Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, 1924, as the procession moves westward on East 106th Street, from First to Second Avenue. The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua was a major street festival for the once thriving Italian community of Harlem. Tracing its origins to the town of Brusciano, outside Napoli, the Feast and parade were held on Labor Day Weekend, beginning in 1918. This area was the first neighborhood known as "Little Italy."

1950 Third Avenue, with jewelry dealer at the corner of 107th Street visible in the foreground.

The Manhattan Oddfellows Temple, 1929. The Oddfellows fraternal organization likely originated in 18th century Britain, and its earliest outposts in New York date to the early 19th century.

Public School 109 was designed by C. B. J. Snyder, superintendent of school buildings for the Board of Education from 1891 to 1923. Roughly 400 schools were constructed during his tenure, when the city’s population was growing and new laws mandated children’s education. Snyder was a great innovator, incorporating advances in fireproofing and air circulation, as well as laying out buildings in an H-plan, like P.S. 109, to increase light and air to classrooms and provide opportunities for recreation. With its many decorative details, the Collegiate Gothic style building is a great example of Snyder’s emphasis on the power of aesthetics in architecture. The school was decommissioned in 1995 and sat neglected for about 15 years until its restoration and conversion to artists’ housing. It reopened in 2015 as El Barrio’s Artspace/PS109, holding 89 units of affordable live/work space and 10,000 square feet for arts organizations. Artspace is a nonprofit that operates 35 arts facilities in 15 states. The Former Public School 109 is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This photo was taken by my buddy "Willie" who was attending Manhattan Community College and was in the school's student photography club. Willie had taken me to visit his old neighborhood since moving to my neighborhood on West 145th Street." —JP Nieves

Public School 172 on East 108th Street, 1920. Originally built as P.S. 172 in 1889, the building became condos in 1987.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1928.

The northwest corner of Third Avenue and 109th Street, 1912. Storefront signage includes "John Armstrong Real Estate"; "Conservatory of Music," offering lessons in piano, violin, mandolin, guitar, and bass; and "B. Rosenfeld Diamonds, Watches, and Jewelry."

St. Cecilia's Church, 1942. Construction on the brick Romanesque Revival structure began in 1883, and was completed in 1887. The completion of the upper church (the larger more ornate space) in 1887 was not only managed by the pastor at the time, but he, Reverend Michael J. Phelan, acted as general contractor and enlisted the skills of church members to finish the construction. Designed by Napoleon Le Brun & Sons, the firm was not involved in the construction at all. The red brick church, with terra cotta relief of St. Cecilia on the front facade, was designated a landmark in 1976 and continues to serve the East Harlem community today.

Aguilar Branch, NYPL, 1928. The Aguilar Free Library was a library structure built between 1898 and 1899 in an Art Nouveau style by the architecture firm Herts & Tallant. The firm was well-known for their work on theaters. Largely funded through the philanthropic support of Grace Aguilar, a popular British novelist and essayist of Sephardic Jewish descent, the Free Library merged with NYPL in 1903. In 1904 the same architecture firm extensively renovated (and nearly tripled in size) the original building. Funded by the Carnegie bequest the new library had an exaggerated classical style with two massive columns flanking the three-story facade. This feature and the iron and glass structure that fills in most of the rest of the facade, this branch is distinctive among the Carnegie libraries.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1931.

East Harlem/El Barrio is home to a great number of murals that build on a long tradition in Latin American art, wherein residents may express themselves and tell their stories. Protecting these significant cultural symbols has become a great challenge, but an important endeavor, in a rapidly changing neighborhood. Modesto Flores Community Garden, Lexington Avenue between East 104th and 105th Streets Yasmin Hernandez 2011 Commissioned by Art for Change, an organization that encourages progressive social change through the arts, this mural, in the artist’s words, “pays tribute to the common histories and struggles of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and is a call for continued and increased political solidarity between the two communities.” Hernandez was inspired by Frida Kahlo’s painting, Las dos Fridas, and substituted the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos for the second Frida. She also took elements from photographs of the soldaderas (women soldiers) who fought in the Mexican Revolution. The words in the mural are from a poem by de Burgos, “El regalo de los Reyes”.

Men carry the "giglio" tower across First Avenue on 106th Street during the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1927. Beginning in the late 19th century, Italians, particularly from Southern Italy and Sicily, began to settle in East Harlem. By the 1930 census, 81% of the neighborhood claimed first or second-generation Italian heritage. In 2000, after a 29-year break, the "dance of the giglio" returned to East Harlem, where it continues to happen on the second Sunday of August each year.

The former Manhattan Oddfellows Temple, photographed in 1944 with the annotation "Diesel Electric Co. has purchased building for use of the television industry." The television production facility called Metropolis Studios is still active at 105 East 106th St. BET's popular new music program "106 & Park" was filmed here.

A branch of "Pro. Ex. Bank" on the west side of First Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets, across from the site of the East River Houses, as yet unbuilt in April 1940. Today, the bank branch building houses the East Ward Missionary Baptist Church.

Public School 72, ca. 1920. Constructed as Public School 72, this neo-Grec structure is one of the oldest intact school buildings in Manhattan. Built to accommodate the growing immigrant population of East Harlem, it was the first full block school building in the city. Its architect, David I. Stagg, was Superintendent of Public School Buildings from 1872 to 1886. The original portion of the building was completed in 1882 and the annex (by C.B.J. Snyder) was added in 1913. The Board of Education closed the school in 1975, and for the next two decades it provided classroom and office space for various institutions. In 1994-95, the building was converted to a cultural center. The conversion was spearheaded by El Taller Boricua, an arts organization founded in 1969 to bring attention and relevancy to artists who were being ignored and systematically marginalized by the cultural gatekeepers of the times. Named in honor of the Puerto Rican teacher, journalist and, poet who died in East Harlem, the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center is home to El Taller Boricua (the Puerto Rican Workshop), the Heritage School and Los Pleneros de la 21.

St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church complex, built from 1883-87, is located at 120 East 106th Street in between Lexington and Park Avenues. St. Cecilia’s was one of the first religious institutions built in the area. The church has been in continuous use as a Roman Catholic parish church since the chapel was completed in 1884. The adjacent buildings that housed the Convent were finished in 1887.

By Susan Smith-Peter Using crutches because of an early bout with meningitis, Percy Loomis Sperr managed to photograph nearly all of New York City from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sperr sought to document and preserve the city as fully as possible. He was interested in telling the story of New York through the lives and environments of everyday people. This work brought him into contact with important photographers such as Berenice Abbott and, to a lesser extent, Walker Evans. And his work has deeply shaped our vision of this New York City during the Jazz Age and Depression-era. Among other things, it helped set design for such movies as The Godfather and The Great Gatsby (1974) and serves as the foundation for such popular apps as OldNYC and Urban Archive. Yet the artist himself remains little known. This blog sets out to establish the basic facts of his life, and suggests lines of possible research, using his previously unanalyzed writings and undigitized albums as well as his better-known works. Born on December 27, 1899, Sperr attended Oberlin College, where he served as the associate editor of the Annual and the managing editor of the Review. In 1916, a list of graduates places him in Columbus, Ohio, care of the Stoneman Press. As he told the Newark Sunday News in 1963, the year before his death, “the first of my sins was to teach in a small private school in California. I taught the ABCs, trigonometry and everything in between. The school closed while I was on vacation, so I wandered around in printing, freelance writing and photography.” His draft card for World War One shows that he was already living in New York in 1917, at 2887 Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. It also noted that his right leg was permanently paralyzed and that he was a printer at the Lumitone Art Company. His World War Two draft card was even blunter, simply stating, “lame.” He moved to Staten Island in 1924, during which time he was “principally a freelance writer, doing articles largely for the Sunday magazine sections of newspapers. Many of these articles concern\[ed] aspects of the New York Public Library.”

141-145 East 103rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.

Engine 53, undated photo. This fire station was designed by the firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, which served the as architects for the Fire Department from 1879 to 1895. During this time, the firm designed more than 40 buildings that defined the department’s architectural presence in the city. This Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival style structure, completed in 1884, is considered a fine example of their work. The fire station and its neighboring police station were both decommissioned in 1974. Today the former firehouse is occupied by the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a local public access cable network.

East Harlem encompasses a large section of northeastern Manhattan bounded by 96th Street, 142nd Street, Fifth Avenue and the Harlem River. Also known as El Barrio, the area is famous as one of the largest predominantly Latino neighborhoods in the city. Echoing the city’s development patterns, the neighborhood was largely built in response to the availability of transportation. In the 1830s, tracks were laid along Park Avenue for horse-drawn streetcars and later, the tracks became the New York and Harlem Railroad line, with train stops in East Harlem. Several resorts were built to take advantage of the higher elevations with views toward the growing city to the south and residential estates were built near the waterfront. Development increased with the construction of the Second and Third Avenue elevated rail lines to 125th Street in 1879- 80, and with the arrival of the subway in 1919. Rowhouses, tenements and flats buildings housed the area’s largely working class population, while Third Avenue became its first commercial thoroughfare. Early residents included German, Irish, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish and Italian immigrants, the latter making up a particularly significant group. At its peak in 1930, East Harlem was home to roughly 100,000 Italian-Americans, many more than the Lower East Side’s Little Italy. It was also the founding location of the Genovese crime family, one of five organized crime families formed in 1931 making up the Italian American Mafia in New York City. One of East Harlem’s most famous Italian-American residents was Vito Marcantonio, famed lawyer, member of the American Labor party and an early leader in the movements for civil rights and Puerto Rican independence. He was extremely popular with both the Italian and Puerto Rican communities, representing the neighborhood in the U.S. House of Representatives for six terms from 1939-51. Most of the tangible references to Italian East Harlem are gone, as the community began to leave after World War II, but a few are identified in the brochure and some storied Italian businesses continue to thrive, including Patsy’s Pizzeria and Rao’s restaurant. Soon after World War I, a large community of Puerto Ricans and South and Central Americans had settled in East Harlem, with a second influx after World War II, leading to the lasting monikers “Spanish Harlem” and later “El Barrio.” The first Puerto Rican elected to public office in the U.S., Oscar García Rivera, was a resident of East Harlem, and represented East and Central Harlem in the New York State Assembly from 1937-40. García Rivera was a strong advocate for child labor laws, workers’ rights and anti-discrimination legislation. The Hellgate Post Office on East 110th Street was renamed in his honor in 2002. In the mid-20th century, urban renewal resulted in the construction of subsidized housing projects by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). With funds from the 1949 Federal Housing Act, Robert Moses led an initiative to clear sections of the neighborhood, resulting in the construction of 24 public housing developments, in which 30% of East Harlem’s population resides. The bankruptcy of New York City in the early 1970s and broader municipal disinvestment hit East Harlem particularly hard. Lots were cleared for investment that never came, leading to a fragmented landscape that exacerbated issues seen across the city: urban flight, race riots, drug abuse and poverty. However, East Harlem residents fought back with strong expressions of their identity and political will, with inspiring murals that continue to be a neighborhood hallmark today. In 2015, the city announced that East Harlem would be one of several neighborhoods in the five boroughs to be rezoned for increased density as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Housing New York plan. Many expect the plan to mark a new era in the evolution of East Harlem, as new development has already destroyed historic buildings and shifted the neighborhood’s socioeconomic makeup and prevailing culture.

The former Manhattan Odd Fellows Temple located at 105 E 106th Street has been home to numerous establishments throughout its nearly 100-year history.

This 1913 photo of Lexington Avenue, between 105th and 106th Streets in Manhattan shows a construction method called cut and cover. Like the name suggests, this method involved cutting or digging a trench in the street, installing the necessary infrastructure, and then covering with the street on top. During construction business went on as usual around construction. With temporary wooden structures placed over the work below, trolleys and other traffic were able to pass over top of the construction. Many of our first subway tunnels were built using this method beginning in 1900, which made construction faster, cheaper, and easier than trying to dig deep under the ground. It allowed sand hogs (the nickname given to tunnel workers) to avoid the difficult and unstable bedrock underneath most of Manhattan called Manhattan schist.

Public School 109, June 7, 1940. Public School 109 was designed by C. B. J. Snyder, superintendent of school buildings for the Board of Education from 1891 to 1923. Roughly 400 schools were constructed during his tenure, when the city’s population was growing and new laws mandated children’s education. Snyder was a great innovator, incorporating advances in fireproofing and air circulation, as well as laying out buildings in an H-plan, like P.S. 109, to increase light and air to classrooms and provide opportunities for recreation. With its many decorative details, the Collegiate Gothic style building is a great example of Snyder’s emphasis on the power of aesthetics in architecture. The school was decommissioned in 1995 and sat neglected for about 15 years until its restoration and conversion to artists’ housing. It reopened in 2015 as El Barrio’s Artspace/PS109, holding 89 units of affordable live/work space and 10,000 square feet for arts organizations.

Frame houses on the south side of East 109th Street, east of Second Avenue, 1934. The sign visible on the top floor reads "School of Music."

At left is the northwest corner of First Avenue and 108th Street, with storage tanks of the Consolidated Gas Co. visible between 110th and 111th Streets, in the background. Photographer P.L. Sperr notes "wine equipment" on the sidewalk in front of what was then 2060 First Avenue, in the foreground. Today, Public School 146 and post-war housing developments occupy the east side of First Avenue.

Streetcars on Lexington Avenue, as seen from the northwest corner of 102nd Street, 1931. Nicknamed "crackup hill" or "Duffy's Hill" for the Tammany Hall Alderman Michael James Duffy, who built rowhouses in the area, this block was the site of frequent traffic accidents. Visible in the lower-left portion of the frame is the entrance to the 6 train at 103rd Street.

East Harlem/El Barrio is home to a great number of murals that build on a long tradition in Latin American art, wherein residents may express themselves and tell their stories. Protecting these significant cultural symbols has become a great challenge, but an important endeavor, in a rapidly changing neighborhood. East 107th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues Natalie del Villar, Marthalicia Matarrita and Xen Medina 2015 The original mural on this site paid tribute to two Puerto Rican political prisoners, Oscar López Rivera and Avelino Gonzalez Claudio. The project was conceived in 2010 by members of the National Boricua Human Rights Network along with local residents. The badly weathered and vandalized mural was re-imagined in 2015 by local artists commissioned by East Harlem Preservation, Inc., with support from the Historic Districts Council. Since Avelino Gonzalez Claudio was released in February 2013, the artists re-focused the mural on Oscar López Rivera, the last Puerto Rican political prisoner in the U.S. who is now 73 years old and has spent 35 years in prison. Because he often speaks about his desire to return to his homeland to walk along the seashore, the artists incorporated his wish into the design. Watch East Harlem Preservation's video on the creation of the mural \*image Photo courtesy Marina Ortiz, East Harlem Preservation, Inc.

Streetcar traffic on Lexington Avenue, north of East 109th Street, April 23, 1914. In the foreground, sidewalk grating above the IRT Lexington Avenue Line is visible. The IRT line would open four years later, in 1918.

This 1913 photo of Lexington Avenue, between 105th and 106th Streets in Manhattan shows a construction method called cut and cover. Like the name suggests, this method involved cutting or digging a trench in the street, installing the necessary infrastructure, and then covering with the street on top. During construction business went on as usual around construction. With temporary wooden structures placed over the work below, trolleys and other traffic were able to pass over top of the construction. Many of our first subway tunnels were built using this method beginning in 1900, which made construction faster, cheaper, and easier than trying to dig deep under the ground. It allowed sand hogs (the nickname given to tunnel workers) to avoid the difficult and unstable bedrock underneath most of Manhattan called Manhattan schist.

East Harlem, the neighborhood covering a broad swath of Upper Manhattan north of 96th Street and East of Fifth Avenue, has historically been known for its prominent populations: in the early 20th century, Italian Harlem; the Latino community of Spanish Harlem in later years. These photo's from the New York Public Library's Milstein Division provide a snapshot of daily life uptown, from street scenes to Feast Day parades.

The sidewalk on the west side of First Avenue, below 108th Street, outside the Pizzeria Sorrentina Spaghetti House, 1934. Photographer P.L. Sperr notes that the building across 108th Street is "fairly new, since 1925." By 1934, the Italian population of East Harlem exceeded 100,000. In the background, Consolidated Gas Co. storage tanks between 110th and 11th Streets.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1929.

St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church Designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, 1883-87 116 East 106th Street Neville & Bagge, 1907 This beautiful Romanesque Revival style church was built for the parish of St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church, which, beginning in the 1870s, worshipped in the former Old Red House, a hotel on East 105th Street. In 1881, the church purchased this property and hired Napoleon LeBrun & Sons to design proper church facilities. The result is a richly ornate brick and terra cotta church featuring a large relief of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, embedded into an arched panel on the building’s central gable. The adjacent “Regina Angelorum” was originally two separate buildings, a four-story tenement built in 1883-84 and a school built in 1885-87. The two buildings were combined in 1906-07 with a façade by Neville & Bagge, but still had two separate functions: a home for working women and a convent. In the late 1930s, the convent took over the entire building until 2004, when the building was converted to the Cristo Rey New York High School.

Originally constructed as Public School 72, this neo-Grec structure is one of the oldest intact school buildings in Manhattan, built to accommodate the growing immigrant population of East Harlem. Its architect, David I. Stagg, was Superintendent of Public School Buildings from 1872 to 1886. For about 20 years after the Board of Education closed the school in 1975, it provided classroom and office space for various institutions. In 1994-95, the building was converted to a cultural center. The Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center is a designated New York City Individual Landmark.

Learn about the history of transportation in New York City, and the past through the lens of subway construction. (This can be viewed in its original context here)

East 106th Street, looking west toward Park Avenue and the Harlem line railroad tracks, June 1942.

St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church on East 110th Street, 1930. Designed and built by Nicholas Serracino in 1911, in the year 1913 more than 1000 babies were baptized in this church.

U.S. post Office, Station U, ca. 1933.

The site of the Lexington Avenue Explosion on July 4, 1914. Members of the Anarchist Black Cross along with a member of the Industrial Workers of the World had been plotting to assassinate John D. Rockefeller by blowing up his home in Tarrytown, NY. Their dynamite explosive detonated prematurely, killing four — including three conspirators — and destroying the upper floors of 1626 Lexington Avenue.