2460 Second Avenue, ca. 1928. Up until 2015, this site was a bus depot operated by the New York City Transit Depot. The city-owned site will become the Harlem African Burial Ground and Cultural Center, slated for completion in 2021. An 1820 map indicates that the plot was initially owned by Nathaniel G. Ingraham. A church and slave burial ground occupied the portion of the lot closest to the Harlem River. In the late 19th-century, the lot became Sulzer's Harlem River Park, an amusement park that covered the entire block between First and Second Avenue and 126th and 127th Street. Herman Sulzer opened the Harlem River Park after his father gave him the land in 1878. The property included various entertainment venues such as a large casino, restaurants, meeting rooms, and a carousel. However, it was not to last. On an unfortunate late November morning in 1907, the park caught on fire. The New York Times reported "strong northeast wind all over Harlem," leading to the fire to spread into a $200,000 disaster. The paper chronicled a dramatic scene of a woman who worked for the casino jumping from a window to escape flames engulfing the building's staircase. She survived the fall but broke both her ankles. Nor were only employees affected! Ernest Sultzer, the president of the park at the time, owned an apartment on the second floor of the casino. Upon hearing of the fire, he rushed home to rescue his wife, who was trapped inside. She was saved, but only three exterior walls of the casino remained after the blaze. The nearby 126th Street station of the Second Avenue Elevated was spared as firefighters worked diligently to stop the flames from spreading. A new, much larger casino was built one year later. By World War I, Sultzer's Park had been sold to the city of New York and was being used for a different purpose. The New York 15th National Guard Infantry Regiment, or the 369th Regiment, an all-black infantry unit, was housed in barracks and trained before deployment on the site. The property was acquired by Cosmopolitan Productions in 1918. The company was a brainchild of William Randolph Hearst in conjunction with Adolph Zucker of Paramount Pictures. Heart's publications, such as Cosmopolitan Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping would warm up readers to the storylines of Cosmopolitan Production's movies before they were released. Thus, by the time they hit the screen, the films would have already captured the public's attention. In a particularly unlucky incident, the lot caught fire once again in the morning hours of February 19th, 1923. The Times reported that the second fire razed "the studio's electrical equipment and scenery, and almost the entire wardrobe," though its reels were salvaged. To properly contain the fire, Con Edison had to shut off electricity to the entire surrounding area. The neighborhood was left without power until six in the evening when the flames finally subdued. Hearst rebuilt the studio after the fire, but split with Zukor to merge with Goldwyn Pictures. Goldwyn provided a studio in Culver City, California for the production company to operate out of while the Harlem studio was rebuilt. In 1924, Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures Corporation acquired Goldwyn-Cosmopolitan and re-named it Metro-Goldwyn. By the time the new building was completed, the film company was called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after a subsequent merger. MGM occupied the lot until some time after the mid-20th century.

This story is about the lot between First and Second Avenues between 126th and 127th streets. The city is presently redeveloping this block-spanning lot into a cultural center, memorial, and mixed-use development. The memorial will commemorate the African Burial Ground, which was part of the Dutch village of Nieuw Harlem. The excavation of the cemetery took place after the New York Transit Depot closed the bus depot that had operated on the site. The project will be called the Harlem African Burial Ground Memorial and is planned for completion in 2021. Between the cemetery and bus depot, this lot has taken on quite a history in its own right. Take a look at the history of this corner in Harlem.