17 East 128th Street ca. 1864 This charming building is one of the few surviving wood frame houses in Harlem, built when Harlem was still a rural village separate from New York City. Designed with Second Empire and Italianate elements by an unknown architect, the house is clad in wood clapboard and features a full-width porch and a slate mansard roof. The house stands as a reminder of Harlem’s early history before being annexed to the city in 1873. 17 East 128th Street is a designated New York City Individual Landmark .

Gus Hill's Minstrels, 1935. Gus Hill (born Gustave Metz) was vaudeville performer who was originally known for his juggling of large pins, called Indian clubs. Hill became a burlesque and vaudeville impresario. He founded the Columbia Amusement Company and was the president of the American Burlesque Association. The building seen here was constructed circa 1869. The Minstrels likely performed in a space within the building, which as various times also hosted political meetings and a gymnasium. The unseen ground floor of this large structure included a garage, a Chinese laundry, a paint store, a drugstore, a produce stand, and a restaurant.

2002–2008 5th Avenue Designed by Christian Brand 1868 These Italianate brownstone houses are survivors of the early development that started in Harlem beginning in the 1860s but was temporarily halted because of the Panic of 1873 and the economic depression that followed. They predate the oldest buildings in the designated Mount Morris Park Historic District and are virtually intact.

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.

Renamed in honor of Marcus Garvey in 1973, the park was built largely as a green space for Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall cronies, many of whom lived uptown by the 1860s. The land for the park had been purchased by the city in 1839, but landscaping was long delayed. Its design was eventually supervised by Ignaz A. Pilat, who would later serve as an able associate of Frederick Law Olmsted during the creation of Central Park.

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.

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.

161 West 129th Street, ca. 1932.

Janes Walk 2023 Our Lovely Tour Guide: Kathy Bensen-Haskins As we make our way to the first stop on the tour, we will give you some background on Landmark East Harlem. It was founded in 2015 by a coalition of organizations and individuals whose mission is to protect the special character of the neighborhood. We do this by working to secure City landmark designation and State and National Register listing for individual properties and historic districts in East Harlem. We also advocate for contextual new development and adaptive reuse of older properties. We have succeeded in getting three individual buildings designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and East Harlem’s first historic district listed on the State and National Registers. We hope the area we are about to tour will be the second historic district so listed later this year. In 2020 we commissioned a historic preservationist to conduct a reconnaissance historic resource survey for the area we are about to tour. Later this year, the New York State Board for Historic Preservation will meet and review nominations for both individual structures and districts, and we hope it will recommend the district for listing on the State Register of Historic Places. It will then be forwarded to the National Park Service for review and listing on the National Register.

Saint Andrew’s Church ARCHITECT: Henry M. Gordon DATE: 1872-73 STYLE: Gothic, Church The architectural composition of Saint Andrew’s Church is distinctive and picturesque in the Gothic manner. Constructed of rock-faced granite, the Church’s rugged appearance has a solid quality and great dignity. The interesting massing of structural elements culminates in a handsome clock tower, adjacent to the south transept on 127th Street. Two graceful pointed-arch openings on each side of the belfry give form and deep shadow to the tower, while the slate-covered spire is adorned at each corner by delicate turrets. Cruciform in shape, the plan has galleries in the transept and side aisles in the nave. Simple buttresses, at the exterior of the south aisle wall, lend structural support and considerable interest to the design.

Gristede Brothers, ca. 1921. Founded by two teenage brothers, Diedrich (Dick) and Charles Gristede, in 1888, Gristede's would become a city mainstay over the next half century. The original small grocery store, located at 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue, prospered and within 50 years the grocery store had become a successful chain with more than 150 stores in the city, Westchester, Long Island and Connecticut. This 128th Street location opened in a new purpose-built structure in 1920. Today the building still stands, sans the 'Gristede Brothers 1920' lettering that once graced the triangular pediment at the top.

"127th Street, north side, west from No. 29. In the background is St. Andrew's Protestant Episcopal Church, at No. 1-9 East 127th Street, July 28, 1932." This block of East 127th Street between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue has been give the honorific name of “Langston Hughes Place.” Hughes lived in an apartment on the top floor of the brownstone at no. 20 (approximately halfway down the block on the left) between 1947 and 1967. The 1869-built rowhouse was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981 due to its connection to Hughes.

Harlem was once a quiet suburban village. Until the mid-19th century, the area was largely undeveloped; most structures were isolated, free-standing frame houses. This collection surveys some of the frame houses that once stood in Upper Manhattan — including a few hardy examples that have survived to the present day.

A direct means of making Harlem's first apartment buildings more attractive to potential tenants was the practice of including an ornate banking room on the ground floor. In fact, before 1920, bank buildings that did not include apartment suites were uncommon. The Mount Morris Bank/Morris Apartments was the result of a limited competition that included McKim, Mead & White. Designed by Lamb & Rich and completed in 1884, the structure housed apartments that were later transformed into offices. Splendidly devised, the cherry-red brick and terra-cotta structure exhibited a stylistic lineage derived from Romanesque, Queen Anne, and Dutch sources. It was one of Lamb's great achievements. One of about six small banks founded in late nineteenth-century Harlem, the Mount Morris Bank was by 1913 absorbed by a mightier citywide financial institution, the Corn Exchange Bank. The building itself was partially destroyed by arson in 1997.

52 West 132nd Street, ca. 1932.

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.

Originally constructed for the Baptist Church of the Redeemer, this freestanding Romanesque Revival style building is of great cultural importance to the city for its ties to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s-60’s. After changing hands several times, it was sold in 1936 to the Friendship Baptist Church, founded by the Rev. Dr. John Iverson Mumford. From the beginning, the church supported Civil Rights. Its second pastor, Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr., was an associate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered a sermon here in 1955. Among Rev. Kilgore’s other local and national Civil Rights efforts, he led the church to found the House of Friendship Community Center, which, in 1963, became the National Headquarters for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, organized by Bayard Rustin. The congregation, still active today, was deeply involved in organizing the Harlem community’s participation in that historic March. In addition to its social and political significance, 170 West 130th Street’s façade is architecturally significant as the work of Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first African-American architect registered in New York State. The House of Friendship Community Center is located in the Central Harlem West -- 130-132nd Street Historic District.

Take your mother for a stroll around East and Central Harlem above 125th Street, straddling Fifth Avenue, the traditional dividing line between East and Central Harlem. Members of Landmark East Harlem (LEH) will introduce you to the treasures of the second historic district that LEH has proposed for listing on the National and State Registers of Historic Places. Featured sites include 19th-century wood-frame houses, Victorian-era rowhouses, landmarks associated with James Baldwin and Langston Hughes, former church buildings that have been given new purpose, and the brownstone stoop that served as the site of the iconic 1958 photograph of jazz musicians by Art Kane for Esquire magazine.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church ca. 1912 St. Andrew's, the first Protestant Episcopal congregation in Harlem, was organized in 1829 and opened its first church on Fourth (now Park) Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets the following year. Several additions enlarged the church before fire destroyed it in 1871. The next year, the congregation broke ground on the same site for a new church designed by Henry M. Congdon (1834-1922). The Gothic-style building was completed in 1873. St. Andrew's grew along with Nieuw Haarlem, a village established in 1658 by Peter Stuyvesant and bounded by the Harlem River, Morningside heights, 110th Street, and 155th Street. Because of the congregation's steady growth and the noise and smoke of the railroad along Park Avenue, a larger building on a different site was deemed necessary for St. Andrew's. In 1888, the building firm of Mahoney and Watson was hired to dismantle the church, brick by brick, and to reassemble and enlarge it on its present site, the east side of Fifth Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets. The larger building, shown here, accommodated congregants from the "aristocratic apartment houses and the popular brownstones'" of the neighborhood, populated primary by Germans and Irish and graced by such amenities as Oscar Hammerstein's Harlem Opera House on West 125th Street.

12 West 129th Street, ca. 1932. This building was erected in the late 19th century by William Paul and Thomas Wilson. The two men, carpenters and business partners, had purchased the lot late in 1862 to construct a two-and-a-half-story house that they initially addressed as "129th off Fifth." Since 1862, this house has seen numerous alterations. The Moorish-inspired porch was added in 1882-83 after John Simpson, the founder of the Estey Piano Company, and his family moved into the home. A full third story was added in 1896 when an order of Franciscan Sisters took over the property. The Sisters converted the home into a convent and reception home for poor children. According to the 1900 census, six sisters resided here; in 1903, one priest, four sisters, and eight servants were in residence; in 1920 there were nine sisters; and in 1925, there were five sisters and fifteen children between the ages of two and nine. In order to accommodate its new use, the Franciscan Sisters made many grand changes to the home—including enlarging the building itself. Now known as 12 West 129th Street, the home is a landmarked building and one of the last free-standing houses in Harlem.

New York Public Library, Harlem Branch. March 20, 1928. A Carnegie Library designed by the McKim, Mead & White firm, the Harlem Branch opened to the public in January 1909. It replaced an earlier Harlem Branch library which, according to the NYPL, had been in operation as early as 1826.

The cast-iron frame watchtower predates the surrounding park's completion. Built in 1856 by Julius Kroehl, it occupies the highest point in the area. A watchman in the tower constantly looked out for fires and sounded the alarm by ringing an enormous bell. Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph would eventually put such towers out of business. This tower, which ceased operations in the 1870s, is the only surviving watchtower in the city.

Also known as the Mount Morris Turkish Baths, June's Landmark Spotlight for NYC Pride Month is located at 28 East 125th Street. Built in 1889-90 by C. Abbott French & Co., the structure was designed as a blend of two popular styles at the time, neo-Grec and Queen Anne.

Pilgrim Pentecostal Church of God, 1936. In the 1930s the majority of African American churches in Harlem met in residences and storefronts. According to a study of the religious institutions in the neighborhood in 1930, 122 congregations met in spaces that were not churches or assembly halls, and the number of these homes and storefront churches was likely much higher. The Reverend of this Pentecostal Church was Elder Johnson, seen here descending the church steps. He presided over a flock of only 28 when this photograph was taken.

Metropolitan Baptist Church ARCHITECT: John R. Thomas DATE: 1884-85 STYLE: Gothic, Romanesque Revival Designed in two sections by different architects, the Metropolitan Baptist Church (originally the New York Presbyterian Church) is a fine example of the many new churches built in Harlem during the late 19th century at a time when the local church represented wealth and stability to the community. The building is distinguished by a somewhat unusual blend of the Gothic and Romanesque Revival styles, both favored in part for their imposing character, and reflects the importance of its original congregation. The earlier section of rough-faced limestone church, fronting on West 128th Street, was planned by John Rochester Thomas in 1884. It housed a small lecture room/chapel and was erected with the intention of adding a principal auditorium structure at a later date. The addition, comprising the Seventh Avenue facade and the northern section of the church, was completed in 1890 and designed by Richard R. Davis. Davis’ extension, with its dominating gable and towers, complemented the Thomas design incorporating many details from the earlier structure.

St. Andrew's Protestant Episcopal Church, ca. 1908. In 1829, St. Andrew’s became the first Episcopal parish in the Village of Harlem. After its first church on East 127th Street was destroyed in an 1871 fire, architect Henry M. Congdon designed a new Victorian Gothic structure as its replacement. In 1889, the Congregation elected to move to a new site at 127th Street and Fifth Avenue in order to better reflect the geographic distribution of its pewholders (in the 19th century, it was commonplace for churchgoers to rent their pews). Rather than build a new church, Congdon was enlisted to develop a plan for a new building incorporating elements of the current structure. Today’s church is Congdon’s relocated St. Andrews, with additional features added and adaptations made to suit the new site, including a 125-foot slate-clad clocktower.

Park & Tilford ca. 1908 By the time the Park and Tilford building was completed in 1907, architect B. Hustace Simonson had emerged as a leader in duplex apartment design. His fashionable reserve is well-represented here: Ionic pilasters on the upper floor correspond to the ground story's Ionic piers and engaged columns. Only the entrance to the offices has any decorative flourish-a flowery garland. Park and Tilford was one of New York's most prestigious purveyors of fine spirits, choice groceries, and tobacco. The rich of Harlem shopped here in the 1910s, and a teenage Henry Roth (later to become an acclaimed writer) worked as a delivery boy. Delivering groceries throughout the neighborhood, he observed that Harlem was a divided community: white gentiles shopped primarily on 125th Street, Jews on 116th Street, and African Americans on 135th Street. Roth appreciated all too well that there were many places where he, a Jew, was no more welcome than were black newcomers. Fearing the effects of the anticipated enactment of Prohibition and faced with an increasingly poor and black neighborhood, Park and Tilford closed its doors in 1919.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 126th Street ca. 1964 Following the killing of James Powell, a fifteen-year-old boy, by police, on July 16th, 1964, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant erupted into six consecutive nights of rioting and protests. Disparate groups in both communities, outraged at continued racism and police brutality, organized a series of meetings that looked for solutions in the form of everything from passive protest to active revolution. Throughout the riots, protestors clashed with the police, whose presence and anti-riot tactics were inflammatory for the grieving neighborhood. Four thousand New Yorkers were said to have taken part in the riots that ended on July 22nd, leaving one rioter dead, and hundreds more injured and arrested.

Originally constructed for the Baptist Church of the Redeemer, this freestanding Romanesque Revival style building is of great cultural importance to the city for its ties to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s-60’s. After changing hands several times, it was sold in 1936 to the Friendship Baptist Church, founded by the Rev. Dr. John Iverson Mumford. From the beginning, the church supported Civil Rights. Its second pastor, Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr., was an associate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered a sermon here in 1955. Among Rev. Kilgore’s other local and national Civil Rights efforts, he led the church to found the House of Friendship Community Center, which, in 1963, became the National Headquarters for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, organized by Bayard Rustin. The congregation, still active today, was deeply involved in organizing the Harlem community’s participation in that historic March. In addition to its social and political significance, 170 West 130th Street’s façade is architecturally significant as the work of Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first African-American architect registered in New York State. The House of Friendship Community Center is located in the Central Harlem West -- 130-132nd Street Historic District.

All Saints Roman Catholic Church Complex ARCHITECT: Architect: Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell DATE: Year Built: 1883-1893 STYLE: Italian Gothic Revival, Venetian Gothic Revival, Gothic Revival The Roman Catholic Church of All Saints, with its lively and animated design and exceptionally fine ornament, was created by one of New York’s leading nineteenth-century architects, James Renwick, Jr., of the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell. Among the many churches he designed during his long career, the Church of All Saints has been called his best. Constructed over the course of several years, the church (1883-93), parish house (1886-89) and school (1902-04) formed an important anchor for the rapidly expanding Harlem neighborhood when they were built, and continue that role today. Renwick, architect of the original Smithsonian building in Washington, designed many of New York City’s most beautiful and well-known churches, including Grace Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Church of All Saints is his most fully evolved Italian Gothic Revival style design, an unusual stylistic choice for a late nineteenth century church in New York. The building displayed the texture, shape and color variations that were so important during that period due to the influence of the writings of John Ruskin. The facades of All Saints combine the mixed tones of light and dark brick, terra cotta and stone, with an assortment of window shapes and sizes in a building which is both spirited and inspiring. The neighboring parish house displays elements of the Venetian Gothic Revival style, with its stone balconies pierced by pinwheeling designs, and its narrow windows topped by filled gothic arches. The school building, located north of the church along 130th Street and completed several years later by Renwick’s nephew, William W. Renwick, displays a simpler version of the Gothic Revival style, with plain brick wall surfaces juxtaposed with light-colored stone and areas of elaborate terra-cotta ornament.

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.

Fire at 102 West 129th Street, May 5, 1925. A fire was discovered in the basement of No. 102 West 129th Street, at Lenox Avenue, in the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 5. All tenants were evacuated without serious injury.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "My parents' wedding day in 1958." —Teri Graham

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.