting at a depot at East 23rd Street, and extending 127 miles (204 km) north to a railroad junction in Columbia County at Chatham, New York by 1851. Charles Henry Hall, a wealthy lawyer and land speculator, recognized the changes that this railroad would make possible in Harlem and began a successful program of infrastructure development, building out streets, gas lines, sewer lines, and other facilities needed for urban life.[27] Piers were also built, enabling Harlem to become a center of industry serving New York City. The rapid development of infrastructure enabled some to become wealthy, and the area became important to politicians, many of whom lived in Harlem. New York mayors Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence and Daniel Tiemann both lived in Harlem in this period. For many in New York City, Harlem was at this time regarded as a sort of country retreat.[27][28] The village had a population of poorer residents as well, including blacks, who came north to work in factories or to take advantage of relatively low rents.

In the years between roughly 1850 to 1870, many large estates, including Hamilton Grange, the estate of Alexander Hamilton, were auctioned off as the fertile soil was depleted and crop yields fell. Some of the land became occupied by Irish squatters, whose presence further depressed property values.[24]

125th Street station on the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line.

1866-1920: Reconstruction & Renaissance

During the Civil War, Harlem saw draft riots, along with the rest of the city, but the neighborhood was a significant beneficiary of the economic boom that followed the end of the war, starting in 1868. The neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian.[28] Factories, homes, churches, and retail buildings were thrown up at great speed.[29] The Panic of 1873 caused Harlem property values to drop 80%,[29] and gave the City of New York the opportunity to annex the troubled community as far north as 155th Street.[30]

Recovery came soon, and row houses (as distinct from the previous generation's free-standing houses) were being constructed in large numbers by 1876. Development accelerated in part in anticipation of elevated railroads, which were extended to Harlem in 1880. With the construction of the "els," urbanized development occurred very rapidly. Developers anticipated that the planned Lexington Avenue subway would ease transportation to lower Manhattan. Fearing that new housing regulations would be enacted in 1901, they rushed to complete as many new buildings as possible before these came into force.[31] Early entrepreneurs had grandiose schemes for Harlem: Polo was played at the original Polo Grounds, later to become home of the New York Giants baseball team. Oscar Hammerstein I opened the Harlem Opera House on East 125th Street in 1889. By 1893, even row houses did not suffice to meet the growing population, and large scale apartment buildings were the norm.[32] In that year, Harlem Monthly Magazine wrote that "it is evident to the most superficial observer that the centre of fashion, wealth, culture, and intelligence, must, in the near future, be found in the ancient and honorable village of Harlem."

However, also in that year, the construction glut and a delay in the building of the subway led to a fall in real estate prices which attracted immigrant Eastern Europe Jews and Italians to Harlem in accelerating numbers. There had been a Jewish community of 12 in Harlem in 1869[33] which grew to a peak of almost 200,000 in about 1915.[34] Presaging their resistance to the arrival of blacks, existing landowners tried to stop Jews from moving into the neighborhood. At least one rental sign declared “Keine Juden und Keine Hunde” (No Jews and no dogs).[35] Italians began to arrive in Harlem only a few years after the Jews did. By 1900 there were three times as many Italians in Harlem as there were in Sicily[36], peaking at 150,000.[34] Both groups moved particularly into East Harlem.

The Jewish population of Harlem embraced the City College of New York, which moved to Harlem in 1907. In the years after the move, 90% of the school's students were Jewish[37], and many of the schools's most distinguished graduates date from this period. Both the Jewish and Italian Mafia emerged in East Harlem and soon expanded their operations to the entire neighborhood.[38] West 116th Street between Lenox and 8th Avenue became a vice district.[39] The neighborhood also became a major center for more conventional entertainment, with 125th Street as a particular center for musical theater, vaudeville, and moving pictures.[40]

The Jewish presence in Harlem was ephemeral, and by 1930 only 5,000 Jews remained. As they left, their apartments in East Harlem were increasing filled by Puerto Ricans, who were arriving in large numbers by 1913.[41] Italian Harlem lasted longer, and traces of the community lasted into the 1970s in the area around Pleasant Avenue.

Black population increase

These buildings on West 135 Street were among the first in Harlem to be occupied entirely by blacks; in 1921, #135 became home to Young's Book Exchange, the first "Afrocentric" bookstore in Harlem.[42]

Black people have been present in Harlem continually since the 1630s, and as the neighborhood modernized in the late 19th century, they could be found especially in the area around 125th Street and "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street. By 1900, tens of thousands lived in Harlem.[43] The mass migration of blacks into the area began in 1904, due to another real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of a black real estate entrepreneurs, including Phillip Payton, Jr. After the collapse of the 1890s, new speculation and construction started up again in 1903 and the resulting glut of housing led to a crash in values in 1904 and 1905 that eclipsed the late-19th century slowdown.[31] Landlords could not find white renters for their properties, so Philip Payton stepped in to bring blacks. His company, the Afro-American Realty Company, has been credited with the migration of blacks from their previous neighborhoods,[44] the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), Minetta Lane in Greenwich Village and Hell's Kitchen in the west 40s and 50s.[45][46] The move to northern Manhattan was driven in part by fears that anti-black riots such as those that had occurred in the Tenderloin in 1900[47] and in San Juan Hill in 1905[24] might recur. In addition, a number of tenements that had been occupied by blacks in the west 30s were destroyed at this time to make way for the construction of the original Penn Station.

In 1907, black churches began to move uptown. Several congregations built grand new church buildings, including St Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church on West 134th Street just west of Seventh Avenue (the wealthiest church in Harlem), the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street and St Mark's Methodist Church on Edgecombe Avenue. More often churches purchased buildings from white congregations of Christians and Jews whose members had left the neighborhood, including Metropolitan Baptist Church on West 128th and Seventh Avenue, St James Presbyterian Church on West 141st Street, and Mt Olivet Baptist Church on Lenox Avenue.[48] [42] Only the Catholic Church retained its churches in Harlem, with white priests presiding over parishes that retained significant numbers of whites until the 1930s. [49]

The early 20th-century Great Migration of blacks to northern industrial cities was fueled by their desire to leave behind the Jim Crow South, seek better jobs and education for their children, and escape a culture of lynching violence. During World War I, expanding industries recruited black laborers to fill new jobs, thinly staffed after the draft began to take young men.[44] So many blacks came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama."[50] Many settled in Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was 32.43% black. The 1930 census revealed that 70.18% of Central Harlem's residents were black and lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street.[51] The expansion was fueled primarily by an influx of blacks from the southern U.S. states, especially Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, who took trains up the East Coast. There were also numerous immigrants from the West Indies. As blacks moved in, white residents left; between 1920 and 1930, 118,792 white people left the neighborhood and 87,417 blacks arrived.

Between 1907 and 1915,[52] some white residents of Harlem resisted the neighborhood's change, especially once the swelling black population pressed west of Lenox Avenue, which served as an informal color line until the early 1920s.[44][53] Some made pacts not to sell to or rent to blacks.[54] Others tried to buy property and evict black tenants, but the Afro-American Realty Company retaliated by buying other property and evicting whites. They also attempted to convince banks to deny mortgages to black buyers, but soon gave up.[55]

In 1910, Central Harlem was about 10% black. By 1930, it had reached 70%.[56]

The 1920s: Harlem as a center of black life

125th Street between Park and Madison Avenue

Starting around the time of the end of World War I, Harlem became associated with the New Negro movement, and then the artistic outpouring known as the Harlem Renaissance, which extended to poetry, novels, theater, and the visual arts.

The growing population also supported a rich fabric of organizations and activities in the 1920s. Fraternal orders such as the Prince Hall Masons and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks set up lodges in Harlem, with elaborate buildings including auditoriums, and large bands. Parades of lodge members, decked out in uniforms and accompanied by band music, were a common sight on Harlem's streets, on public holidays, lodge anniversaries, church festivities and funerals.[57] The neighborhood's churches housed a range of groups, including athletic clubs, choirs and social clubs. A similar range of activities could be found at the YMCA on 135th Street and the YWCA on 137th Street. The social pages of Harlem's two African American newspapers, the New York Age and the New York Amsterdam News recorded the meetings, dinners and dances of hundreds of small clubs.[58] Soapbox speakers drew crowds on Seventh and Lenox Avenues until the 1960s, some offering political oratory, with Hubert Harrison the most famous, while others, particularly in the late 1920s, sold medicine.[59][60] Harlem also offered a wealth of sporting events: the Lincoln Giants played baseball at Olympic Field at 136th and Fifth Avenue until 1920, after which residents had to travel to the Catholic Protectory Oval in the Bronx; men's and women's basketball teams from local athletic clubs played in church gymnasiums, and, as they became more popular, at the Manhattan Casino on 155th Street, before giving way to professional teams, most famously the Rens, based at the Renaissance Ballroom on Seventh Avenue;[61] [62] and boxing bouts took place at the Commonwealth Casino on East 135th Street (run by white promoters the McMahon brothers). The biggest crowds, including many whites, came to see black athletes compete against whites.[63][64]

Marcus Garvey Park

It took years for business ownership to reflect the new reality. A survey in 1929 found that whites owned and operated 81.51% of the neighborhood's 10,319 businesses, with beauty parlors making up the largest number of black-owned businesses. [65][66] By the late 1960s, 60% of the businesses in Harlem responding to surveys reported ownership by blacks, and an overwhelming fraction of new businesses were black owned after that time.[67]

Marginalized in the legitimate economy, a small group of blacks found success outside the law, running gambling on numbers. Invented in 1920 or 1921, numbers had by 1924 exploded into a racket turning over tens of millions of dollars every year. That year the New York Age reported that there were at least thirty bankers (the name given to someone running a numbers game) in Harlem, with many employing between twelve and twenty people to collect bets, and Marcellino, the largest banker, employing over one hundred. By the late 1920s, Wallace Thurman guessed there were over a thousand collectors taking bets from 100,000 clients a day.[68] The most successful bankers, who could earn enormous sums of money, were known as Kings and Queens. The wealthiest numbers king of all was almost certainly the reputed inventor of the game, Casper Holstein. He owned a fleet of cars, apartment buildings in Harlem and a home on Long Island, but did not have the ostentatious style and life style of many other kings. He, and other bankers, gave money to charities and loans to aspiring businessmen and needy residents. Holstein's role in the community extended further than most of his colleagues, included membership in the Monarch Lodge of the Elks, support for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, philanthropy in his native Virgin Islands, and patronage of the Harlem Renaissance.[69][70]

Harlem adapted rapidly to the coming of Prohibition, and its theaters, nightclubs, and speakeasies became major entertainment destinations. Claude McKay would write that Harlem had become "an all white picnic ground," and in 1927 Rudolph Fisher published an article titled "The Caucasian Storms Harlem."[71] Langston Hughes described this period at length, including this passage from his 1940 autobiography,

White people began to come to Harlem in droves. For several years they packed the expensive Cotton Club on Lenox Avenue. But I was never there, because the Cotton Club was a Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites. They were not cordial to Negro patronage, unless you were a celebrity like Bojangles. So Harlem Negroes did not like the Cotton Club and never appreciated its Jim Crow policy in the very heart of their dark community. Nor did ordinary Negroes like the growing influx of whites toward Harlem after sundown, flooding the little cabarets and bars where formerly only colored people laughed and sang, and where now the strangers were given the best ringside tables to sit and stare at the Negro customers--like amusing animals in a zoo.
—Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

In response to the white influx, some blacks operated alternative venues in their homes. Called buffet flats, they offered alcohol, music, dancing, prostitutes, and, commonly, gambling, and, less often, rooms to which a couple could go. Their location in residential buildings, typically on cross streets above 140th Street, away from the nightclubs and speakeasies on the avenues, offered a degree of privacy from police, and from whites: you could only find a buffet flat if you knew the address and apartment number, which hosts did not advertise.[72]

Since the 1920s, this period of Harlem's history has been highly romanticized. With the increase in a poor population, it was also the time when the neighborhood began to deteriorate to a slum, and some of the storied traditions of the Harlem Renaissance were driven by poverty, crime, or other social ills. For example, in this period, Harlem became known for "rent parties", informal gatherings in which bootleg alcohol was served and music played. Neighbors paid to attend, and thus enabled the host to make his or her monthly rent. Though picturesque, these parties were thrown out of necessity. Further, over a quarter of black households in Harlem made their monthly rent by taking in lodgers, many of who were family members, but who sometimes brought bad habits or even crime that disrupted the lives of respectable families. Lodgers also experienced disruption, with many having to move frequently when households relocated, roommates quarreled or they could not pay rent.[73] Urban reformers campaigned to eliminate the "lodger evil" but the problem got worse before it got better; in 1940, still affected by the Depression, 40% of black families in Harlem were taking in lodgers.[74]

The high rents and poor maintenance of housing stock, which Harlem residents suffered through much of the 20th century, was not merely the product of racism by white landlords. By 1914, 40% of Harlem's private houses and 10% of its tenements were owned by blacks.[75] Wealthier blacks continued to purchase land in Harlem,[44] and by 1920, a significant portion of the neighborhood was owned by blacks.[31][76] By the late 1960s, 60% of the businesses in Harlem responding to surveys reported ownership by blacks, and an overwhelming fraction of new businesses were black owned after that time.[77]

In 1928, the first effort at housing reform was attempted in Harlem with the construction of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Houses, backed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. These were intended to give working people of modest means the opportunity to live in and, over time, purchase houses of their own. The Great Depression hit shortly after the buildings opened, and the experiment failed. They were followed in 1936 by the Harlem River Houses, a more modest experiment in housing projects.[31] And by 1964, nine giant public housing projects had been constructed in the neighborhood, housing over 41,000 people.[78]

Stately Harlem apartment buildings adjacent to Morningside Park.

1930-1995, "Ghettoization"

The neighborhood was hit hard by job losses in the Great Depression. In the early 1930s, 25% of Harlemites were out of work, and employment prospects for Harlemites stayed bad for decades. Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950.

The job losses of the Depression were exacerbated by the end of Prohibition in 1933[79] and by the Harlem Riot of 1935, which scared away the wealthier whites who had long supported Harlem's entertainment industry[14]. White audiences decreased almost totally after a second round of riots in 1943. Many Harlemites found work in the military or in the Brooklyn shipyards during World War II,[80] but the neighborhood declined rapidly once the war ended. Some middle-class blacks moved north or west to suburbs, a trend that increased after the 1960s Civil Rights Movement decreased discrimination in housing.

The neighborhood enjoyed few benefits from the massive public works projects in New York under Robert Moses in the 1930s, and as a result had fewer parks and public recreational sites than other New York neighborhoods. Of the 255 playgrounds Moses built in New York City, he placed only one in Harlem.[81]

Little investment in private homes or businesses took place in the neighborhood between 1911 and the 1990s. However, the unwillingness of landlords elsewhere in the city to rent to black tenants, together with a significant increase in the black population of New York, meant that rents in Harlem were for many years higher than rents elsewhere in the city, even as the housing stock decayed. In 1920, one-room apartments in central Harlem rented for $40 to whites or $100–$125 to blacks.[82] In the late 1920s, a typical white working-class family in New York paid $6.67 per month per room, while blacks in Harlem paid $9.50 for the same space.[83] The worse the accommodations and more desperate the renter, the higher the rents would be.[84]

This pattern persisted through the 1960s; in 1965, CERGE reported that a one-room apartment in Harlem rented for $50–$74, while comparable apartments rented for $30–$49 in white slums.[85] The high rents encouraged some property speculators to engage in block busting, a practice whereby they would acquire a single property on a block and sell or rent it to blacks with great publicity. Other landowners would panic, and the speculators would then buy additional houses relatively cheaply.[86] These houses could then be rented profitably to blacks.[87]

A dilapidated Harlem building, photographed on May 14, 2005. The building has since been demolished.

In the post-World War II era, Harlem ceased to be home to a majority of NYC's blacks,[88] but it remained the cultural and political capital of black New York, and possibly black America.[89][90] The character of the community changed in the years after the war, as middle-class blacks left for the outer boroughs (primarily the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn) and suburbs. The percentage of Harlem that was black peaked in 1950, at 98.2%.[91] Thereafter, Hispanics and, more recently, white residents have increased their share.

The high cost of space forced people to live in close quarters, and the population density of Harlem in these years was stunning—over 215,000 per square mile in the 1920s. By comparison, in 2000, Manhattan as a whole had a population density under 70,000 per square mile.[92] The same forces that allowed landlords to charge more for Harlem space also enabled them to maintain it less, and many of the residential buildings in Harlem fell into disrepair.

In 1937, the Harlem River Houses, America's first federally subsidized housing project, were opened. Other massive housing projects would follow, with tens of thousands of units constructed over the next twenty years.[93]

The 1960 census showed only 51% of housing in Harlem to be "sound," as opposed to 85% elsewhere in New York City.[78] In 1968, the New York City Buildings Department received 500 complaints daily of rats in Harlem buildings, falling plaster, lack of heat, and unsanitary plumbing.[24] Tenants were sometimes to blame; some would strip wiring and fixtures from their buildings to sell, throw garbage in hallways and airshafts, or otherwise damage the properties which they lived in or visited.[94]

Harlem has many townhouses, such as these in the Mount Morris Historic District.

As the building stock decayed, landlords converted many buildings into "single room occupancies", or SROs, essentially private homeless shelters. In many cases, the income from these buildings could not support the fines and city taxes charged to their owners, or the houses suffered damage that would have been expensive to fix, and the buildings were abandoned. In the 1970s, this process accelerated to the point that Harlem, for the first time since before WWI, had a lower population density than the rest of Manhattan. Between 1970 and 1980, for example, Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 110th Street and 125th Street in central Harlem lost 42% of its population and 23% of its remaining housing stock.[95] By 1987, 65% of the buildings in Harlem were owned by the City of New York,[96][97][98] and many had become empty shells, convenient centers for drug dealing and other illegal activity. The lack of habitable buildings and falling population reduced tax rolls and made the neighborhood even less attractive to residential and retail investment.

The doorframe of a brownstone designed by William Tuthill in the Mount Morris Historical District in Harlem.

Inadequate housing contributed to racial unrest and health problems. However, the lack of development also preserved buildings from the 1870–1910 building boom, and Harlem as a result has many of the finest original townhouses in New York. This includes work by many significant architects of the day, including McKim, Mead, and White; James Renwick; William Tuthill; Charles Buek; and Francis Kimball.

By some measures, the 1970s were the worst period in Harlem's history. Many of those Harlemites who were able to escape from poverty left the neighborhood in search of safer streets, better schools and homes. Those who remained were the poorest and least skilled, with the fewest opportunities for success. Though the federal government's Model Cities Program spent $100 million on job training, health care, education, public safety, sanitation, housing, and other projects over a ten-year period, Harlem showed no improvement.[99]

The deterioration shows up starkly in the statistics of the period. In 1968, Harlem's infant mortality rate had been 37 for each 1000 live births, as compared to 23.1 in the city as a whole. Over the next eight years, infant mortality for the city as whole improved to 19, while the rate in Harlem increased to 42.8, more than double. Statistics describing illness, drug addiction, housing quality, and education are similarly grim and typically show rapid deterioration in the 1970s. The wholesale abandonment of housing was so pronounced that between 1976 and 1978 alone, central Harlem lost almost a third of its total population, and east Harlem lost about 27%.[99] The neighborhood no longer had a functioning economy; stores were shuttered and by estimates published in 1971, 60% of the area's economic life depended on the cash flow from the illegal "Numbers game" alone.[100]

The worst part of Harlem was the "Bradhurst section" between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Edgecombe, from 139th Street through 155th. In 1991, this region was described in the New York Times as follows: "Since 1970, an exodus of residents has left behind the poor, the uneducated, the unemployed. Nearly two-thirds of the households have incomes below $10,000 a year. In a community with one of the highest crime rates in the city, garbage-strewn vacant lots and tumbledown tenements, many of them abandoned and sealed, contribute to the sense of danger and desolation that pervades much of the area."[101]

The city began auctioning its enormous portfolio of Harlem properties to the public in 1985. This was intended to improve the community by placing property in the hands of people who would live in them and maintain them. In many cases, the city would even pay to completely renovate a property before selling it (by lottery) below market value.[102] The program was soon beset by scandal—buyers were acquiring houses from the city, then making deals with churches or other charities in which they would inflate the appraised values of the properties and the church or charity would take out federally guaranteed 203(k) mortgage and buy it. The original buyer would realize a profit and the church or charity would default on the mortgage (presumably getting some kind of kickback from the developer).[103][104] Abandoned shells were left to further deteriorate, and about a third of the properties sold by the city were tenements which still had tenants, who were left in particularly miserable conditions. These properties, and new restrictions on Harlem mortgages, bedeviled the area's residential real estate market for years.

Recent history

After four decades of decline, Central Harlem's population bottomed out in the 1990 census, at 101,026. It had decreased by 57% from its peak of 237,468 in 1950. Between 1990 and 2006 the neighborhood's population grew by 16.9%, with the percentage of blacks decreasing from 87.6% to 69.3%, and the percentage of whites increasing from 1.5% to 6.6%.[51]

From 1987 through 1990, the city removed long-unused trolley tracks from 125th Street, laid new water mains and sewers, installed new sidewalks, curbs, traffic lights, street lights, and planted trees. Two years later, national chains opened branches on 125th Street for the first time – The Body Shop opened a store at 125th street and 5th Avenue (still extant as of 2010), and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream franchise employing formerly homeless people opened across the street.[105] The development of the region would leap forward a few years later with the 1994 introduction of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, which brought $300 million in development funds and $250 million in tax breaks.[106]

After years of false starts, Harlem began to see rapid gentrification in the late 1990s. This was driven by changing federal and city policies, including fierce crime-fighting and a concerted effort to develop the retail corridor on 125th Street. The number of housing units in Harlem increased 14% between 1990 and 2000[97], and the rate of increase has been much more rapid in recent years. Property values in Central Harlem increased nearly 300% during the 1990s, while the rest of New York City saw only a 12% increase.[97] Even empty shells of buildings in the neighborhood were, as of 2007, routinely selling for nearly $1,000,000 each.[107] Since completing his second term in the White House in 2001, former U.S. President Bill Clinton has maintained his office at 55 West 125th Street.[108]

In January 2010, The New York Times reported that in "Greater Harlem," which they defined as running from the East River to the Hudson River, from 96th Street to 155th Street, blacks ceased to be a majority of the population in 1998, with the change largely attributable to the rapid arrival of new white and Hispanic residents. The paper reported that the population of the area had grown more since 2000 than in any decade since the 1940s.[109]

Religious life

Church of Nazareth, 144th Street and Hamilton Terrace. The building is currently a burned-out shell.

Black Harlem has always been religious. The area is home to over 400 churches.[110] Major Christian denominations include Baptists, Methodists (generally African Methodist Episcopalian, or "AME"), Episcopalians, and Roman Catholic. The Abyssinian Baptist Church has been a particularly potent organization, long influential because of its large congregation, and recently wealthy as a result of its extensive real estate holdings.

Masjid Aqsa – West African mosque near 116th Street

There are mosques in Harlem, including the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque No. 7 (formerly Mosque No. 7 Nation of Islam), the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood and Masjid Aqsa. The LDS Church established a chapel at 128th Street in 2005. Many of the area's churches are "storefront churches", which operate out of an empty store, or a building's basement, or a converted brownstone townhouse. These congregations may have fewer than 30–50 members each, but there are hundreds of them.[111] Judaism, too, maintains a presence in Harlem, including The Old Broadway Synagogue, Temple Healing from Heaven, and Temple of Joy. A non-mainstream synagogue of black Jews known as Commandment Keepers, was based in a synagogue at 1 West 123rd Street until 2008. Especially in the years before World War II, Harlem produced popular Christian charismatic "cult" leaders, including George Wilson Becton and Father Divine.[112]

Culture

Though Harlem musicians and writers are particularly well remembered, the community has also hosted numerous actors and theater companies, including the New Heritage Repertory Theater,[14] National Black Theater, Lafayette Players, Harlem Suitcase Theater, The Negro Playwrights, American Negro Theater, and the Rose McClendon Players.[113]

The Apollo Theater opened on 125th Street on January 26, 1934, in a former burlesque house. The Savoy Ballroom, on Lenox Avenue, was a renowned venue for swing dancing, and was immortalized in a popular song of the era, "Stompin' At The Savoy". In the 1920s and 1930s, between Lenox and Seventh avenues in central Harlem, over 125 entertainment places operated, including speakeasies, cellars, lounges, cafes, taverns, supper clubs, rib joints, theaters, dance halls, and bars and grills.[114] Some jazz venues, including most famously the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington played, and Connie's Inn, were restricted to whites only. Others were integrated, including the Renaissance Ballroom and the Savoy Ballroom.

In 1936, Orson Welles produced his famous black Macbeth at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem.[115] Grand theaters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were torn down or converted to churches. Harlem lacked any permanent performance space until the creation of the Gatehouse Theater in an old pumping station on 135th Street in 2006.[116]

Since 1965, the community has been home to the Harlem Boys Choir, a famous touring choir and education program for young boys, most of whom are black. The Girls Choir of Harlem was founded in 1988.

Harlem is also home to the largest African American Day Parade which celebrates the culture of African diaspora in America. The parade was started up in the spring of 1969 with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. as the Grand Marshal of the first celebration.[117]

Arthur Mitchell, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, established Dance Theatre of Harlem as a school and company of classical ballet and theater training in the late 1960s. The company has toured nationally and internationally. Generations of theater artists have gotten a start at the school.

Manhattan's contribution to hip-hop stems largely from artists with Harlem roots such as Kurtis Blow, and P. Diddy. Harlem is also the birthplace of popular hip-hop dances such as the Harlem shake, toe wop, and Chicken Noodle Soup.

Socioeconomic trends

Poverty and health

The neighborhood suffers from unemployment rates higher than the New York average (generally more than twice as high),[118] and high mortality rates as well. In both cases, the numbers for men have been consistently worse than the numbers for women. Unemployment and poverty in the neighborhood resisted private and governmental initiatives to ameliorate them. In the 1960s, uneducated blacks could find jobs more easily than educated ones could, confounding efforts to improve the lives of people who lived in the neighborhood through education.[119] Infant mortality was 124 per thousand in 1928 (twice the rate for whites).[120] By 1940, infant mortality in Harlem was 5% (one black infant in 20 would die), still much higher than white, and the death rate from disease generally was twice that of the rest of New York. Tuberculosis was the main killer, and four times as prevalent among Harlem blacks than among New York's white population.[120]

A 1990 study reported that 15-year-old black women in Harlem had a 65% chance of surviving to age 65, about the same as women in India. Black men in Harlem, on the other hand, had a 37% chance of surviving to age 65, about the same as men in Angola.[121] Infectious diseases and diseases of the circulatory system were to blame, with a variety of contributing factors, including consumption of the deep-fried foods traditional to the South and neighborhood, which may contribute to heart disease.

The neighborhood remains a predominantly African-American area, with census data revealing about 72% of the population in 2005 to have been black. The number of white residents has increased from only 672 people in 1980, about 0.5% of the population, to some 5000 people, or 4.3% of the population, in 2005. As of September 2008, their number was estimated to have tripled from 2005 levels.[122][109]

Crime

Rather than compete with the established mobs, black gangsters concentrated on the "policy racket," also called the Numbers game, or bolita in Spanish Harlem. This was a gambling scheme similar to a lottery that could be played, illegally, from countless locations around Harlem. According to Francis Ianni, "By 1925 there were thirty black policy banks in Harlem, several of them large enough to collect bets in an area of twenty city blocks and across three or four avenues."[123]

By the early 1950s, the total money at play amounted to billions of dollars, and the police force had been thoroughly corrupted by bribes from numbers bosses.[124] These bosses became financial powerhouses, providing capital for loans for those who could not qualify for them from traditional financial institutions, and investing in legitimate businesses and real estate. One of the powerful early numbers bosses was a woman, Madame Stephanie St. Clair.

Shoes hanging from a lamppost in Harlem

The popularity of playing the numbers waned with the introduction of the state lottery, which has higher payouts and is legal. The practice continues on a smaller scale among those who prefer the numbers tradition or who prefer to trust their local numbers bank over the state.

1940 statistics show about 100 murders per year in Harlem, "but rape is very rare."[74] By 1950, essentially all of the whites had left Harlem and by 1960, much of the black middle class had departed. At the same time, control of organized crime shifted from Jewish and Italian syndicates to local black, Puerto Rican, and Cuban groups that were somewhat less formally organized.[123] At the time of the 1964 riots, the drug addiction rate in Harlem was ten times higher than the New York City average, and twelve times higher than the United States as a whole. Of the 30,000 drug addicts then estimated to live in New York City, 15,000 to 20,000 lived in Harlem. Property crime was pervasive, and the murder rate was six times higher than New York's average. Half of the children in Harlem grew up with one parent, or none, and lack of supervision contributed to juvenile delinquency; between 1953 and 1962, the crime rate among young people increased throughout New York City, but was consistently 50% higher in Harlem than in New York City as a whole.[125]

Injecting heroin grew in popularity in Harlem through the 1950s and 1960s, though the use of this drug then leveled off. In the 1980s, use of crack cocaine became widespread, which produced collateral crime as addicts stole to finance their purchasing of additional drugs, and as dealers fought for the right to sell in particular regions, or over deals gone bad.[126]

With the end of the "crack wars" in the mid 90s and with the initiation of aggressive policing under mayor Rudolph Giuliani, crime in Harlem plummeted. In 1981, 6,500 robberies were reported in Harlem. The number dropped to 4,800 in 1990, perhaps due to an increase in the number of police assigned to the neighborhood. By 2000, only 1,700 robberies were reported. There have been similar changes in all categories of crimes tracked by the New York City Police Department.[127] In the 32nd Precinct, which services Central Harlem above 127th Street, for example, between 1990 and 2008, the murder rate dropped 80%, the rape rate dropped 58%, the robbery rate dropped 73%, burglary dropped 86%, and the total number of crime complaints dropped 73%.[128]

Politics and activism in Harlem

Marcus Garvey in 1925

1910–1945, as Harlem became the capital of black America

Soon after blacks began to move into Harlem, the community became known as "the spiritual home of the Negro protest movement."[129] The NAACP became active in Harlem in 1910 and Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1916. The NAACP chapter there soon grew to be the largest in the country. Activist A. Philip Randolph lived in Harlem and published the radical magazine The Messenger starting in 1917. It was from Harlem that he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. W. E. B. Du Bois lived and published in Harlem in the 1920s, as did James Weldon Johnson and Marcus Garvey.

The earliest activism by blacks to change the situation in Harlem itself grew out of the Great Depression, with the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" movement.[112] This was the ultimately successful campaign to force retail shops on 125th Street to hire black employees. Boycotts were originally organized by the Citizens' League for Fair Play in June 1934 against Blumstein's Department Store on 125th Street. The store soon agreed to more fully integrate its staff. This success emboldened Harlem residents, and protests continued under other leadership, including that of preacher and later congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., seeking to change hiring practices at other stores, to effect the hiring of more black workers, or the hiring of members of particular protesting groups.[130]

Communism gained a following in Harlem in the 1930s, and continued to play a role through the 1940s.[129] 1935 saw the first of Harlem's five riots. The incident started with a (false) rumor that a boy caught stealing from a store on 125th Street had been killed by the police. By the time it was over, 600 stores had been looted and three men were dead. The same year saw internationalism in Harlem politics, as Harlemites responded to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia by holding giant rallies, signing petitions and sending an appeal to the League of Nations.[131] Such internationalism continued intermittently, including broad demonstrations in favor of Egyptian president Nasser after the Suez invasion of 1956.[132]

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. addressing a citizens' committee mass meeting in 1942

Black Harlemites took positions in the elected political infrastructure of New York starting in 1941 with the election of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to the City Council. He was easily elected to Congress when a congressional district was placed in Harlem in 1944, leaving his City Council seat to be won by another black Harlemite, Benjamin J. Davis. Ironically, Harlem's political strength soon deteriorated, as Clayton Powell, Jr. spent his time in Washington or his vacation home in Puerto Rico, and Davis was jailed in 1951 for violations of the Smith Act.[133]

The year 1943 saw the second Harlem riot. A black soldier knocked down a policeman who then shot him. An onlooker shouted that the soldier had been killed, and this news spread throughout the black community and provoked rioting. A force of 6,600, made up of city police, military police and civil patrolmen, in addition to 8,000 State Guardsmen and 1,500 civilian volunteers was required to end the violence. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed and looted, the property damage approaching $225,000. Overall, six people died and 185 were injured. Five hundred people were arrested in connection with the riot.

1946–1969, the Civil Rights Movement

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices in line with existing rent control regulations. According to the Metropolitan Council on Housing, in the mid-1960s, about 25% of the city's landlords charged more for rent than allowed by law.[134]

Many groups mobilized in Harlem in the 1960s, fighting for better schools, jobs, and housing. Some were peaceful and others advocated violence. By the early 1960s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had offices on 125th street, and acted as negotiator for the community with the city, especially in times of racial unrest. They pressed for civilian review boards to hear complaints of police abuse, a demand that was ultimately met. As chairman of the House Committee of Education and Labor at the start of the 1960s, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. used this position to direct federal funds to various development projects in Harlem.[135]

Malcolm X at a 1964 press conference

The influence of the southern nonviolent protest movement was muted in Harlem. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the black leader most respected in Harlem,[136][137] but at least two dozen groups of black nationalists also operated in New York. The most important of these was the Nation of Islam, whose Temple Number Seven was run by Malcolm X from 1952–1963.[138] Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights in 1965. The neighborhood remains an important center for the Nation of Islam.

The largest public works projects in Harlem in these years were public housing, with the largest concentration built in East Harlem.[139] Typically, existing structures were torn down and replaced with city-designed and managed properties that would, in theory, present a safer and more pleasant environment than those available from private landlords. Ultimately, community objections halted the construction of new projects.[93]

From the mid-20th century, the terrible quality of local schools has been a source of distress. In the 1960s, about 75% of Harlem students tested under grade levels in reading skills, and 80% tested under grade level in math.[140] In 1964, residents of Harlem staged two school boycotts to call attention to the problem. In central Harlem, 92% of students stayed home.[141]

An incident at 133rd Street and Seventh Avenue during the Harlem Riot of 1964.

In 1963, Inspector Lloyd Sealy became the first African-American officer of the NYPD to command a police station, the 28th precinct in Harlem.[142] Community relations between Harlem residents and the NYPD were strained as civil rights activists requested that the NYPD hire more black police officers, specifically in Harlem. In 1964, across Harlem's three precincts, the ratio was one black police officer for every six white officers.[143] A riot broke in the summer of 1964 following the fatal shooting of an unarmed 15-year-old black teenager by an off-duty white police lieutenant. One person was killed, more than 100 were injured, and hundreds more were arrested. Property damage and looting were extensive. The riot would later spread out of Manhattan and into the borough of Brooklyn and neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the heart of Brooklyn's African-American community. In the aftermath of the riots, the federal government funded a pilot program called Project Uplift, in which thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called Youth in the Ghetto.[144] HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, along with the National Urban League and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.[145]

In 1966, the Black Panthers organized a group in Harlem, agitating for violence in pursuit of change. Speaking at a rally of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Max Stanford, a Black Panther, declared that the United States "could be brought down to its knees with a rag and some gasoline and a bottle."[146]

In 1968, Harlemites rioted after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as did black residents in other U.S. cities. Two people died—one stabbed to death in a crowd and another trapped in a burning building. Mayor John Lindsay helped to quell the rioting by marching up Lenox Avenue in a "hail of bricks" to confront the angry crowds.[147]

1970–1989

Aerial view of Harlem with river, seen from north (2010)

Harlem reached its lowest in this period. Plans for rectifying the situation often started with the restoration of 125th Street, long the economic heart of black Harlem.[148] By the late 1970s, only marginalized and poor retail remained.[149] Plans were drafted for a "Harlem International Trade Center," which would have filled the entire block between 125th Street and 126th, from Lenox to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, with a center for trade with the third world. A related retail complex was planned to the west, between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas. However, this plan depended on $30 million in financing from the federal government,[148] and with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States, it had no hope of being completed.[149]

The city did provide one large construction project, though not so favored by residents. Starting in the 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, Harlemites fought the introduction of an immense sewage treatment plant, the North River Water Pollution Control Plant, on the Hudson River in West Harlem. A compromise was ultimately reached in which the plant was built with a state park, including extensive recreational facilities, on top. The park, called Riverbank State Park, was opened in 1993 (the sewage plant having been completed some years earlier).[150]

1990–present

Development of Harlem restarted around 1990, thanks in part to the institution of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. Plans were laid for shopping malls, movie theaters, and museums. However, these plans were nearly derailed in 1995 by the "Freddy's Fashion Mart" riot, which culminated in political arson and eight deaths. These riots did not resemble their predecessors, and were organized by black activists against Jewish shop owners on 125th street.[151]

Sign disparaging Barack Obama outside the Atlah World Missionary Church in the former Harlem Club at 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue

Five years later, the revitalization of 125th Street resumed, with the construction of a Starbucks outlet backed in part by Magic Johnson (1999), the first supermarket in Harlem in 30 years,[106] the Harlem USA retail complex, which included the first first-run movie theater in many years (2000),[106] and a new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001). In the same year, former president Bill Clinton took office space in Harlem. In 2002, a large retail and office complex called Harlem Center was completed at the corner of Lenox and 125th.[106] There has been extensive new construction and rehabilitation of older buildings in the years since.

The neighborhood's changes have provoked some discontent. James David Manning, pastor of the ATLAH World Missionary church on Lenox Avenue, has received press for declaring a boycott on all Harlem shops, restaurants, other businesses, and churches other than his own. He believes that this will cause an economic crash that will drive out white residents and drop property values to a level his supporters can afford.[152] There have been rallies against gentrification.[153]

Harlem landmarks

Hotel Theresa building at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 125th Street
St Martin's Episcopal Church at Malcolm X Blvd and 122

Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine

Education

Main article: Education in Harlem

In 1977, Isiah Robinson, president of the New York City Board of Education, was quoted as saying that "the quality of education in Harlem has degenerated to the level of a custodial service."[14]

As of May 2006, Harlem was the heart of the charter schools movement in Manhattan; of the 25 charter schools operating in Manhattan, 18 were in Harlem.[157] In 2010, about one in five age-eligible children in Harlem was enrolled in charter schools.[158]

The New York Public Library operates the Harlem Branch Library at 9 West 124th Street,[159] the 115th Street Branch Library at 203 West 115th Street,[160] and the 125th Street Branch Library at 224 East 125th Street, near Third Avenue.[161]

The Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, City College of New York, and New York College of Podiatric Medicine are all located in Harlem.

See also

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Further reading

  • WPA Guide to New York City 1939
  • "Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. Negro New York, 1890–1930". Gilbert Osofsky, 1963
  • TIME Magazine, vol. 84, No.5, July 31, 1964. "Harlem: No Place Like Home"
  • Newsweek, August 3, 1964,. "Harlem: Hatred in the Streets"
  • Harlem Stirs, John O. Killens, Fred Halstead, 1966
  • Francis A. J. Ianni, Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime, 1974
  • "Crack's Decline: Some Surprises from U.S. Cities", National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, July 1997

External links

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Coordinates: 40°48′32.52″N 73°56′54.14″W / 40.8090333°N 73.9483722°W / 40.8090333; -73.9483722


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