We are a block away from the southern boundary of the proposed historic district. But there are two interesting sites on this block. This empty lot used to be occupied by the National Black Theater, founded 1968 by Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, an award-winning performer, director, visionary entrepreneur and champion of the Black Arts Movement. 50-0dd years later, her son and daughter, Sade and Michael Lythcott, are partnering with developers to build a 21-story structure that will include a mix of housing, retail and, on floors three through five, a gleaming new home for the theater.

2036 Fifth Avenue, west side, 125th-126th (Neil Patrick Harris House) Something I learned from reading recently about the pending sale is that the house was previously owned by the Settepani family, who operated a bed and breakfast there. They have a bakery and restaurant of the same name on Malcolm X Boulevard and about 119th Street.

We have now entered the boundaries of the proposed East-Central Harlem Historic District. The iconic photograph “A Great Day in Harlem” was taken on this stoop. Esquire Magazine was preparing its January 1959 issue and used every method it could think of to invite the city’s jazz musicians to assemble for a group photo on August 12, 1958. They had no idea how many would show up. Almost 60 musicians arrived by subway, bus, taxi, private car, and on foot. The photograph, taken by Art Kane, became the centerfold of the January 1959 issue, "The Golden Age of Jazz." No. 17 is, sadly, the only house in the row that is missing its cornice. It is part of a row comprising Nos. 9 to 31 that was built in 1877 in the Neo Grec style to designs by W.P. Birdsall. He also designed Nos. 8, 10, and 12 in the same style; they were built in 1878. Most of the row on the opposite side was designed by Hanson and Thurston and built in the Italianate style in 1874.

Mary E. Johnson Boarding School for Colored Children. Demolished to make way for Art Deco-style Dunbar Apartments.

Once the site of Mary E. Johnson Boarding School for Colored Children, this Art Deco apartment building was designed by H.I Feldman and completed in 1937. I’ve read but have not confirmed that it was one of the first newly-built apartment buildings in Harlem for black residents. I’ve also read that the Dunbar Apartments on West 149th-150th, were built as a co-op for blacks in 1926-28 by John D. Rockefeller Jr. African-American residents in Harlem had mostly lived in buildings that were formerly occupied by white residents or in buildings that had been intended for white residents.

This structure, currently home to the Pilgrim Cathedral, was built as Finnish Hall in 1922 by the Finnish Progressive Society, to a neo-Classical design by Jacob Gescheidt. From the 1920s to 1940s, up to 9,000 Finnish residents called Harlem home. They were mainly maids, carpenters, and other construction workers as well as some tailors, and they were concentrated between 120th and 130th Streets near Madison Avenue. Beginning in the 1940s, many Finns relocated to Brooklyn’s Sunset Park—home to an estimated 40,000 residents of Finnish or Norwegian descent in the 1940s and 1950s.

This structure was originally built as the Mount Morris Baptist Church in 1887/88 to designs by Henry Kilburn. It was later taken over by the congregation of Central Baptist Church. A Romanesque Revival building, it has a tripartite facade with a central gable and a tower on either side. The entrance is an imposing round-arched portal. It was foreclosed upon and put up for auction in 2008. Since it was not landmarked, it could easily have been torn down, but luckily Swiss -born artist Ugo Rondinino decided to buy it. The so-called “subversive sculptor” was then living in Greenwich Village and was best known in New York for scrawling the words “HELL, YES!” across the front of the New Museum when it opened the same year as the church was put up for auction. Because it has been converted to residential use, the structure has been deemed not eligible for listing in the National Register as an individual site, but its exterior remains an imposing presence on Fifth Avenue.

2056 Fifth Avenue / 2-4 West 127th Street This structure was built in 1902 to Edwardian designs by Oscar Lowinson. It was the new home of the Columbia Club, organized 13 years earlier by alumni of Columbia College. The building has since been converted to residential use, with penthouse additions.

Langston Hughes House, 20 East 127th Street Constructed in 1869 and designed by architect Alexander Wilson, the Italianate brownstone rowhouse was designated a NYC landmark in 1981. It’s chiefly significant as the home of the author and poet Langston Hughes, one of the foremost figures of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement of the 1920s-30s that focused on the question of the Negro identify. The house was actually owned by Hughes’ friends Emerson and Ethel Harper, who purchased it in 1947. Hughes moved in with them and occupied the top floor. He died in 1967, having spent the last 20 years of his life in the house. The only place he occupied for any length of time, the house is the tangible symbol of his association with the Harlem which so continuously inspired his literary career.

Langston Hughes outside his stoop at 20 East 127th Street

Built in 1885 and designed in the Neo-Flemish style by William H. Beers, this is a very wide and beautiful house that recalls the Dutch origins of New York City.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 2067 Fifth Avenue (East Side, 127th -128th Streets) This neo-Gothic church was built in 1889-1891 to designs by Henry M. Congdon. It was one of the first five buildings in Harlem to be designated a New York City landmark in 1967. The actress Cicely Tyson and her family –who lived on 101st Street between Lexington and Third Avenues - attended the church when she was an adolescent and teenager (ca. 1933-1941). The congregation was predominantly West Indian and was welcoming to the Tysons. Cicely learned to play the piano and taught herself the organ at this church. Tony Robins, the preservation consultant who conducted the Reconnaissance Historic Resource Survey of this area, suggested that a small historic district, the St. Andrew's Historic District, would merit designation--including portions of blocks on East 126th and 127th Streets from Fifth to Park Avenue, plus a cluster from 127th to 128th flanking Fifth Avenue on the east and west.

This redbrick house was built in 1889 in the Queen Anne style. It last sold in July 2014 for $3,335,000.

These four flats were designed in the Queen Anne style by R.B. Eastman and built in 1883. I think the Queen Anne style, which was popular in the 1880s, is my favorite. The Queen Anne style of the 1880s was really Queen Anne Revivial, since the British Queen Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714. It is characterized by eclecticism, asymmetry, and contrast and by a variety of surface textures.

To our knowledge, this is the only clapboard house left in East Harlem. It helps us imagine what East Harlem looked like in earlier times when Harlem was still a rural village and not legally part of the City of New York (it was annexed to New York City in 1873). It is the first of the two oldest houses in Harlem that we will see on this tour. This one dates to 1859-69 and its style is a synthesis of French Second Empire and Italianate elements. Its architect is not known. It was designated a landmark by the LPC in 1982. The LPC’s designation report stated that the house had survived almost completely intact, one reason being that to that date it had been occupied by only five families. It is currently owned by a musician who opens the house occasionally for recitals. While standing in front of this house in late April 2022, we met Jack Stephenson, the current owner of the house (as of 2015). He said he had bought it from Angie Ortega, who owns the house to the west. He also said he had done much to restore the house to the original, including painting it colors approved by LPC and also doing interior work.

This school was built in 1890 in a neo-Federal style. The writer James Baldwin attended this school when it was a PS 24. It was his first school experience, and he was lucky that its principal, Gertrude Ayer, who was the first and at that time the only black principal in the New York City school system, took a special interest in him and encouraged him to write. 128th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues was co-named James Baldwin Place in 2014.

The little park across Fifth Avenue is located on a lot once occupied by the Collyer Brothers townhouse, a four-story brownstone located at 2078 Fifth Avenue into which the Collyer family moved in 1909. The two children of the family, brothers Homer and Langley, born in 1881 and 1885 respectively, have gone down in history as hoarders in extremis whose bodies were unearthed amid 120 pounds of debris in March 1947. The house was then razed.

This glorious former ecclesiastical compound consisting of the church and an attached school and parish house, was built between 1883 and 1893 to Italian and Venetian Gothic designs by Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell. It became known as the St. Patrick’s of Harlem Thank goodness it was designated an individual landmark by the LPC in 2007, because its dwindling congregation soon caused the Archdiocese of New York to close it. According to cannon law, a religious building that is closed must be deconsecrated and that involves removing all of the religious iconography. In the case of All Saints RC Church, this meant the main rose window, other stained-glass windows depicting Biblical scenes, and some statuary. All were removed to the Archdiocese’s Patrimony Warehouse on Staten Island. The property was then put up for sale. The complex was sold in March 2019 for $10.85 million to the developer CSC Coliving. A modernization of the school and conversion of the church into a school auditorium, designed by Tang Studio Architect, is underway, and the Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School plans to move into the two buildings this fall on a long-term lease. The founder of Capital Prep is none other than the entertainer and entrepreneur Sean P. Diddy Combs.

2034 to 2054 Madison Avenue, between 129th and 130th Streets These 12 rowhouses were built c. 1885, designed by architect James E. Ware in the Neo Grec style. The preservation consultant recommended this row as a small historic district.

Frederick R. Moore School (P.S. 133), 2121 Fifth Avenue The Frederick R. Moore School, together with its playground, occupies the entire block bounded by Fifth and Madison Avenues and East 130th and 131st Streets. It was named after a former editor of The New York Age, an African American newspaper that was published from 1887 to 1960 and had a short-lived revival in 1974. The school was designed by Archibald F. Gilbert and constructed 1945-48. Gilbert had earlier supervised the design of the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway (listed in the National Register,90NR00736). By 1945 he had turned in a more modernistic direction. P.S. 133 is in a severe Moderne style. The main entrance doors on West 131st Street are slightly recessed beneath a curving metallic marquee with typically Moderne "speed lines" running horizontally across it, and a tall rectangular window above.

13, 15, 17 West 131st Street These three houses were built in 1886 in the Queen Anne style. The developer was John Darragh and the owner was Sarah Darragh, who was probably his wife. There is something decidedly whimsical about these three houses. My favorite is the red one with its bow window on the second floor. But I like the half-moon windows on the other two. The middle one lost its stoop at some point, which is too bad.

Astor Row: Originally a cluster of 28 houses, grouped in pairs, while individually designated, historically they form a single entity. They were built between 1880 and 1883 on land that John Jacob Astor (1763-1848 first multimillionaire businessman in US) had purchased in 1844. Astor’s grandson, William Backhouse Astor, was the developer of these speculative townhouses designed by Charles Buek. Highly unusual for Manhattan houses, each has both a front yard and a back yard and a front porch! Unfortunately, the houses were not well maintained, and the porches were gradually lost. In 1981, New York City designated the entire row as landmarks, and money was raised to restore their facades, and improve their plumbing, heating systems, and electrical lines where needed. By 1990 most of the porches were gone or in serious disrepair. In a tour through Upper Manhattan at that time, Brooke Astor came upon Astor Row and commenced a substantial financial commitment to restore and place the porches. In the next few years, the now-dissolved Vincent Astor Foundation awarded $1.7 million to the Landmarks Conservancy to carry out this endeavor. All but three of the 28 buildings received new or improved porches. In late 2021, the house at 28 West 130th Street was demolished following several years of degradation and years after the LPC had sued the house's owner to force her to repair the house.

This is the second of the two oldest houses in Harlem. It was designated a NYC landmark in 1994. It too is a wood frame house, though it is covered in stucco. It was built c.1863 as a two-and-a-half story frame structure characteristic of suburban architecture. It was built for two carpenters, William Paul and Thomas Wilson, and their families. It has undergone substantial alterations and additions. In 1883, piano merchant John Bolton Simpson, Jr., added the distinctive Moorish-inspired porch, the most significant architectural feature of the house. In 1896, the house was acquired by an order of Franciscan nuns which was expanding its mission in the greater New York area. In order to accommodate a new use as a convent and children's home, the building was enlarged to a full three stories. Since that time, the building has continued in institutional ownership. Currently it is owned by Shiloh Church of Christ, which is directly behind it and occupied by

3-17 West 129th Street Across the street are eight rowhouses that belonged to William B. Astor, grandson of the first John Jacob Astor. They were designed in the Italianate style by P. Kissam and built in 1871. No. 17 successfully divides this group from Nos. 19-25 because of the way it juts out as well as its color.

19-25 West 129th Street These four flats were all owned by John Jacob Astor III. They were built in 1879 and designed in the Victorian Gothic style by Thomas Stent. The difference between an apartment building and flats is that flats were floor-through apartments. Flats were the first apartments built in NYC that were considered fashionable enough for people of means to live in when they did not want to be burdened with an entire house. The flat was a French idea.

44 and 46 West 127th Street These two limestone rowhouses were built by John Miller in the Neo-Gothic style in 1876.

51-63 West 127th Street Across the street from the contemporary conversion is a group of six rowhouses, all built in 1879 and designed in the Italianate style by Robert Mook. The gray house, No. 57, is taller and must have been elevated at some point, since it is unlikely that one of the six would have been designed at a different height from the others. THANK YOU FOR TAKING A STROLL WITH US There's lots more to see, but we hope you have enjoyed what you have seen. The blurb for this tour asserted that we would see 32 NYC landmarks. In order of our visit they were: Langston Hughes House, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 17 East 128th Street, All Saints Roman Catholic Church, the 27 extant Astor Row houses, and 12 West 129th Street. Thanks for tagging along! -Kathy