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.

Harlem was once a quiet suburban village. Until the mid-19th century, the area was largely undeveloped; most structures were isolated, free-standing frame houses. This collection surveys some of the frame houses that once stood in Upper Manhattan — including a few hardy examples that have survived to the present day.

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.

12 West 129th Street, ca. 1932. This building was erected in the late 19th century by William Paul and Thomas Wilson. The two men, carpenters and business partners, had purchased the lot late in 1862 to construct a two-and-a-half-story house that they initially addressed as "129th off Fifth." Since 1862, this house has seen numerous alterations. The Moorish-inspired porch was added in 1882-83 after John Simpson, the founder of the Estey Piano Company, and his family moved into the home. A full third story was added in 1896 when an order of Franciscan Sisters took over the property. The Sisters converted the home into a convent and reception home for poor children. According to the 1900 census, six sisters resided here; in 1903, one priest, four sisters, and eight servants were in residence; in 1920 there were nine sisters; and in 1925, there were five sisters and fifteen children between the ages of two and nine. In order to accommodate its new use, the Franciscan Sisters made many grand changes to the home—including enlarging the building itself. Now known as 12 West 129th Street, the home is a landmarked building and one of the last free-standing houses in Harlem.