Advance Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Organization, 1939. The UNIA, founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914, advocated universal black solidarity and exerted considerable influence prior to Garvey’s 1925 deportation. The organization was headquartered on 135th Street in Harlem, and operated hundreds of chapters worldwide. The buildings on in this photograph were demolished by Robert Moses, under the pretense of slum clearance, for the construction of the Lenox Terrace housing development, which now occupies the superblock between 132nd and 135th Streets, Fifth Avenue, and Malcolm X Boulevard (then Lenox Avenue).

The Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP), part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to stimulate the economy and create jobs during the Great Depression, employed thousands of artists between 1935 and 1943 to create artworks for public spaces. This groundbreaking democratic experiment celebrated and supported American art and artists by providing a source of income, enhancing public buildings, and enriching the lives of Americans in the throes of the Great Depression. The Art Commission reviewed hundreds of Federal Art Project commissions during this period, including murals, sculpture and mosaics. A significant portion of the WPA/FAP commissions in our collection were installed in public health and hospital facilities. There is a noticeable shift in theme and tone depending on the location of murals. Murals in children's wards often focused on nursery rhymes and fanciful themes, while those in nurses' recreation rooms were "relaxing" and focused on familial scenes. Murals in doctors' recreation rooms focused on the history and progress of medicine, while those in psychiatric wards sought to provide therapy for mental distress. In the late 1930s, the WPA/FAP commissioned a series of murals for Harlem Hospital, located on the east side of Lenox Avenue between 136th Street and 137th Street. It was the first major United States government commission awarded to African American artists. While the WPA approved the artists' sketches, the hospital's superintendent and the commissioner of hospitals objected to four of the proposed murals on the grounds that they included too much "Negro" subject matter. In response, the Harlem Artists Guild, the Artists Union, and the hospital's first African American physician, Louis T. Wright, worked to support the artists and publicize the controversy. With this support, the artists prevailed and their murals were submitted to the Art Commission for review and approval. In 1993, the two Harlem Hospital murals by Charles Alston were conserved through the Municipal Art Society's Adopt-A-Mural program. Starting in 2005, as part of the construction of the new Harlem Hospital Center, murals by Charles Alston, Alfred Crimi, Vertis Hayes and Georgette Seabrooke were removed from the old building and conserved. In 2012, they were reinstalled prominently in the center's Mural Pavilion, celebrating the hospital and Harlem's rich African American history and culture.

The Harlem Hospital, now the Harlem Hospital Center, ca. 1915. The Harlem Hospital was opened as a holding center for patients awaiting treatment at Randalls Island, Ward Island, and Bellevue Hospital. The facilities were opened in 1897 in a Victorian Mansion at East 120th Street bordering the East River. The 54-bed facility, which was founded under the Department of Public Charities and Corrections, had to quickly expand to accommodate an influx of new African American residents to the neighborhood of Harlem in the early 20th century. By 1907, the Harlem Hospital moved to its current location, at Lenox Avenue between 136th and 137th Street. Today, the hospital remains a symbol of pride for the Black community of Harlem: it's where James Baldwin was born, where Martin Luther King was treated after a near-fatal stabbing and a site of many of the community's great struggles. In 1998, former state judge Bruce Wright told the New York Times the Harlem Hospital was "like a mother figure." From the 1890s until the 1920s, reforms were taking place in various cities across the country, and New York was no exception. City bureaucracies such as the police force, firefighters, and medical unions vied for autonomy from city governance. African American communities, who already found it difficult to secure positions of power in the political sphere, were now barred from participation altogether by discriminatory policies of unions, societies, and "expert" groups. Autonomous bureaucracies were formed to "reduce drastically both the access of nonwhite outsiders and of their own executive and supervisory ranks," according to an essay titled: "Black Power and the Rise of Bureaucratic Autonomy in New York City Politics: The Case of Harlem Hospital." The essay also asserts that the city hospital bureaucracy, comprised of various medical societies and "lay groups" in the field "skillfully asserted their monopoly in the area of health 'expertise' in order to resist what they viewed as the intrusion of nonwhite doctors and dentists." These groups maintained an unequal distribution of wealth and benefits amongst urban populations. Black New Yorkers were barred from joining self-governing city bureaucracies, firstly due to racist policies and because these communities had little access to reach the educational or fiscal status membership required. Bureaucracy leaders feared African Americans might outrank them if they were allowed to participate in these groups in any capacity. Following the end of World War I, city politicians became suspicious of these organizations and began pushing for greater integration. By 1919, the first African American physician in any city hospital, Dr. Louis T. Wright, was appointed a visiting-staff member at the Harlem Hospital. Though he was given the lowest possible position, this opened the doors for six other African American physicians to be hired. A group of white doctors and staff members resigned as an act of protest, but this only encouraged Wright. He later became the first Black Police Surgeon, the first Black recipient of the American College of Surgeons fellowship, and the Director of the Department of Surgery in 1943. However, Wright was not the only Black medical professional that Harlem Hospital fostered. In 1923, the Hospital opened the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing to train Black nurses, who weren't allowed to train at any other city hospital. The school closed in 1977, though it played a vital role in training generations of young Black medical professionals. The Harlem Hospital saved the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on September 20th, 1958. The civil rights activist was stabbed at his own book signing at the Harlem location of Blumstein's, pictured here. Reportedly, the wound was so severe that "a sneeze could have killed him:" the letter opener which was lodged in Dr. King's chest had barely missed his aorta. A team of Surgeons, both Black and white, operated on King for over two hours, saving the young leader's life. A few decades later, in the 1980s, the New York State Department of Health and Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) found numerous instances of patient harm, violations of the state hospital and Medicare standards, and "primarily in the areas of nursing care and the building's cleanliness and safety," including an unusually high death rate, reported in "Medicare Standards at Harlem Hospital." Beginning in 1987, the HCFA has regularly monitored the conditions of the hospital and noted great improvements in the facilities and care the hospital offers. This would not be the last of the hospital's troubles: after reducing the tax subsidy to public hospitals from 228 million dollars to just 60 million dollars in 1995, Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to lay off around 1,500 members of the hospital's staff. The Harlem Hospital, like other city hospitals, was in danger of being sold off to a private company due to its lack of profitability. ...

Playground on West 133rd Street, undated photo. The West 134th Street bath house is visible at upper left. The buildings in this photo would all be razed ahead of the construction of the Lincoln Houses.

Station house for the FDNY’s Engine 87 (Marine), November 24, 1937. The Engine 87 marine company was established in 1908, with a station house on the Harlem River at 132nd Street. The company moved to the facility shown in Berenice Abbott’s photo in 1922. Construction of the Harlem River Drive caused the station house to move to the Lower East Side, at the foot of Grand Street in 1954, before the company was disbanded in 1954.

As New York battles the Coronavirus pandemic this summer, city businesses and public spaces are re-opening in phases. In Phase 3, libraries, tattoo parlors, spas, massage and nail salons, basketball and tennis courts, dog runs, and public beaches are among the spaces to open back up to the public—including some of these long-standing New York City establishments.

The Bronx is named after Jonas Bronck, a Nordic European settler who arrived in the colony of New Netherlands in 1639. Bronck and his Dutch wife, Teuntje Joriaens, established their farmstead in what is now Mott Haven at the confluence of the Harlem River and Bronx Kill overlooking Randall’s Island. In 1670 much of the area was acquired by the Morris family, who established a large manor called Morissania. The family retained ownership—and the area remained sparsely populated—through the early 19th century. It was the arrival of the New York and Harlem Railroad line, announced in 1840, that finally persuaded the Morrises to embrace suburban development on their estate. Jordan L. Mott, the neighborhood’s namesake, purchased sizable tracts from the Morris family in 1841 and 1848. Hoping to create a “downtown of Westchester County” (of which this area was then still a part), he laid out streets and building lots and began marketing the new hamlet called Mott Haven. According to Mott’s plan, the southern portion was devoted to industrial uses, including his own iron works, all served by a purpose-built, 3,000-foot canal. The northern section was reserved for tidy residential buildings, protected by restrictive covenants from anything “pernicious to health or noxious or offensive to the neighborhood.” Other developers soon followed Mott to the South Bronx, purchasing large tracts from the Morris family and laying out their own suburbs such as Wilton (subdivided 1857) and North New York (1860)—now both part of the neighborhood of Mott Haven. The Morris family itself entered the development business, planning the industrial neighborhood of Port Morris. Development of these tracts was steady, if not as rapid as their promoters may have wanted. Mott Haven proper—which consisted of the area between Third Avenue and the Harlem River—was the most populous, containing a concentration of modest, mostly wood-framed, houses built for local factory workers. By the 1860s the area even boasted a few brick rowhouses, some of which still survive. Much of the area, however, remained in the hands of real estate investors waiting for the area to gain in value. The Panic of 1873 delayed this by several years, although around the same time, in 1874, the South Bronx was annexed into New York City, likely ensuring its eventual development as an urban neighborhood. The arrival of mass transit (the 1887 opening of the Suburban Rapid Transit Company’s 138th Street Station, later part of the IRT Third Avenue Elevated) provided the ultimate spark for the area’s growth. Within a decade or two, most of Mott Haven’s streets were completely built up with a diverse range of buildings, from comfortable single-family rowhouses, to larger multi-family tenements and apartment buildings. Industry also blossomed. Mott’s iron works, now controlled by his descendants, continued to expand. Other manufacturers moved into the area including a remarkable number of piano manufacturers. In fact, by the early 20th century the Bronx had (by one count) 63 piano factories—43 of them in Mott Haven—producing more than 100,000 instruments a year. Mott Haven’s dense industrial base meant the neighborhood was particularly hard hit by the deindustrialization of New York City in the mid 20th century. Though the South Bronx became a symbol of urban decay and disinvestment by the 1970s, it also remained a vibrant immigrant neighborhood with new institutions, such as the Teatro de Puerto Rico, moving into the many surviving historic buildings. The rich history and architectural distinction of Mott Haven has been recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission through the designation of three historic districts (including the first in the Bronx) and several individual landmarks.

Harlem Hospital, ca. 1907.

Harlem native and former state judge Bruce Wright called the Harlem Hospital a "mother figure." The Harlem Hospital has provided healthcare for a majority of the area's residents for over a century. It's where a young Martin Luther King Jr. was saved from a near-fatal knife wound, which he referenced in his final public address, "I Have Been to the Mountaintop." Read on to learn the history of the Harlem Hospital.

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.

Ye Olde Barber Shop at 2193 Fifth Avenue in Harlem, 1939. These buildings were razed a few years later, ahead of the construction of the Lincoln Houses, a NYCHA development completed in December, 1948.

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.