Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church ARCHITECT: George W. Foster, Jr. DATE: 1923-25 STYLE: Neo-Gothic The Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, built in 1923-25, is the sixth home of New York City’s first black congregation and the founding church of the A.M.E. Zion Conference of churches, which spread throughout the United States and Canada. Established in 1796, under the leadership of James Varick, Mother Zion has a long and illustrious history of religious and social activism. In the nineteenth century, the A.M.E. Zion conference was popularly known as the “Freedom Church” because of its important role in the abolitionist movement; many conference churches, including Mother Zion, served as stations on the Underground Railroad. The movement of the Mother Zion congregation northward, beginning in lower Manhattan, to the present location in Harlem, reflects the residential patterns of New York City’s black population. At the time the present church was constructed, Harlem contained the majority of New York’s black residents. A distinguished composition in the neo-Gothic style, reflecting the tradition of Protestant church design in the 1920s, the church building was designed by George W. Foster, Jr., one of the first black architects to be registered in the United States. During the twentieth-century leadership of Pastor James W. Brown and his successor, Dr. Benjamin C. Robeson, Mother Zion rose to even greater prominence as a religious and social institution. Robeson’s civil rights crusade attracted such notable Harlem residents as Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois, and the Zion pulpit was often a platform for the social and political activism of Robeson’s brother, Paul Robeson. Mother Zion has continued its almost two-hundred year tradition of service to its congregation and community, not only addressing the spiritual needs of its members but also providing an array of social programs.

Savoy Ballroom, c. 1930. This popular Harlem dance hall was referred to as "Home of the Happy Feet," and the "World's Finest Ballroom." The venue's lifespan was a relatively short 30-some years, but there is no doubt it made major contributions to the artistry of the Swing era. A plaque, dedicated in 2002, says the following: "Here once stood the legendary Savoy...a hothouse for the development of jazz in the Swing Era. Visually dazzling and spacious, the Savoy nightly featured the finest jazz bands in the nation...the great jazz dancers who appeared on its block-long floor ranged from professionals...to everyday Harlemites. During a time of racial segregation and strife, the Savoy was one of the most culturally and racially integrated of institutions, and its fame was international. It was the heartbeat of Harlem's community and a testament to the indomitable spirit and creative impulse of African-Americans. It was a catalyst of innovation where dancers and musicians blended to forge new, wide-spread and long-lasting traditions in music and dance." The club was opened on March 12, 1926 by Jay Faggen, who owned downtown swing venue Roseland, and Moe Gale, a Jewish businessman. It was managed by Charles Buchanan, a Black civil rights activist. The ground floor of the Savoy was marked by a hulking marquee. Patrons entered a lavish lobby, adorned with a glass chandelier and marble staircase which led to the 10,000 square foot ballroom on the second floor. The block-long ballroom of the Savoy had a capacity of 4,000 guests and saw around 700,000 patrons annually, meaning the wood-sprung floor needed to be replaced once every three years. Its pink interior was bathed in colored lights, with mirrored walls and a double bandstand that allowed music to play continuously, night after night. Musical acts included Ella Fitzgerald, Al Cooper, Erskine Hawkins, Lucky Millinder, Buddy Johnson, Cootie Williams, and later be-bop jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, and Thelonious Monk. The ballroom also hosted "Battle of the Bands" competitions, the most famous face-off being between Chick Webb and Benny Goodman. In addition to musical talent, patrons attended the Savoy Ballroom for the spectacular footwork that could be seen on the dancefloor. Dances like the Lindy Hop, named for Charles Lindbergh, the Jitterbug, Flying Charleston, Jive, Snakehips, Rhumboogie, and variations of the Shimmy and Mambo were pioneered and popularized on the floor of the Savoy. The northeast corner of the ballroom now called the Cat's Corner was where experienced dancers would work on their routines all night, or enjoy dance-offs where "only the greatest...would stay on the floor to try to eliminate each other," as Barbara Engelbrecht writes in 'Swinging at the Savoy,' for the Dance Research Journal in 1983. A group called "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers" frequented the floor of the Savoy, and later went professional with the help of Herbert "Whitey," White, a bouncer with an eye for talent who was nicknamed for his streak of grey hair. Amateur dancers could learn some of the hottest new moves with the help of the Savoy Hostesses, who would partner-up for lessons for 25 cents a dance ticket. Entry to the club ranged from 30 cents to 85 cents after 8 pm, or just over $10 today. Other than a dress-code, the Savoy Ballroom had no discrimination policy. The only thing owners and staff were concerned about was whether or not you could dance. Patrons were around 85% Black and 15% white, though some nights the crowd was an even fifty-fifty. A tuxedo-wearing security team led by actor Jack La Rue monitored the crowd, and bouncers made sure patrons were dressed in a jacket and tie. The club was demolished in 1958 to make way for a housing project after many efforts to save the venue by the owners of the club, its patrons, and even Borough President Hulan Jack. The commemorative plaque was unveiled by who of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, Frankie Manning and Norma Miller.

The Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at 140-148 West 137th Street is the sixth home of New York City’s very first black church, and the founding church of the A.M.E. Zion Conference of churches. Today, the gorgeous neo-Gothic structure, built in 1923-1925, stands as a symbol of the city’s black, religious, and civil rights history while continuing to serve as a touchstone for over 1.4 million followers. In honor of Black History Month, we delve into the remarkable story of Mother Zion, which takes us beyond the Village and back. This story is adapted from a Village Preservation blog, which can be viewed here.

120 West 140th Street, 1920. Public School 139 (also called the Frederick Douglass Junior High School) was likely constructed in the first years of the 20th century. In the 1930s and 1940s school had a number of well-known teachers including poet Countee Cullen and James Allen, president of the New York State NAACP for some time. Today the former school building serves as a senior center.

Watt-Pinkney Mansion, 1925. Built in 1796 by John DeLancey, the dwelling later known as the Watt-Pinkney mansion originally stood on a low rise of what would become 139th and 140th Streets. Archibald D. Watt acquired the house and its 300-acre farm in 1826. Eleven years later, following the crash of 1837, he borrowed funds from his stepdaughter, Mary G. Pinkney (1810-1908). A mortgage on the Watt acreage secured the loan. In the 1860s, when Seventh Avenue was extended northward, the house was moved around the corner to 139th Street. Mary G. Pinkney left a fortune in uptown real estate and a house worthy of becoming a museum. However, her home was not to enjoy the fate of the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Around 1915 the Libya nightclub opened in the mansion near the foot of Libya Hill. Harlem’s most influential politicians, professionals, and theater people patronized the club, where the Clef Club provided the musicians. A young Ethel Waters, famous later as a singer and then as an actress, performed at the Libya as part of a dance duo. The nightclub closed in 1921. For a time, the local community tried to interest the City of New York in acquiring the property for a playground, but the house was ultimately demolished in 1925.

Street scene outside Daniel’s Bar & Grill, Harlem, 1939.

New York Public Library, Schomburg Collection for Research in Black Culture ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1903-05 STYLE: Neo-Classical Built as the West 135th Street Branch Library, the former Schomburg Collection building at 103 West 135th Street was designed in 1904 by the eminent firm of McKim, Mead & White. Small and dignified, the structure is one of the eleven elegant neo-Classical buildings that the firm designed for the New York City Public Library system under a generous grant from Andrew Carnegie. Located in the heart of Harlem, the Library Branch became a center of black cultural events during the 1920s, as the well-known Schomburg Collection on black history and culture, housed in the building, served as a magnet to countless intellectuals drawn to the area during the “Harlem Renaissance.” Distinguished by a fine architectural design, the building is also nationally significant as a cultural center and a site where the documentation of the black experience was a long and important tradition.

Abyssinian Baptist Church ca. 1923 Abyssinian Baptist Church was located on West 40th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues when Adam Clayton Powell Sr., arrived from New Haven to take up the pastorship of what was the largest black congregation in the world in 1908. Powell, who moved his family to a house in a predominantly white neighborhood on West 134th Street, soon tried to interest his congregation in relocating the church to Harlem but encountered considerable resistance. Abyssinian did not purchase land on West 138th Street between Seventh and Lenox Avenues until 1920. A white architectural firm designed the Gothic edifice, completed in 1923, which still features stained-glass images of blue-eyed blond angels, saints, and biblical figures. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who succeeded his father as pastor in 1937, used the substantial power base afforded by the largest black congregation in America to win election as the first black member of New York's City Council and as Harlem's Congressman for twenty-five years.

H. Adolph Howell Funeral Chapel, ca. 1926. The H. Adolph Howell Funeral Chapel was considered one of the first "funeral churches" (what would come to be known as funeral parlors). Howell was a Caribbean immigrant, local Harlem businessman and undertaker, who moved to Harlem in the first decades of the 20th century. The building at 2332 Seventh Avenue became the funeral facility in the middle of the 1920s and quickly became a prominent part of the community, a space where the neighborhood's deceased were mourned and celebrated. Often the bodies of the recently departed were laid out in state for a few days before their Sunday afternoon burials (as Sunday was the traditional day for funerals). This was the case for two famous burials that occurred at H. Adolph Howell's. In 1927 famed Harlem cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian laid in state for five days while more than 10,000 mourners passed by her coffin. In 1931 the funeral services for A'Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and mainstay of the Harlem Renaissance in her own right, also saw 10,000 mourners files passed her casket at Howell's. On the day of the funeral itself, more than 1000 people gathered outside the funeral parlor for the invite-only funeral. In later years the building served as the John Joyce-Rodney Dade Funeral Home, which only ceased operations in 2007.

Harlem YMCA, ca. 1930. Officially designed by the Architectural Bureau of the National Council of the YMCA, the architect in charge of the project was James C. Mackenzie, Jr. The red brick, neo-Georgian building was completed in 1932 and replaced a former YMCA building across the street. The building became an important location for the African American community in Harlem, with a number of well-known residents, including authors Ralph Ellison and Maria Celeste and Malcolm X.

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.

135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, home of the “Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints.” March 20, 1928. The Carnegie-funded library, designed by Charles Follen McKim, opened in July, 1905. During the 1920s, the 135th Street branch led the NYPL’s gradual integration of African-American works into its collections and programming. In 1921, the branch hosted the first annual exhibition of African-American art — the first show of its kind in Harlem. In 1926, the Afro-Puerto Rican scholar and book collector Arturo Alfonso Schomburg sold his collection — including “5,000 books; 3,000 manuscripts; 2,000 etchings and paintings; and several thousand pamphlets” — to the library, with the stipulation that the collection remain in Harlem. Schomburg himself was the collection’s curator from 1932 until his death in 1938. In 1940, the archive was renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, History and Prints. In 1972, the branch became a Research Library and was renamed the Schomburg Collection for Research in Black Culture. In 1980, a new Schomburg Center extension opened on nearby Lenox Avenue.

Mother AME Zion Church, 1925. Designed by one of the first African American architects in the United States, George W. Foster Jr., Mother Zion was completed in 1925, as the sixth and final home of the religious community. The congregation that moved into this new Gothic Revival building dates to 1796 when it was founded as the first African American church in New York. The community became the "mother" church of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Conference denomination when the church broke from the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church in 1820. During the 1930s the charismatic preacher of the this church was Reverend Dr. Benjamin C. Robeson, who spoke passionately of civil rights activism. Parishioners, both here and in its previous locations, included singer Paul Robeson (brother to the pastor) Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Marian Anderson, and Madam C.J. Walker.

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. ...

136 West 137th Street, ca. 1932.

Abyssinian Baptist Church ARCHITECT: Charles W. Bolton & Son DATE: 1922-23 STYLE: Neo-Gothic The Abyssinian Baptist Church is the home of one of New York City’s oldest church organizations and the second oldest within the family of African-American churches in Manhattan. Organized in 1808 by a small group of black worshippers who withdrew from the predominantly white First Baptist Church on Gold Street, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was incorporated in the following year, adopting the ancient name for Ethiopia. The northward movement of the Abyssinian congregation, which occupied several successive locations from its first home in a wooden church on Worth Street to its imposing stone edifice in Harlem, followed the residential patterns of New York’s black population. Under the leadership of the Reverend William Spellman during the second half of the nineteenth century, the church grew rapidly into one of the wealthiest of the “African” congregations. In the twentieth century, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.’s “social gospel,” blending social activism with spiritual leadership, set the tone for Abyssinian’s ongoing mission to serve its community. Commissioned during Powell’s tenure, the striking church building and the adjoining community house were the work of Charles W. Bolton & Son, a productive Philadelphia firm which specialized in churches. The neo-Gothic design of the church reflects the tradition of Protestant church architecture of the 1920s. Powell’s son and successor, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who served eleven terms as a U.S. Congressman, put Abyssinian at the forefront of the national crusade for social reform and civil rights. During his pastorate, the church membership grew to over 10,000, placing it among the largest Protestant churches in the world. Today, the church leadership under the Reverend Calvin Butts continues its commitment to religious and social service and economic development in Harlem.

369th Regiment Infantry Armory ARCHITECT: Tachay & Vaight DATE: 1921-34 STYLE: Art Deco The 369th Regiment Armory occupies the eastern half of the block bounded by west 142nd Street and West 143rd Street at 2360 Fifth Avenue, just off Harlem River Drive. Like other New York City armories built in the late 19th century and early 20th century, this armory is a highly specialized structure built to serve as a training and marshaling center for the National Guard. The armory consists of two sections, the drill shed, and the administration building. The building combines the medieval design forms of earlier armories with contemporary Art Deco elements.

Grocery at 552 Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard), undated photo. In 1922, this grocery was part of a network of businesses associated with the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. It was part of a cooperative network of three such Harlem groceries. As part of the organization’s agenda, African Americans were encouraged to patronize UNIA businesses in an effort to build wealth among the community. In a 1922 advertisement for UNIA businesses, the grocery is listed with a simple tagline: “oit pays to patronize your own.” In 1919, Marcus Garvey himself resided at 552 Lenox Avenue, with his then-wife Amy Ashwood Garvey.

Harlem Hospital, ca. 1907.

2465 Seventh Avenue (Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard), ca. 1939. Two sailors stand in the doorway of a Seventh Avenue restaurant; note the bunting advertising the 1939 World's Fair.

108-110 West 136th Street, 1936. In 1913 and 1915 Madam C.J. Walker, the African American businesswoman who made millions selling hair care products purchased two brownstones in Harlem. She was prompted to move to Harlem by her daughter A'Lelia, who had arrived in the city a few years earlier. Walker hired African American architect Vertner Tandy, the first black architect registered in New York State, to redesign the buildings. The resulting structure was a handsome, single, Georgian style townhouse. The building not only served as Walker's home, but the garden level was used as a beauty parlor, college, and spa. Women were able to receive training in the use of Walker's products, while also providing services to clients in an upscale locale. Walker died in 1919. Her daughter, who by the mid-1920s had become an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance (known for hosting well-attended and extravagant parties), turned the 136th Street home into an event space and cultural salon she called the Dark Tower. Lasting only a year as the Dark Tower, the house was later rented to the city for use as a health clinic (pictured here as the Harlem Health Center). In 1941, the home, then owned by the city, was demolished for a branch of the New York Public Library, which in 1951 would be renamed for Countee Cullen, black poet, and friend of A'Lelia Walker.

73 West 141st Street, ca. 1930.

The Harlem Renaissance was one of the most important cultural movements in American history. The legacies left behind, whether musical, political, or legacies of social activism, are ones whose impacts we still see everywhere in American culture today. As a part of my personal project with the Living City Project, I led a walk around Harlem, looking at historical buildings, streets, and institutions, or at least where they once were, and discussing the important people, events and activities associated with those iconic sites. I started this project with an interest in the influential jazz scene of NYC in the early 20th century. As I began to study this, I came across Billie Holiday’s incredible art and life. Although Holiday wasn’t from New York, one of her most famous songs, “Strange Fruit,” was a product of the city’s writers and musicians at the time. The lyrics were written by a Jewish school teacher, Abel Meeropol, who originally wrote them as a poem. The song was heard being sung in Cafe Society by the floor manager at the time, who told the club’s founder, Barney Josephson. Josephson then invited Holiday to come to hear the song. From there, it became the iconic and deeply powerful song we know today. Billie performed it all over the world. It became one of her signature songs. I was equally as fascinated by Holiday’s relentless, fearless singing of the song, the national interest in hearing her sing it, and the federal government’s alarm at her performing the song. Furthermore, as I read more about her and her music, I began to understand how, in many ways, “Strange Fruit” was the catalyst for other protest songs of the 20th century. After beginning with an interest in NYC Jazz, and then Billie Holiday, I arrived at the Harlem Renaissance because of the way it aligned with what fascinated me about Billie. The Harlem Renaissance was also a meeting of civil rights activism, art, and the movement, and has had long-lasting effects on American culture, just as Holiday has. This is only a small sampling of some of these incredibly important and influential institutions and figures, and it is only a fraction of the information out there about this topic. There are many scholars and organizations who have delved deeper into some of these topics, and I encourage the viewer to look beyond this introduction if they're interested. I also recognize that I am a young white woman from out of town, and this is not my community in many senses. I created this walk in hopes of appreciating and better understanding the great cultural influence that many of the figures and institutions from The Harlem Renaissance have had on my own life as well as on the lives of many Americans to this day. Spotify playlist with all songs from the tour: Harlem Renaissance Walk. I chose to include this playlist because the music is what initially drew me to this topic, and I want the reader to get to experience it as well. In addition, sometimes with history, it is hard for the reader to completely feel and understand what was going on; I feel that music is a vivid, real way to gain even the slightest understanding of the moment they’re learning about, especially when discussing an artistic, musical movement. I would encourage the reader to either listen to the playlist before starting the tour, after doing it or both. At each stop, I have included which song from the playlist goes with the stop - I encourage the viewer to play these at each stop in addition to listening to the playlist all the way through.

The 135th Street Branch of the YMCA, unknown date. The third of 12 Carnegie libraries designed by the preeminent firm of McKim, Mead & White for the New York Public Library (NYPL), the 135th Street Branch opened in 1905. Within the next ten years, African Americans started to move to Harlem in large numbers. Under newly-appointed white librarian Ernestine Rose in 1921, the 135th Street Library made significant changes to better serve a burgeoning black community. That same year, it became the first NYPL branch to have an integrated staff; in 1922, Nella Larsen began working here as an assistant and was promoted to children’s librarian two years later. The 135th Street Branch, with its literary gatherings, art exhibitions, theatrical and musical productions, and lectures, was known as “the place to go” during the Harlem Renaissance. Importantly, the library provided a rare public platform for black artists, writers, and performers as well as the opportunity to share their work with audiences of color. A young Langston Hughes made a point to visit the library the day he arrived in Harlem in 1921 (he later wrote about it in his 1963 essay “My Early Days in Harlem”). Other Harlem Renaissance luminaries who frequented the branch included poet Countee Cullen (who met Hughes here), performer Florence Mills, poet Claude McKay and writer Eric Walrond, the latter two of whom also reserved space here to work. In 1926, the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre, which included playwright Harold Jackman, performed plays by, about, and for people of color in the library’s basement (The American Negro Theatre still performs here.)

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.

Originally the West 135th Street Branch of the NYPL, this library grew exponentially over the 20th century to encompass a complex of buildings housing the prestigious Schomburg Collection for Research in Black Culture. The original building was one of 11 Carnegie-funded branches designed by the firm of McKim, Mead & White. All that remains of the building, which was designed in the firm’s characteristic Italian Renaissance Revival style, is its West 135th Street façade. During the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, the library became an important center for black cultural events and scholarship. This was due to the pioneering work of Branch Librarian Ernestine Rose, who began compiling a collection of black literature and history books beginning in the 1920s. As a result of this growing and influential collection, the library was renamed the 135th Street Branch Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints in 1925, and the following year, the NYPL increased it with the acquisition of historian, writer, and activist Arturo Alfonso Schomburg’s famous private collection. With its continued expansion, a new wing was added to the rear of the building on West 136th Street in 1941. With this addition, the library, which had doubled in size, was renamed the Countee Cullen Branch. In 1972 the collection was renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 1980, a new building was constructed at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard. The complex now represents three distinct eras for this venerable institution. 103 West 135th Street is a New York City Individual Landmark.

There have been two Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) buildings on this street. The original, which was built in 1918-19, was the YMCA Building, West 135th Street Branch at 181 West 135th Street. In 1931-32, a new building was constructed across the street at 180 West 135th Street; still in use today as the Harlem YMCA, it was first known as the YMCA Building, 135th Street Branch. The original location at 181 West 135th Street was the successor to the “Colored Men’s Branch” of the YMCA, located on West 53rd Street (1901-19). African-American YMCAs were the result of the YMCA’s official policy of racial segregation, from the organization’s beginnings in the United States in 1851 until 1946. Though excluded from white YMCAs, African Americans were encouraged to form separate branches, which became autonomous community centers. As the African-American population of Harlem rapidly increased and this facility became overcrowded, a new 135th Street Branch YMCA (today’s Harlem YMCA) was constructed across the street from the earlier building. This new 135th Street Branch, partially funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Julius Rosenwald (former president of Sears, Roebuck & Co.), and the Phelps-Stokes Fund, was called at the time of its completion the largest such facility for African-American men and boys, as well as one of the best-equipped YMCA buildings, in the country.

187 West 135th Street, 1931. Between 1925 and 1938, this apartment was the residence of Civil Rights activist James Weldon Johnson . Johnson could be described as a modern "Renaissance man" - he taught and practiced law, songwriting, poetry, as well as authored novels, and served as the United States consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua all before he was appointed head of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP). Johnson was born in Jacksonville Florida. While studying for the bar exam, Johnson was a schoolteacher and eventually served as the principal of the prestigious Stanton Preparatory School. In 1897, Stanton passed the bar making him the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar. Johnson opened a law practice in Florida while concurrently writing poetry and songs, which led him to New York in 1901 during the Great Migration. He moved to the city with his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and together they authored around 200 songs (many of which were sung on Broadway.) While in New York, Johnson remained interested in law and thus, became involved in politics. He participated in Theodore Roosevelt's presidential campaign and when Roosevelt was elected, he served as consul to Venezuela in 1906 and to Nicaragua in 1913. During this time, he anonymously published his novel, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man." By the 1920s, Johnson had become a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance as a poet and songwriter. He began working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1916 and by 1920 he was appointed executive secretary. Johnson lived in this house on 135th Street during his time as head of the NAACP, a position he held for ten years. In "Negro Americans, what now?" an essay published in 1934, Johnson writes the following: "Black America is called upon to stand as the protagonist of tolerance, of fair play, of justice, and of goodwill...White America cannot save itself if it prevents us from being saved." His home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.