Trolley in traffic on Lenox Avenue (now Malcolm X Boulevard), ca. 1930. In 1895, the Metropolitan Railway Company opened a streetcar line along Lenox Avenue from 110th Street to the Harlem River, and later connected to the Lexington Avenue surface line, via 116th Street. The Lenox Avenue streetcar line operated until 1935; the route was later converted to bus service. At left is Bickford’s, a department store and restaurant chain, at 101 West 116th Street. The Bickford’s building survives, but the top band of cornice detail has been removed. Just out of frame at left is the entrance to the 116th Street station of the IRT Lenox Avenue subway line.

Regent Theater ARCHITECT: Thomas W. Lamb DATE: 1912-13 STYLE: Theater An elegant architectural design, the Regent was built to elevate the presentation of movies and was one of the first luxurious movie theaters in New York City. The theater was controlled by the real estate interests of the Little family, prominent printers, for nearly forty years. Located in Harlem at the comer of two thoroughfares which were popular for entertainment venues, the Regent was operated as a movie and vaudeville house for some fifty years, as an innovative setting for movie presentations.

The Mount Morris Park neighborhood is a residential area in central Harlem, bounded by 125th and 117th Streets from north to south, by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard to the west, and by Marcus Garvey Memorial Park to the east. The park, known as Mount Morris Park until 1973, has always been the centerpiece of the neighborhood. Besides the park, the area is characterized by attractive low-scale rowhouses, townhouses and institutional buildings, including many churches. Stylistically, most of the architecture found in Mount Morris Park is Romanesque Revival, French Neo-Grec and Queen Anne, as well as Classical and Renaissance. There is also much transition among styles in the architecture here, which results in a charming, eclectic mix, and the neighborhood retains a strong turn-of-the-20th-century architectural character today. With the opening of the elevated transit line in Harlem in 1872, development in Manhattan pushed northward into former farmlands. Speculative building began in 1878, and several booms in Harlem real estate soon followed. New York City in the 1880s and 1890s saw some of the most elegant construction designed by prominent local architects, and this neighborhood was no exception. The row of houses that line Mount Morris Park West and face the park were compared with Fifth Avenue mansions in 1903 by the New York Herald. At the turn of the 20th century, German Protestants and Jews commissioned many church and synagogue buildings that survive today. By 1920 the area had become a middle-class neighborhood of mainly Jewish, Caribbean and African-American families. The new residents acquired and adapted institutional and residential buildings to suit their religious and cultural needs, while some of the single-family houses were converted to multi-family. The neighborhood struggled during the Depression and ensuing decades, but the quality construction of earlier years remained remarkably extant. In 1971, New York City designated the Mount Morris Park Historic District, and in 1973 the district was placed on the National Register, with its boundaries expanded in 1996. Since that time, the area has been enjoying a revival thanks in part to the overall exceptional craftsmanship of the built environment.

Graham Court Apartments, 1933. More than those of any other Harlem apartment house, Graham Court's expansive suites suggest the ideal of an entire row house set at a single level. It is still considered Harlem's finest luxury apartment house. Graham Court's underground stable, situated directly below the court, was considered a major amenity for tenants, as was the roof's warren of extra servants' rooms. The typical apartment featured a parlor and dining room suite with a pantry, kitchen, and maid's room, four or more bedrooms, and up to three baths. The illusion of being in a house is reinforced by the separation of family bedrooms along a private hall beyond the public spaces and the similar isolation of the kitchen and servants' quarters. The building was erected by William Waldorf Astor, one of the world's richest men and one of the largest owners of Harlem real estate. Even today, his WWA monogram embellishes the structure. The Astor family owned Graham Court until 1928; the first African Americans moved in five years later. The building's new owners rented to black tenants but scaled back services and staff, divided some apartments, and raised Depression-era rents. New residents included Dr. Cyril Harold Dolly, assistant visiting physician at Harlem Hospital, who helped to found the Consolidated Tenants League in response to these changes. The writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was a guest here for an extended period of time.

H. C. F. Koch & Company Department, ca. 1891. C. F. Koch & Company was established in 1860 in Greenwich Village as a purveyor of dry good and "fancy good." The business successful moved uptown to the Ladies Mile shopping district by the 1870s. Shocking their competitors in the neighborhood, Koch announced that they would close their 20th Street store for a move to Harlem in 1890. The Harlem building, designed by architect William H. Hume, was a five-story shopping emporium. Opened in 1891, the store sold its previous ware but, according to a contemporary article, also offered "a full line of millinery, china and glassware, bedding and furniture, shoes, boys’ clothing, etc." The building also featured passenger elevators, electric lighting, and a pneumatic tube cash system. The store remained successful through the mid 1920s but suffered as the neighborhood demographics shifted in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They closed in 1932 after the founder passed away. Somewhat surprisingly though the 1891 building remains on 125th Street looking very much like it must have 125 years ago.

Lenox Lounge, ca. 1985. The Lenox Lounge opened in 1939 and quickly became a favorite Harlem spot for musicians and those in search of great jazz, classy interiors (the bar’s legendary Zebra Room was known for its zebra skinned walls), and good drinks. By the 1960s there was less jazz activity in the neighborhood bars and by the end of the 20th century, the Lenox Lounge had deteriorated. In 1999-2000 it underwent a restoration to bring back its period details like the Zebra print walls and geometric floor tiles, while at the same time booking live jazz once again. Sadly, due to rent increases the club closed at the end of 2012. A new owner planned to keep the interiors for a new venue, while the owner who sold the building (and retained the rights to the Lenox Lounge name) planned to open a new club nearby. Neither plan came to fruition and the structure was demolished in 2017

Lenox Lounge, 1961. This legendary art deco lounge survived for decades before submitting to changing tastes and development. Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and a host of jazz greats all played here.

Businesses on West 124th Street, off of Lenox Avenue, 1932. Storefronts include: Lenox Auto Renting Co.; Harding Hand Laundry; and L. Pelzling, Tailor. Today, the second story cornices and wooden clapboards have been removed, but underlying structures remain.

Orient Theatre, June 24, 1927. The Orient Theatre was in operation by 1915 and had a seating capacity of 600. The theatre remained open until the early 1950s. In 1952, famed Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson opened a menswear and appliance store in a portion of the building which had previously housed the theatre.

L.M. Blumstein department store, 125th Street. March 21, 1954. Louis Blumstein, a German Immigrant, opened a department store on West 125th Street in 1898. Over the next two decades, the street continued to develop into an uptown shopping district. Blumstein died in 1920, but his family pressed on with expansion plans, breaking ground on a new, eight-story building in 1921. The hybrid Art Nouveau-Art Deco structure stretched the entire block between 124th and 125th Streets and made extensive use of copper ornamentation on its main facade. As African-American families moved to Harlem in greater numbers, the entirely white sales staff at Blumstein’s became a point of tension in the neighborhood. In 1934, the Citizens’ League For Fair Play organized a successful boycott of the store, leading to a change in its hiring practices. In 1943, Blumstein’s became the first department store to feature black mannequins and a black Santa Claus as part of its holiday programming. On September 20, 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed at a book signing held at Blumstein’s. Izola Curry stabbed the civil rights leader with a letter opener, nearly piercing his aorta. A bystander wisely cautioned onlookers not to remove the letter opener, lest it cause damage on the way out, likely saving King’s life. The Blumstein family sold the building in 1976.

Hotel Theresa ARCHITECT: George & Edward Blum DATE: 1912-13 STYLE: Terra-cotta The Theresa entered the national limelight in 1960 when Cuban premier Fidel Castro chose to stay at the hotel while visiting New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly; while at the Theresa, Castro hosted a visit from Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Hotel Theresa, built in 1912-13, is significant in the history of Harlem, America’s most prominent African-American community, as one of the most important social centers of that community. It is a major work by the noted architectural firm of George & Edward Blum, exemplifying this firm’s singular approach to ornamentation and inventive use of terra-cotta.

New York Public Library, 115th Street branch. July 18, 1928. The 115th Street branch, a Carnegie-funded library designed by McKim, Mead & White, opened in November, 1908. The small, three-story Renaissance Revival building is styled as an Italian palazzo, with a heavily rusticated limestone facade and symmetrical arched windows. In 2017, the library was renamed the Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library, after the musician, activist, and Harlem resident.

Ansehe Chesed Synagogue ca. 1910 Jewish residents were a significant presence in post-Civil War Harlem, which at the turn of the twentieth century was the nation's pre-eminent middle class Jewish neighborhood. If, in their religious structures, Harlem's Jews avoided Christianity's distinctive Gothic mode, but they were not averse to presenting a "churchly" appearance. Temple Ansche Chesed was completed in 1909 on a fine corner site at Seventh Avenue and West 114th Street. The structure is built of brick, limestone, and terra cotta. It was lit naturally by means of an enormous skylight, the stained glass of which depicted traditional Jewish symbols. Congregation Ansche Chesed was a Reform congregation, with mixed seating for men and women and prayers conducted in English. It also boasted a fine organ. Since 1927, the congregation has worshipped in a similar building by Edward Shire located at 251 West 100th Street. Reflecting Harlem's history of changing demographics, Temple Ansche Chesed was adapted in 1926 as Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, a Spanish Roman Catholic church, and then became Mount Neboh Baptist Church in 1980.

Temple Israel, ca. 1907. The Temple Israel Reform congregation was incorporated in 1873, first worshipping in a series of rented and temporary spaces in East Harlem, then in a converted church at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street. The congregation was primarily composed of German immigrants, part of what was then a large Jewish community in Harlem. In 1906, the congregation broke ground on its own space, a Neoclassical limestone synagogue at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 120th Street. However, Temple Israel’s Lenox Avenue tenure was to be short lived; Harlem’s Jewish population began to shift to other parts of the city, and Temple Israel followed suit, moving to a new, Upper West Side synagogue in 1920. The Mount Olivet Baptist Church, the current tenants, purchased the Lenox Avenue building in 1925.

"Settling in for what they initially assumed would be a temporary stay at Harlem’s Theresa Hotel, Anna and Merritt \[Hedgeman] set about looking for employment and permanent housing… The Theresa offered a suite of rooms at a reasonable rate, a central location, and a bit of celebrity. The stately white terra cotta and brick hotel had only recently opened its doors to black guests, but now a bevy of black entertainers, artists, and socialites called the “Waldorf of Harlem” home… The tallest building in Harlem, standing on the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, now Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, and near Frank’s Restaurant, the Apollo Theater, the Harlem Opera House, the African Memorial National Bookstore, and Blumstein’s Department Store, the Theresa literally offered a window on Harlem’s political, social, and cultural life. Anna and Merritt would become two of the hotel’s high-profile residents, a group that included writer Zora Neale Hurston, socialite Grace Nail Johnson, Negro Yearbook editor Florence Murray, and entertainer Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson." For more on the social world at Harlem's Theresa, check out this article by Jennifer Scanlon on the forgotten civil rights pioneer Anna Hedgeman in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

From 1939 to 1942, the internationally popular African American cabaret singer Jimmie Daniels owned and operated his eponymous Harlem supper club on the ground floor of this building. The famed nightspot hosted European royalty, high society from both sides of the Atlantic, and Black and white, gay and straight notables from the arts. You can read more about Jimmie Daniels at the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

Subway construction at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, August 10, 1910.

Saint Paul’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church ARCHITECT: Schneider & Herter DATE: 1897-98 STYLE: Neo-Gothic, Church Faced in bluish-gray Vermont marble, the church building is a distinguished example of late nineteenth-century neo-Gothic church design. The symmetrical tripartite facade, featuring projecting corner towers with prominent spires, is enriched with gabled arches, lancet windows, finials, and an impressive rose window of leaded opalescent glass with jewel work. After nearly a century of use, the church’s grandeur and architectural integrity are very much apparent.

Mount Morris Brownstones: 6–10 Mount Morris Park West Designed by James A. Ware 1891 This row of brownstone houses has recently been restored and is in beautiful condition. The architect, James A. Ware, is most recognized for his development of the dumbbell tenement.

Ansche Chesed Synagogue, ca. 1910. The Congregation Ansche Chesed was established in 1828 by a group of German, Dutch and Polish Jews who split off from Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. The community was originally based on the Lower East Side and their first purpose-built synagogue was on Norfolk Street (now the Angel Orensanz Center). As the city expanded northward, the community moved in that direction as well. After calling a number of buildings home the congregation, now consisting of traditional German Jews and recent immigrants, settled in a new building in fashionable Harlem on 114th Street. The grand synagogue was fashioned as neo-Classical temple with a large portico and massive columns. Designed by Edward I. Shire, the cornerstone dates the building with dual dates, 1908 and 5668, on the Hebrew calendar. The building served the community well, but by the 1920s a larger space as needed. A new synagogue was constructed on the corner of 100th Street and West End Avenue. The community moved to that space in 1928. The building at 114th Street became the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Milagrosa), which served the Hispanic community in Harlem. Since 1980, it has housed the Mount Neboh Baptist Church.

Turks Lounge and Bar, March 11, 1954.

Harlem churches have been an important part of the historical shaping of the neighborhood. For decades, they have been centers for community bonding and healing. Many of these churches have been involved with social movements like the fight for civil rights and the abolition of slavery. Many historic Harlem churches have lost some of their popularity as time has passed, but they still hold spiritual importance in their neighborhoods. As property values rise in an ever-gentrifying city, a few churches have been struggling to stay open as tithes and parishioners have dwindled. However, the members remain hopeful. On this walk, interact with structures of beauty and importance in the Harlem community.

Graham Court Apartments 1923–1937 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard Designed by Clinton & Russell, 1899–1901 This complex was built by major Harlem landowner William Waldorf Astor as a luxury apartment house. Designed in the Italian Renaissance style, the complex features a grand gated-entryway leading to a large, landscaped interior court which provides an abundance of light and air as well as passive recreation space for the residents. Several years after this building was completed the architects designed a similarly luxurious sister building, the Apthorp Apartments, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Graham Court was designated a New York City landmark in 1984.

Mount Olivet Baptist Church (Temple Israel) 201–203 Lenox Avenue Designed by Arnold W. Brunner, 1906–07 This Neo-Classical limestone building looks like a Roman temple, yet it was originally constructed as a synagogue. Arnold W. Brunner designed many synagogues, including Shearith Israel located on Central Park West, 10 years before this building, in 1897. If one looks closely, Stars of David can be found adorning the building. Mount Olivet, the first African-American congregation on Lenox Avenue, has occupied this building since 1924. The congregation was organized in 1878 and continues to worship at this site today. This building is an example of religious structures in Harlem serving different religions and cultures over time as residents change.

Graham Court Apartments, 1905. Graham Court is large luxury apartment building that was financed by William Waldorf Astor and designed by the firm of Clinton & Russell in 1901. Constructed during a period of massive residential development in Harlem, the Italian Renaissance structure is quadrangle with the four sides surrounding a grand central courtyard. The apartments were marketed for middle and upper class residents. These tenants were entirely white until Graham Court was integrated in the late 1920s (one of the last major apartment buildings in Harlem to do so). It became a fashionable address for Harlem's black residents in the 1930s and 1940s. The building was designated a landmark in 1984 and has undergone renovations in the last few decades to restore some of the grandeur lost in the financially chaotic decades between 1960 and and 1990.

Hotel Theresa ca. 1934 Built by Gustavus Sidenberg, a lace dealer who named the hotel for his late wife before marrying another Theresa, the Hotel Theresa was hailed as a triumphant testament to Harlem's arrival as a self-contained district. It was the tallest Harlem structure of its day, retaining that distinction until 1973, when the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. state office building was erected. The structure's height, together with the stylized sunrise on the façade, symbolized the builder's hopes for all the good things modernity was still to bring to Harlem. Sidenberg maintained a strict policy that excluded black people, except as servants. Many other hotels, theaters, and department stores discriminated against blacks during the years now celebrated as the Harlem Renaissance. Not until 1937, nearly twenty years after African Americans came to dominate Harlem's population, was this discriminatory policy rescinded at the Hotel Theresa. New black owners welcomed boxer Joe Louis, singer and actress Lena Horne, and dancer and singer Josephine Baker, as well as Cuban premiere Fidel Castro. Senator John F. Kennedy would choose the Hotel Theresa as his forum when he asked Harlem blacks for their support, and Malcolm X would form the Organization of Afro-American Unity in the top floor's double-height dining room.

Harlem Opera House ca. 1905 Impresario Oscar Hammerstein's 1,800-seat Harlem Opera House was designed by one of the city's most productive theater specialists, J. B. McElfatrick & Sons. The facade was ornately embellished with arabesque panels and a hierarchy of pilasters; allegorical statuary surmounted its crowning parapet. Its interpretation of European architecture was as free as that of any Disney castle. Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon took over the Harlem Opera House around 1903 and operated there until they leased a newly-built theater at 253 West 125th Street (corner of Lenox Avenue) in 1914. Hurtig & Seamon's (New) Burlesque Theatre played to an all-white clientele, but in 1928, that structure became the Apollo Theatre.

The Wadleigh High School for Girls 215-25 W. 114th Street, Harlem 1902 Hailed as “a triumph of architectural skill,” The Wadleigh High School for Girls was among the first public high schools built in New York City and the first high school for girls. Designed in the Colligate Gothic style by school architect C.B.J. Snyder, the impressive red brick and buff limestone structure boasts a 125-foot tower. Constructed at a total cost of $900,000 inclusive of furnishings and equipment, The Wadleigh’s 3,000 student capacity had 80 classrooms, 3 gymnasia and a 1,500-seat auditorium and was the first school building to have electric elevators. In February 1903, the New York Times described The Wadleigh as “the finest high school building in the world.” Notable alumnae include actresses Jean Stapleton and Isabel Sanford.

122nd Street, east from Seventh Avenue (now Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard). Ca. 1905. Thaddeus Wilkerson's street scene has every appearance of a Sunday stroll, with men, women, and children (plus one stray dog!) all out and about. The church in the background is St. Martin’s Episcopal. The storefronts of the corner building at right is (then No. 2039) are J. Perlmutter, possibly a grocer, and American Lenox Laundry.

135 West 115th Street. Remodeled apartments, 1941.

Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity ca. 1932 Inspired by Henry Hobson Richardson's Trinity Church in Boston (1872-1877), Harlem's Holy Trinity is built of granite with bands of reddish brown Longmeadow sandstone. Its three buildings are highly individual but still coherent as a group. A particularly masterful touch is the cluster of homelike chimneys that balances the institutional center lantern. On the interior, the church is fifty feet square at the crossing, with shallow transepts and a raised chancel embellished with carving, stained glass, and mosaics. Because of two devastating fires, these decorations supplied by the Tiffany Studios no longer exist.

This bar is renowned for its history as a performance venue in Harlem, hosting such greats as Billie Holliday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane and patrons such as James Baldwin and Langston Hughes in its famed Zebra Room. The exterior and interior contain hallmarks of the Art Deco style including the graphic signage on the front of the building. It has been used in numerous television shows, music videos and movies. The bar was restored in the late 1990s. Note- The Lenox Lounge is no longer open.

311 Lenox Avenue, 1920. The better known and more prominent location of the Corn Exchange Bank in Harlem occupied a large lot at the corner of 125th Street and Park Avenue (built as the Mount Morris Bank in 1883 and taken over by the Corn Exchange in 1913). Bu,t with the success of the bank, further expansion in the neighborhood was undertaken in 1919. A four-story house was purchased near the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue. It was quickly demolished and a new bank structure designed by S. Edson Gage was quickly constructed, featuring a large arched window.