Merson's Liquor and Wine, January 7, 1941.

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.

Dunbar Apartments, March 6, 1928. The Dunbar Apartments — named for the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar — are a six-building housing development built by John D. Rockefeller between 1926-1928, in response to a housing shortage in Harlem. The buildings, designed by architect Andrew J. Thomas, were the first large-scale garden apartment complex in Manhattan, and, according to the New York Times, “the first large cooperative project in the country built for occupancy by blacks.” However, the Great Depression caused many middle class residents to default on mortgages, leading Rockefeller to foreclose on the properties in 1936. The buildings were subsequently converted to rental units. In 1970, the Dunbar Apartments were designated a New York City Landmark.

303 West 142nd Street, ca. 1932.

232 West 147th Street, unknown date.

Dunbar Apartments ARCHITECT: Andrew J. Thomas DATE: 1926-28 STYLE: Apartment The Dunbar Apartments, named after the famous Black poet of the turn of the century, Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), occupies the entire block bounded by 149th and 150th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It was the first large cooperative built for Blacks and was Manhattan’s earliest large garden apartment complex. Financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and designed by the architect Andrew J. Thomas, the building was completed in 1928 and was destined, from the planning and sociological points of view, to occupy a pivotal place in the history of the Harlem community. The complex consists of six independent U-shaped buildings, containing 511 apartments, and is clustered around a large interior garden court. Eight arched entrance ways lead into the court and to public staircases. With its lawns, shrubs and trees, the garden court provides a quiet, green oasis removed from the traffic and noise of the surrounding streets. Architecturally, the dominant note is one of simplicity. The architect successfully avoided the cold monotony of many later housing projects by breaking up the massive walI surfaces. He varied the heights of the buildings from five to six stories, alternately projected and recessed adjoining units and introduced a variety of window alignments and sizes. The warm tones and varicolored brick are set off by decorative accents of limestone. Handsome wrought iron balconies and window guards and architectural terra-cotta at the roof level complete the decorative scheme.

During an era of racial segregation, pioneering African-American singer and actress Ethel Waters (1896-1977) achieved stardom in theater, radio, movies, and television. Her career in New York began in 1919 when she moved to Harlem and performed at such popular venues as the Lafayette Theater (demolished) on West 132nd Street and the Lincoln Theater (façade since altered) at 58 West 135th Street. By at least 1925, Waters was living in a seven-room apartment at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem’s Sugar Hill section. The building had become one of the neighborhood’s most prestigious addresses for prominent African Americans around that time. First a blues singer, she recorded numerous hit songs during this time, including “Dinah” (1925), “I’ve Found a New Baby” (1926), and “Am I Blue?” (1927). In 1925, Waters replaced popular black star Florence Mills at the Plantation Club, a nightclub formerly part of Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre. She made her Broadway debut in Africana (1927) at Daly’s 63rd Street Theatre (demolished), which soon moved to the National Theatre (now Nederlander Theatre). Her performance in the short-lived revue caught the attention of lyricist Irving Berlin, who would later cast her as the only major black performer in As Thousands Cheer, a huge Broadway hit in 1933. Berlin had also been impressed with her “Stormy Weather” act with Duke Ellington at the whites-only Cotton Club (demolished) in Harlem. After Waters found success in Hollywood and her fame grew she never publicly acknowledged her homosexuality, likely because — as with other closeted stars then and to this day — she feared it would ruin her career. However, in the early 1920s, she lived with her girlfriend, dancer Ethel Williams, and was well known in Harlem’s lesbian circles. Fellow entertainer Mabel Hampton called them “the two Ethels” and later recalled spending time with them and other lesbian blues singers in Harlem.

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.

73 West 141st Street, ca. 1930.

Fruit carts at Eighth Avenue and West 143rd Street, 1937. The Ninth Avenue El (which ran along Eighth Avenue from 110th Street to the Harlem River) was the first elevated rail line in New York. The original section, from Battery Place to Cortlandt Street, along Greenwich Street, opened in 1868 as the West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway, an experimental single-track cable-powered elevated railway. The section of the line seen here (the traditional two-track line) opened in 1879. The elevated line was closed in 1940, except for a short "Polo Grounds" shuttle between 155th Street and Burnside Avenue in the Bronx, which ceased operations in 1958. Difficult to see unless the photograph is zoomed in, are the small posters of President FDR tacked up among the signs and prices for the produce.

St. Nicholas Avenue Presbyterian Church is a Gothic Revival church built between 1904-1905. Its congregation was originally known as the Lenox Presbyterian Church, which occupied a Romanesque structure constructed in 1892. Upon moving, the church changed its name to reflect its new location. The congregation merged with the North Presbyterian Church and moved to 529 West 155th Street in 1927. The building now houses the St. James Presbyterian Church, a historically black church known for its music. In 1964, the Harlem School of the Arts was established in the basement of this building. Its founder was Dorothy Maynor, the wife of Reverend Shelby Rooks and a talented soprano soloist. Her husband was the pastor of the church until 1976. The school is now located in the building directly behind the church.

305 West 142nd Street, ca. 1932.