Harlem

:This article is about the Harlem neighborhood in New York City. For other places named Harlem, see Harlem (disambiguation).

History

The first European settlement in what is now Harlem was by Dutch settlers and was formalized in 1658 as Nieuw Haarlem (or New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem. The Indian trail to Harlem's lush bottomland meadows was rebuilt by the Dutch West India Company's black slaves and eventually developed into the Boston Post Road. In 1664, the English took control of the New Netherland colony and anglicized the name of the town to Harlem. On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights (also called 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.

Related Topics:
Dutch - 1658 - Haarlem - Dutch West India Company - Boston Post Road - 1664 - English - New Netherland - September 16 - 1776 - Battle of Harlem Heights

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In the 19th century, Harlem was a place of farms, such as James Roosevelt's, east of Fifth Avenue between 110th and 125th Streets, now the heart of Spanish (actually Latin-American) Harlem. Country estates were largely on the heights overlooking the Hudson to the west of Harlem. Service connecting the suburb of Harlem with New York was by steamboat on the East River, an hour and a half's 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 saltmarshes around 110th Street, to pass through Harlem. The New York and Harlem Railroad was incorporated in 1831, to better link the city with the suburb, starting at a depot at East 23rd Street. It was extended 127 miles north to a railroad junction in Columbia County at Chatham, New York by 1851. Harlem was developing into an extensive, somewhat ramshackle suburb.

Related Topics:
19th century - Fifth Avenue - New York and Harlem Railroad - 1831 - Suburb - East 23rd Street - Columbia County - Chatham, New York - 1851

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Elevated railroads were extended to Harlem in 1880. With the construction of the els, urbanized development occurred very rapidly, with townhouses, apartments, and tenements springing up practically overnight. Early entrepreneurs had grandiose schemes for Harlem: Polo was actually played at the original Polo Grounds (later to become home of the New York Giants baseball team) and Oscar Hammerstein I opened the Harlem Opera House on East 125th Street in 1889. Fine townhouses by first-rank architects survive in the Sugar Hill section, west of 8th Avenue between 137th and 160th Streets. But by the early 1900s, Harlem's population was German, German Jewish, and Eastern European Jewish. In common with many other Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish Harlem was an ephemeral entity. By 1930, only 5,000 Jews remained, down from a 1917 peak population of 150,000. The area of Harlem by the East River, now known as Spanish Harlem, became occupied by Italians. Italian Harlem is gone as well, though it lasted longer than Jewish Harlem (traces of Italian Harlem lasted into the 1970s, in the area around Pleasant Avenue).

Related Topics:
Elevated railroad - 1880 - Polo - Polo Grounds - New York Giants - Baseball - Oscar Hammerstein I - 1889 - Sugar Hill - 1900s - 1930 - 1917 - Spanish Harlem - Italians - 1970s

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There was essentially no investment in private homes or businesses in the neighborhood between 1911 and the 1990s. The resulting neglect meant unpleasant living conditions for many, and contributed to racial unrest and health problems. However, it 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, Charles Buek, and Francis Kimball.

Related Topics:
McKim, Mead, and White - James Renwick - Charles Buek - Francis Kimball

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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 even the modest city taxes charged to their owners, and the buildings were abandoned. By the 1980s, 60% of the buildings in Harlem were owned by the City of New York, and many had become empty shells, convenient centers for drug dealing and other antisocial activity. The lack of habitable buildings and prevalence of squalor decreased population density in the area, reducing tax rolls and making the neighborhood even less attractive to residential and retail investment.

Related Topics:
Single room occupancies - Shells

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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. Starting in 1994, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone funneled money into new developments including the Harlem USA retail complex. Finally, wealthier New Yorkers, having gentrified every other part of Manhattan and much of Brooklyn, had nowhere else to go. The number of housing units in Harlem increased 14% between 1990 and 2000 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 the City saw only a 12% increase. Even empty shells of buildings in the neighborhood were, as of 2005, routinely selling for nearly $1,000,000 each. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton rented office space at 55 West 125th Street after completing his second term in the White House in 2001.

Related Topics:
Gentrification - 1990s - Empowerment Zone - Bill Clinton - White House - 2001

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The neighborhood has been the setting for several movies, including Across 110th Street in 1972 and the recent The Royal Tenenbaums.

Related Topics:
Across 110th Street - 1972 - The Royal Tenenbaums

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As African American center

The first blacks who lived in Harlem moved there in 1904, thanks to the leadership of a black real estate entrepreneur named Philip Payton, Jr. Over the next several years, his company, the Afro-American Realty Company, was almost single-handedly responsible for migration of blacks from their previous neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill in the Upper West Side, and Hell's Kitchen (today sometimes called Clinton) in the west 40s and 50s. By 1907, black churches began to move uptown, and by 1919 the black population of Harlem had quadrupled.

Related Topics:
1904 - Tenderloin - San Juan Hill - Upper West Side - Hell's Kitchen - 1907 - 1919

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In the 1920s, Harlem was the center of a flowering of African American culture that became known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of amazing artistic production, but ironically, many blacks were excluded from viewing what they were creating. Many jazz venues, like Small's Paradise and the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington played, were restricted to whites only.

Related Topics:
1920s - African American culture - Harlem Renaissance - Cotton Club - Duke Ellington

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Apollo Theater - January 26 - 1934 - Swing

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In the post-World War II era, Harlem ceased to be home to a majority of NYC's blacks, but it remained the cultural and political capital of black New York, and possibly black America. The character of the community changed in the years after the war, as middle class blacks left for the outer boroughs (primarily Queens and Brooklyn) and suburbs. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a massive rent strike by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, who became discredited after he was identified as a member of the Communist Party by witnesses testifying under oath before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Gray himself was given an opportunity to testify before the same committee, but he pleaded the Fifth Amendment every time he was asked a question regarding the Communist Party or his alleged connection to it. The rent strike collapsed soon after.

Related Topics:
World War II - Suburbs - 1950s - 1960s - Jesse Gray - Communist Party - House Committee on Un-American Activities - Fifth Amendment

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