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.

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.

Harlem churches have been an important part of the historical shaping of the neighborhood. For decades, they have been centers for community bonding and healing. Many of these churches have been involved with social movements like the fight for civil rights and the abolition of slavery. Many historic Harlem churches have lost some of their popularity as time has passed, but they still hold spiritual importance in their neighborhoods. As property values rise in an ever-gentrifying city, a few churches have been struggling to stay open as tithes and parishioners have dwindled. However, the members remain hopeful. On this walk, interact with structures of beauty and importance in the Harlem community.

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.