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

Hamilton Grange at its second location before St. Luke's Richardsonian Romanesque church was constructed, ca. 1889.

287 Convent Avenue, 1932. Hamilton Grange in its second location! The 1802 home of Alexander Hamilton was originally located at approximately West 143rd Street between what is now Convent Avenue and Hamilton Place. Built by John McComb Jr., the two-story Federal style house was only home to Hamilton for two years before his death by duel in 1804. The home remained in his family until the 1840s. By the 1880s the home had been condemned and was likely to be razed for the implementation of the street grid uptown. St. Luke's, an Episcopal parish originally organized in Greenwich Village, had recently moved uptown. In 1889, the church had the structure moved east and south (about 250 feet) to a new lot at 287 Convent just north of 141st Street. For the move many features of the home, including the original porches, were removed, the traditional entrance was sealed (that side of the house was no longer the front), and a new staircase and entrance were created once the home was in place. The church used the house for their first uptown services in 1889, but soon after built their own massive Richardsonian Romanesque church. In the 1910s a new apartment building was constructed within inches of the Grange (it can be seen at left in this 1932 photograph). The home became a public museum in 1924. It stood, literally encircled on one side by the church and squeezed in on the other side by the apartment building, until 2008. After being closed in 2006 for architectural and structural surveys, it was decided that a more appropriate place for the house was in nearby St. Nicholas Park. The home was raised high enough to pass over the loggia (porch) of the church that curved around it. In July of 2008, from its spot on stilts in the middle of Convent Avenue, the home was moved 500 feet to the park. Attached to its new foundation, the home had its original staircase and entrance restored. It also had 13 sweet gum trees (for the original 13 states) installed nearby, exactly as Hamilton had planted in 1802. Hamilton Grange reopened to the public in September 2011.

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.

Hamilton Grange porch detail, with St Luke's loggia (first floor exterior gallery) archways seen in the background, date, unknown.

Hamilton Grange with porch configuration and non-original entrance at 287 Convent Avenue, date unknown.

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.

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.

A residential enclave, this neighborhood east of St. Nicholas Park features remarkably intact and finely detailed residential rowhouse architecture, built for upper-middle-class professionals in the late 19th century. The community is named for the adjoining park dedicated in 1925 that honors African-American infantryman Dorrance Brooks, who displayed ”signal bravery” in World War I. The square became a rallying point for civil rights protests. Closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the area was home to jazz musician Lionel Hampton. Dorrance Brooks Square was designated a historic district on June 15, 2021. Watch the 2020 Grassroots Prersvation presentation on Dorrance Brooks Square

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.

Children in Colonial Park Swimming Pool.; Harlem

Hamilton’s impact on New York City was deep and long-lasting. In addition to establishing the Bank of New York and resurrecting Columbia College, he advocated for the city through his role as the first Secretary of the Treasury. A physical reminder of Hamilton’s presence remains in Harlem in the form his “country” estate, The Grange, although it has moved a couple of times over the last 200 years in response to our growing metropolis. Towards the end of his political, financial, and legal career, Alexander Hamilton wrote to his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, about a “sweet project” he was planning, with which she would be pleased. He told her she could “guess and guess again,” but that he would let her in on his “scheme” when they next saw each other. Hamilton’s plan was to purchase land in part of upper Manhattan about nine miles above the city limits of the time, and to commission a country home. The Federal-style home was designed by John McComb, Jr., and Hamilton named the estate “The Grange” after his family’s ancestral home in Scotland. The Grange was finished in 1802 and Hamilton lived there for just two years, until his death-by-duel in 1804. Hamilton’s widow sold the home in 1833 and moved downtown. By 1889, the Grange had fallen into disrepair and was set to be razed to make room for the expanding city grid. The estate sat on what was to be 143rd Street – the street would have run right through the house’s northwest corner. Luckily, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, in the midst of relocating from Greenwich Village, acquired the house and moved it a half block east and two blocks south, out of the way of the city’s bulldozers. The home’s original porches and staircase were removed for the move; the original front entrance was boarded up; and a new entrance was added to the side of the house, which now faced the street. St. Luke’s used the house for various purposes and built an adjacent church building that nearly touched The Grange’s front porch. In 1924 the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society purchased The Grange and turned it into a museum, complete with furniture and decorative objects associated with the Hamilton family. The house changed hands yet again in 1962, after being purchased by the National Park Foundation and transferred to the National Park Service. The same year Congress designated The Grange as a National Memorial, with the caveat that it be relocated, again, and restored to its original condition. The second relocation didn’t occur until about 45 years later, in part due to local opposition to moving the home from its spot on Convent Avenue in the eponymous Hamilton Heights neighborhood. Residents were afraid the move would effect the character of the community. Officials decided to move The Grange to nearby St. Nicholas Park, where the home would remain within the original 32 acres of Hamilton’s estate, and where its original features could be restored. The Grange temporarily closed in 2006 – the home was moved one block south and one block east in June 2008 – and in September 2011, it finally re-opened to the public.. The house is oriented in a different direction, allowing for a better view from the street, but otherwise its original characteristics have been restored, including the addition of 13 sweet gum trees – the same variety that Hamilton had planted to represent the original 13 colonies. Perhaps Hamilton already had these trees in mind when he referred to The Grange as his “sweet project!”