This building served as the headquarters of the NAACP (founded Feb. 12, 1909) and The Crisis magazine from 1914 until the mid-1920s, when they moved up the block to the no-longer-extant 69 Fifth Avenue (some evidence suggests as early as 1923, while other evidence indicates as late as 1926 – see also here), and DuBois & Dill Publishing, which published the first magazine for African American youth. This was a time of extraordinary growth, accomplishment, and challenges for both the NAACP and its affiliated The Crisis magazine, funded and edited by W.E.B. DuBois. Both were focused on the epidemic of lynchings of African-Americans and race-based violence taking place at the time, discrimination in voting, housing, and employment faced by African-Americans, and the proliferation of demeaning, derogatory, and dehumanizing representations of African Americans in media such as the film The Birth of A Nation. At the same time their tenancy here coincided with and reflected a flowering of Black culture with the Harlem Renaissance, and growing African American aspirations for greater freedom and opportunity emanating in part from participation in World War I and the principles of democracy and self- determination which were the premise for the United States’ joining the conflict, and the Great Migration which began at this time and saw more African Americans living in the North, Midwest, and West, where they encountered both new opportunities and new obstacles.

NAACP logo The NAACP Headquarters The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 as a bi-racial social justice organization seeking to end bias and discrimination against African Americans and ensure their equality of opportunity in the United States. Founded by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, Bishop Alexander Walters, Rev. William Henry Brooks, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells, among others, the new organization’s first public meeting was held a few blocks away at the Great Hall of Cooper Union. DuBois was named the organization’s Director of Publicity and Research, and founded what would be the official organ of the NAACP, The Crisis magazine. During this time, the status of civil rights for African Americans was arguably deteriorating in many ways in the United States; lynchings were commonplace and occurred with impunity; states were introducing legislation to ban interracial marriages; and in his first year in office (1913), President Woodrow Wilson officially introduced segregation into federal government agencies, establishing separate workplaces, bathrooms, and lunchrooms for Black and white people. It was into this challenging environment that the NAACP emerged when it established its headquarters here at 70 Fifth Avenue in 1914. While other national organizations had been established to advance civil rights for African Americans, none lasted more than a few years, and none had the broad and growing institutional support the NAACP attracted. Having grown rapidly in just five years to have twenty-four branches and three thousand members, the organization was in need of more space, which brought them to 70 Fifth Avenue, a newly-constructed commercial building at 13th Street just below Union Square. Among the organization’s first campaigns while at 70 Fifth Avenue was to challenge the newly- instituted segregation within the federal government with a highly-publicized “Open Letter to President Wilson.” At this time the NAACP also succeeded in securing the repeal of an American Bar Association resolution barring the admission of Black lawyers, and in the opening of the women’s suffrage parade in Washington D.C. to Black marchers. In 1915, their second year at 70 Fifth Avenue, the NAACP launched its campaign against D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of A Nation, which opened February 8 of that year, arguing that it distorted history and slandered the entire black race. The wildly successful film was credited with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and an increase in violence against African Americans; its prominence was raised by being shown at the White House by President Woodrow Wilson, the first such showing ever in the presidential residence. That same year the NAACP participated for the first time in litigation to advance its agenda – the beginning of a long and storied history of the NAACP changing the national landscape through the courts, which of course included the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, ending legal segregation and the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ in this country. The NAACPs’ founding President (1909-1929) Moorefield Storey successfully argued the case of Guinn vs. U.S. before the Supreme Court, striking down a ‘grandfather clause’ in the Oklahoma Constitution which effectively barred most Black men from voting by limiting the franchise to literate men or those whose ancestors were eligible to vote before January 1, 1866. The NAACP also filed an amicus curiae brief in the case. In 1916, the NAACP responded to the mutilation, burning, and lynching of an illiterate seventeen year old Black farmhand in Waco, Texas accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Labeled “The Waco Horror” by the NAACP, the organization sent an investigator to Texas whose report, including pictures of the horrifying act, was published in The Crisis and distributed not only to the magazine’s 42,000 subscribers, but 700 white newspapers, members of congress, and affluent New Yorkers in an effort to gain support for the NAACP’s newly established anti-lynching fund. The NAACP’s anti-lynching organizing brought national attention to the oft-ignored crime, and mobilized political and business leaders in both the North and South to speak out against this de facto state-sanctioned domestic terrorism.

1917 Silent March on Fifth Avenue In 1917, following the brutal East St. Louis race riots in which between forty and two hundred fifty African Americans were killed, thousands were made homeless from the burning of their homes, and thousands eventually left the city, the NAACP organized a silent protest down Fifth Avenue of nearly 10,000 African American men, women, and children. They marched to only the sound of muffled drums, carrying signs with messages such as “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Make America safe for democracy” and “We march because we want our children to live in a better land.” This was the first protest of its kind in New York City, and only the second instance of African Americans publicly demonstrating for civil rights (the NAACP’s protests against The Birth of A Nation and the Silent March, organized from their headquarters at 70 Fifth Avenue, were arguably the first large public demonstrations for African American civil rights in the country). That same year the NAACP succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to rule that ordinances restricting where African Americans could live, as had been passed in an increasing number of localities including Baltimore and Louisville, were unconstitutional violations of the 14th Amendment, and won the battle to allow African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I, allowing six hundred African Americans to achieve that rank.

“A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” Flag, undated In 1918, the NAACP secured passage of an amendment to the New York State civil rights law protecting African Americans – their first such statewide success which they used as a model for progress in other states in subsequent years. After bitter resistance, the NAACP also finally secured from President Woodrow Wilson a public pronouncement against lynching, which he had previously refused to do. That same year an anti-lynching bill was introduced in the House based on a bill drafted by NAACP co-founder Albert E. Pillsbury. The bill called for the prosecution of lynchers in federal court, and made state officials who failed to protect lynching victims or prosecute lynchers punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. It also allowed the victim’s heirs to recover up to $10,000 from the county where the crime occurred. In 1919, the NAACP released its landmark report “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918,” in which it listed the names of every African American, by state, whom they could document had been lynched. This continued to bring unprecedented attention to this longstanding and uncontrolled epidemic of violence in America. In the aftermath of the end of the First World War and the subsequent unrest and intolerance which gripped the nation, twenty-six race riots erupted across the country during that “Red Summer,” and a record number of lynchings took place. Membership in the NAACP grew to about 90,000 and circulation of The Crisis grew to over 100,000 after it published W.E.B. DuBois’ “Returning Soldier,” a report documenting the indignities suffered by Black service members in France at the hands of the U.S. military. In 1920 the NAACP led investigations into and exposed U.S. military atrocities and abuse in Haiti following the American occupation of the Caribbean nation, arguing for American withdrawal and making it a campaign issue in the election of 1920 seized upon by successful candidate Warren G. Harding. The passage of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote gave the NAACP the opportunity to highlight the continued disenfranchisement of Black women and men. They demanded that congress investigate the systematic denial of the vote to African Americans in the South in the 1920 election, and that where such discrimination was found, those elected to congress not be seated. The revived Ku Klux Klan’s publication The Searchlight announced that the NAACP, which was increasingly active in the South, was its arch enemy. Multiple accounts also say that the NAACP began flying its iconic flag printed with “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” in simple white sans-serif letters against a plain Black background from its headquarters in 1920, and continued to do so until 1938, when they were forced to remove it or face eviction. While the sole photographic record of this appears to be an image from 1936 when the flag flew from their next location just up Fifth Avenue at No. 69 (demolished), if this frequently-cited date is correct, then this campaign began at 70 Fifth Avenue.

Flyer calling for the federal anti-lynching bill, 1922 In 1921 the NAACP secured the reintroduction of federal anti-lynching legislation in the new congress, and met with new President Warren G. Harding to lobby for his support, an end to segregation in federal employment, independence for Haiti, and action against the disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the country. The following year, the anti- lynching legislation was finally approved by the House by a vote of 230 to 119, after a vigorous campaign by the NAACP which included placing ads in newspapers across the country entitled “The Shame of America.” While the bill died in the Senate after a filibuster by Southern Democrats, congressmen in New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, and Wisconsin who voted against the measure were defeated in the election of 1922 after their stance was made an issue in their campaigns. In 1923, the NAACP had another successful case before the U.S. Supreme Court when they appealed the convictions of twelve African American men sentenced to death and sixty-seven to long prison terms by an all-white jury. Those sentences had resulted from bloody riots in Arkansas in 1919 precipitated by a white mob attacking a mass meeting of Black farmers trying to organize a union, in which as many as two-hundred Blacks and twenty whites were killed. In Moore v. Dempsey those convictions were overturned, ruling that Moore v. the defendants’ mob-dominated trials were a violation of the due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The landmark decision reversed the court’s previous ruling in the 1915 case of Leo Frank, a Jewish man convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that he managed, on specious evidence in what was widely seen as a case motivated by anti-Semitism. Later, Frank’s death sentence was commuted by Georgia’s governor, which led a mob to storm the prison and lynch Frank. As a result of the ruling, Frank’s lawyer Louis Marshall joined the NAACP’s legal committee. That same year the NAACP began what would be a successful legal challenge (handed down by the Supreme Court in 1927) against southern state’s “white primary” laws, which precluded Black candidates from running in Democratic primaries, which were tantamount to the general election in those states.

"The Crisis" issue, July 1918 The Crisis Magazine Called “the most widely read and influential periodical about race and social justice in U.S. history,” The Crisis (originally subtitled ‘A Record of the Darker Races’) was founded by W.E.B. DuBois as the house magazine of the NAACP. The periodical called unprecedented attention to the lives and plight of African Americans, providing a forum for DuBois’ uncompromising philosophy of racial equality. In its first issue, DuBois said its purpose was to be “first and foremost a newspaper” that would “record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect Negro-Americans;” provide “a review of opinion and literature,” and “stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race” and vigorously defend the “highest ideals of American democracy.”

Langston Hughes, 1936 Particularly during its years at 70 Fifth Avenue (1914-1923), The Crisis was an incomparable showcase for Black writers and artists, containing the first publication of the writings of Langston Hughes, as well as works by Zora Neale Hurtson, Countee Cullen, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Arthur Schomberg, and Jean Toomer. From an initial circulation of 1,000 in its first year of publication, the magazine’s circulation peaked while at 70 Fifth Avenue in 1919 at over 100,000, making it more popular than established journals like The New Republic and The Nation, while also growing from twenty to nearly seventy pages. According to DuBois, its mission was to pursue “the world-old dream of human brotherhood.”

Jesse Redmon Fauset, undated From its founding in 1910 The Crisis included both hard-hitting reporting about injustices faced by African Americans and DuBois’ pointed commentary – about lynching, Jim Crow, and the failures of political leadership to address these issues, as well as exposing readers to relevant international issues, such as the non-violent passive resistance efforts for Indian independence being led by Mahatma Ghandi in 1922. But starting in 1918 while published out of 70 Fifth Avenue, The Crisis also came to include a rich and influential array of literature and art. That was largely reflective of the influence of Jessie Redmon Fauset, an African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator dubbed by Langston Hughes “the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance,” who began contributing to the magazine in 1912 and served as its literary editor from 1918 to 1926. By many accounts, she was also the main force keeping the magazine operating during that time, as DuBois was travelling the world. Both she and DuBois also introduced photography, painting, and drawing into the magazine as a means of communicating its message and giving a forum for expression to African Americans. In addition to civil rights and the arts and literature, The Crisis had a special emphasis upon education, promoting the rise of African-American colleges and African American studies (DuBois himself would teach the very first course in African American history just feet from here at The New School in 1948). DuBois reported heavily upon both the successes and challenges of Black colleges and universities, and dedicated two issues of the magazine each year specifically to the topics of education and youth respectively. The Crisis also had a special focus during these years on promoting the emerging Black cinema.

W.E.B. Du Bois, 1918 DuBois and The Crisis also had a notable commitment to gender equality. Aside from the significant role given to Fauset, the magazine showcased the works of many female writers and artists. And DuBois made that support explicit in his political writings as well; in 1911 in the pages of The Crisis he wrote that “Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage; every argument for women's suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage; both are great moments in democracy. There should be on the part of Negroes absolutely no hesitation whenever and wherever responsible human beings are without voice in their government. The man of Negro blood who hesitates to do them justice is false to his race, his ideals and his country.” In fact, DuBois’ perspective sometimes put him at odds with the more moderate and still predominantly White leadership of the NAACP at the time. The Crisis gave him an opportunity to express this more uncompromising perspective; DuBois sharply criticized President Wilson for segregating the Federal government in the pages of The Crisis before and more bluntly than the NAACP. The Crisis also called for an outright ban on the film The Birth Of A Nation, based upon its distortion of history and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its flagrant denigration of Blacks.

The Brownies’ Book, June 1921 DuBois and Dill Publishing W.E.B. DuBois and his business partner Augustus Granville Dill created a short-lived but highly impactful publishing house, located for its entire existence at 70 Fifth Avenue/2 East 13th Street. The enterprise furthered DuBois’ mission of inspiring African Americans with stories of their peers and predecessors, as well as guiding them to a better future. These highly personal projects built upon the work he was already doing through the NAACP and especially The Crisis. The Brownies’ Book magazine was a collaboration of DuBois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Redmon Fauset, who served as literary and managing editor of the magazine, published by DuBois and Dill. Growing out of the youth and education issues of The Crisis, it was the first magazine ever made for African American youth. The monthly focused heavily on promoting standards of gender, class and racial behavior and pride, using photographs, art, and literature to inspire young African-American children. The magazine’s message was consistently to do well in school, take pride in one's appearance, and learn about one's heritage, often citing African folk tales and drawing on other aspects of traditional African culture. One of the goals of the magazine was to dispel the “grotesque stereotypes" of the "Dark Continent," a disparaging term used for Africa and its people. African American children were frequently exposed to such portrayals along with the white children who were the implied audience in contemporary children's literary works. In the October 1919 issue of The Crisis in which DuBois first announced that publication of The Brownies’ Book would begin in January of the following year, he also laid out its agenda: To make colored children realize that being "colored" is a normal, beautiful thing. To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race. To make them know that other colored children have grown into beautiful, useful and famous persons. To teach them a delicate code of honor and action in their relations with white children. To turn their little hurts and resentments into emulation, ambition and love of their homes and companions. To point out the best amusements and joys and worth-while things of life. To inspire them to prepare for definite occupations and duties with a broad spirit of sacrifice. Like The Crisis, The Brownies’ Book had covers showcasing the work of prominent Black artists. While utilizing games and music to engage its young audience, the magazine also included literature, poetry, information on current events, and biographies of successful African Americans, including Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley (a slave seized from Africa at age 7, who in the 18th century became the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry), and popular Vaudeville entertainer Bert Williams. The first issue featured a photo of African American children marching in protest of lynchings and racist violence in the Silent March of 1917. DuBois had a regular column called “As the Crow Flies” relating current events to children; Fauset had an advice column called “The Judge;” a section called "Little People of the Month," showcasing the artistic and academic achievements of children submitted by and a regular feature was readers. Notable authors published in The Brownies' Book included Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Winifred Davidson, Effie Lee Newsome and Georgia Douglas Johnson. The magazine published Hughes’ high school graduation picture along with those of other high school graduates, and was the first publication to print Hughes’ poetry. There was little advertising; the modest amount included was often for literature geared towards Black children which typically could not be found in bookstores. Because of this, the magazine was almost entirely dependent upon subscriptions to maintain it. In spite of Fauset, DuBois, and Dill’s best efforts, it never gained enough subscriptions to become financially self-sufficient, and ceased publication in December of 1921. DuBois and Dill Publishing’s other celebrated product was Elizabeth Ross Haynes’ Unsung Heroes (1921), a book about “the lives of seventeen men and women of the Negro race told in a way to inspire the children of our time.” The seventeen biographies chosen by Haynes, herself a pioneering African American activist and social worker, included those who were almost entirely unknown in the early 1920s, and those who had not been given their historic due. These included Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Alexandre Dumas, Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Booker T. Washington, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Phillis Wheatley. By the mid-1920s DuBois and Dill Publishing House ceased operations, and the NAACP and The Crisis moved to new quarters just up the block at 69 Fifth Avenue (northeast corner of 14th Street) where they remained for decades (the building was demolished in the 1950s). 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The International Workers Order (IWO) was located at 80 Fifth Avenue for its entire lifetime, from 1930 until 1954. This progressive mutual-benefit fraternal organization was a pioneering force in the U.S. labor movement, and took some incredibly powerful positions for civil rights. For a quarter of a century, the IWO fought relentlessly for racial equality, interracial solidarity, industrial unions, and social security programs that would protect working-class people.

International Workers Order emblem, 1930-1939 The IWO operated under the principle that there would be “No Jim Crow in the IWO,” and at its height the consortium included 188,000 members from many political, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. In the 1930s and 1940s, African American members of the IWO instituted the Lincoln-Douglass Society. Beyond championing civil rights, the Society offered high quality health insurance to its members, who often faced discrimination from private insurance companies. IWO vice president and Harlem resident Louise Thompson Patterson was one of many notable activists to fight for racial equality as part of the IWO.

Louise Thompson Patterson, 1960 In addition to operating as an interracial organization, the IWO supported campaigns such as the federal anti-lynching bill, the permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, the integration of the armed forces, the elimination of Jim Crow segregation in public facilities, and the protection of Black voting rights. It also organized rallies in defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” the nine Black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death in 1931. Congressman Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem, who served as the IWO’s vice president, introduced legislation drafted by the IWO to bar discrimination against Jewish, Italian, and Black individuals in war work. Furthermore, the IWO demanded the integration of Major League Baseball, segregated beaches, and the Stuyvesant Town co-ops in New York City.

Langston Hughes, 1936 The IWO also organized the Harlem Suitcase Theater, led by Thompson Patterson, which sought to bring socially conscious theater to African American audiences throughout the Depression. Its debut production, “Don’t You Want to be Free?” was written by Langston Hughes, whose poems had already been showcased in other IWO publications.

Portrait of Robert Earl Jones in Langston Hughes' "Don't You Want to be Free?," 1938 Actors Butterfly McQueen and Robert Earl Jones performed in this play, which served as their acting debut. The Suitcase Theater, which featured productions on topics including racism, lynching, and industrial workers poverty, travelled to Atlanta, Nashville, and other American cities. It also presented an opera by composer James P. Johnson. Actor, musician, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson was another IWO member, and frequently performed at the Order’s rallies and concerts. From its beginning, the IWO was the frequent target of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations, and in 1954 the organization was disbanded following legal action undertaken by the state of New York. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

59 Fifth Avenue was originally owned by prominent businessman and philanthropist Jonathan Sturges, who bought the home for his daughter Virginia Reed Sturges Osborn and son-in-law William H. Osborn (Sturges lived just a few doors away in the now-demolished 5 East 14th Street).

Jonathan Sturges, c. 1840 Sturges was one of the founders of the Union League Club, the pro-Union, anti-slavery club established to support the cause of the Union and abolition during the Civil War in the face of significant opposition from New York’s governing elite and its working class. Sturges was also the club’s second president beginning in 1863, at the time when the club, located a few blocks north of Sturges’ home on Fifth Avenue, was a prime target, along with the Colored Orphans Asylum, of mobs during the 1863 Draft Riots. Club members kept the mobs at bay with an armed vigil in the locked and barricaded clubhouse. Following the riots the club chose a bold gesture to show it was not intimidated by such threats; they recruited, trained, and equipped for military service a Colored Infantry regiment, whom club members accompanied on a march from the Union League clubhouse to Canal Street’s Hudson River piers to see them off to duty in Louisiana (the club continued this tradition during World War I, when it sponsored the 369th Infantry, the famed Harlem Hellfighters, which was commanded by club member William Hayward).

“Presentation of Colors” by Edward Lamson Henry, 1864. Shows the Union League Club of New York’s First Headquarters Virginia Osborn, in addition to being a great patron of the arts, was also extremely involved in philanthropic services to benefit the infirmed and impoverished — endeavors she shared with her mother Mary Cady Sturges. Among other positions, she served on the board of the art section of the 1864 New York Sanitary Fair, which was held to raise money for medical provisions for the Union troops during the Civil War. In 1854, William H. Osborn took over the presidency of the Illinois Central Railroad. During his tenure with the Illinois Central, Osborn worked with Abraham Lincoln, then general counsel for the railroad, as well as Ambrose Burnside, its treasurer, and George McClellan, its chief engineer and Vice President. The latter two served as generals in the Union Army during the Civil War, while Osborn directed the movement of Union troops and supplies on the Illinois Central. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

While largely housing offices throughout its over one hundred year history, 55 Fifth Avenue bears great significance in the history of American music and African American history. The studios in this building reshaped the music market of the twentieth century, brought new genres of music into mainstream consciousness, transformed the opportunities available to Black artists, and promoted the growth of some of our most beloved musicians and bands.

Columbia disc by Art Gillham, mid-1920s The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887, and moved to 55 Fifth Avenue in 1926. Now known as Columbia Records, it is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and only the second major company to produce records. OKeh Records was founded in 1916 by Otto K.E. Heinemann, and moved to 55 Fifth Avenue shortly after Columbia did. OKeh eventually merged with Columbia, but initially established a strong reputation for producing “race records”: recordings by and for African Americans, including some of the early greats of jazz and blues, such as Louis Armstrong. These studios remained at this address until mid-1934.

Garland Wilson, c. 1938-1948 The renowned record-producer, civil rights activist, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inductee John Hammond made his very first recordings here. Hammond would go on to play a significant role in launching the careers of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Harry James, Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Babatunde Olatunji, Aretha Franklin, Leonard Cohen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, as well as in reviving the music of delta blues artist Robert Johnson. At 55 Fifth Avenue, Hammond accomplished several historic firsts. His first recordings here were with jazz pianist Garland Wilson, and big band and swing pianist, arranger and composer Fletcher Henderson. Henderson is considered, along with Duke Ellington, one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history, and one of the progenitors of what would come to be called “swing.” Henderson also recorded his “New King Porter Stomp” here.

Billie Holiday, 1947 Hammond discovered Billie Holiday singing at a Harlem speakeasy, and brought her down to the Columbia studios to cut her very first records here in 1933. He also established a close relationship with a young Benny Goodman, who recorded his first top ten hits, including “Ain’t Cha Glad?,” with Hammond at 55 Fifth Avenue in 1933.

Teddy Wilson at a Benny Goodman rehearsal, 1950 While Goodman is often credited with integrating American music by working with African American musicians and vocalists, Goodman himself would credit Hammond, who made it his personal mission to advance the integration of the music industry. Hammond suggested and indeed pushed Goodman to record music with African American musicians, and arranged many of the first integrated recording sessions. After initial resistance from Goodman, Hammond got him, Holiday, and the great African American swing pianist Teddy Wilson to record together here in what was Goodman and Hammond’s first integrated musical recording session (while Black and white musicians might at times play together at clubs, recording together was a taboo which Hammond participated in shattering). At 55 Fifth Avenue Hammond also recorded with legendary jazz saxophonist Benny Carter, Blues singer Bessie Smith, and jazz vocalist Ethel Waters. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Film producers and directors David Berger and Holly Maxson lived at 4 East 12th Street.

Milton Hinton, 1930 Here they maintained a photo archive dedicated to the African American jazz musician and photographer Milton J. Hinton. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

RPM STUDIOS operated from 1976-2004 at 12 East 12th Street during a golden age of music and recording in NYC. RPM was one of the first boutique studios in the city, operating in a large tree-filled upper floor loft with industrial-sized windows open to the sky and overlooking across Union Square.

Cassandra Wilson - Visionary Award (1993). Landmark Album re-mastered and re-released in 2014. For use please contact Village Preservation. The interior studio complex was where several African American recording artists created their first prominent albums, including Cassandra Wilson ("Blue Night 'Til Dawn"), Maxwell ("Urban Hang Suite"), Meshell Ndegeocello ("Peace Beyond Passion''), and Lauryn Hill ("The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"). Paradise Garage's Larry Levan created some of his earliest dance floor remixes here. Danny Sims worked at RPM on Bob Marley's "Reggae on Broadway" and with Gloria Gaynor.

Hendrix Estate Reissues - BBC Sessions (1998). For use please contact Village Preservation. Many other African American and Black recording artists worked at RPM, including Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige (“My Life”), Vanessa Williams ("Comfort Zone" and "The Sweetest Days"), Lenny Kravitz (“Mama Said”), Public Enemy with Chuck D and Flav-o-Flav, Herbie Hancock ("Future Shock"), Genuwine, RZA, Q-Tip, Mtume, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Living Colour, D'Angelo ("Brown Sugar"), Anita Baker, Freddie Jackson, George Benson, Earl Klugh (“Collaboration”), Freddy Cole, Joshua Redman, Sun Ra, Ron Carter, Donna Summer, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sade, Diana Ross, Ronnie Spector, Nona Hendryx (''Design for Living''), and Chaka Khan (“I Feel For You”). A steady stream of reissues from the Jimi Hendrix Estate emerged from RPM as well.

Robert Mason (2018) In his oral history, Robert Mason reflects on his growth as a musician and composer, shares stories of operating RPM Studios, and outlines new projects with younger generations of post-genre contemporary classical electronic composers. Listen to Robert Mason’s Oral History here. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

From 1951 until 1959, the c. 1842 row house at 86 University Place was home to the lesbian bar the Bagatelle. The Bagatelle played a significant role in Greenwich Village’s LGBTQ life, especially for women, throughout its years of operation.

Audre Lorde, 1980 The Black lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde wrote extensively about the Bagatelle, memorializing its complex history. In her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Lorde describes being consistently carded at the door even though her white companions never were, and encountering a bouncer who would not let Black women into the club.

"Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" by Audre Lorde, 1982 Lorde’s writings illuminate the business’ hostility toward Black patrons, despite the fact that it was one of the few spaces where lesbians could congregate in this neighborhood at this time. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

Grove Press, called “the era’s most explosive and influential publishing house” and “the most innovative publisher of the postwar era,” produced incredibly important pieces of 20th century literature while working aggressively and effectively to transform American culture in relation to issues of censorship, sexuality, race, and class. Founded in 1947, in 1964 Grove Press moved to 80 University Place.

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965 Here it published The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This groundbreaking book was Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alex Haley’s first, and was based on over 50 interviews Haley conducted with Malcolm X in his studio at 92 Grove Street. The text has played an enormous role in shaping the legacy and perception of the African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

In the 1950s this building was the home of union organizer and civil rights advocate David Livingston, a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. who arranged a meeting between King and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

United Auto Workers logo Under his leadership, District 65 of the United Auto Workers became one of the earliest supporters of the civil rights movement. Livingston was also notable for his early outreach to women and minorities. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

Over the years, the four buildings that comprised the Albert Hotel hosted many of the most prominent names in American arts, literature, music, and radical politics. According to the State and National Register Report for the Hotel Albert, the Hotel St. Stephen, which was absorbed by the Hotel Albert in 1895, accepted some African American guests as early as 1889. In 1943, the Amsterdam News published an article about the Hotel Albert titled “No Jim Crow In This Hotel.” However, the article itself shared a more nuanced story. It was written following an incident in which a Black student of the Workers School was declined a room and a delegation from the Workers School launched a protest in response. The article quoted the hotel’s manager saying the hotel had a policy of not discriminating.

Charles S. Johnson, undated In 1938, Professor Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University, one of the co-directors of the Institute of Race Relations at NYU, stayed at the Hotel Albert with his wife. Johnson went on to become Fisk University’s first Black president in 1946. In the mid-20th century The People's Radio Foundation, Inc., moved to the Hotel Albert. Its goal was to establish a radio station dedicated to "interracial unity and the brotherhood of man."

“If He Hollers Let Him Go” by Chester Himes, 1945 A number of important African-American literary figures also stayed at the Hotel Albert throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chester Himes was listed at this address in the 1950s, Richard Wright stayed here in 1949, and Charles Wright stayed here in the 1960s. Amiri Baraka (previously known as LeRoi Jones) wrote about meeting a friend at the Hotel Albert in the 1960s. Samuel Delany, an acclaimed writer of non-fiction and science fiction, also lived at the Hotel Albert during the 1970s. While here in 1971, he wrote, directed, and edited the film The Orchid.

The University Place Book Shop, one of Book Row’s longest-running shops, was also located at 69 University Place. Opened by Walter Goldwater in 1932, the business was listed at 105 University Place in 1936-37, then moved to 69 University Place in 1939, and finally ended up at 821 Broadway, where it stayed from at least the 1970s through 1995. Goldwater opened the bookstore with the help of bookdealer and scout Abe Sugarman, who was also the uncle of Goldwater’s wife, Eleanor Lowenstein. Goldwater was the son of the influential political radical Dr. Abraham Goldwater, who was personally acquainted with renowned figures such as John Reed, Emma Goldman, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Arthur Spingarn. The University Place Book Shop was renowned for its extensive selection of books by Black authors and on the subjects of Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Studies. While running the store, Goldwater sustained friendships with venerable Black authors including Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and his customers included Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, and Tuskegee Universities. In the 1950s, Goldwater issued a new edition of Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. The bookstore’s collection also covered the topics of chess, incunabula, Russia, radicalism, communism, socialism, and the political left. Goldwater was married to Eleanor Lowenstein, the proprietor of the Corner Book Shop at 102 Fourth Avenue. The couple lived together above Lowenstein’s shop, and both were deeply involved in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, for which Goldwater was a founding member. Goldwater made philanthropic contributions to the Schomburg Center, another one of his frequent customers, and to the New York Public Library. Yale and Columbia Universities were also customers, and hold some of the Book Shop’s collection. When his store closed in 1995, NYU paid $47,500 for Goldwater’s collection. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

Starting in the 1930s, 35 East 12th Street/48-50 East 13th Street housed the headquarters for Communist Party of the United States. A number of associated offices were also located at this address, including the National Negro Congress. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

Around the early 1930s, 49 East 10th Street was home to Lawrence Gellert, a prominent collector and promoter of field-recorded African-American blues and spirituals and protest songs from the American South.

The Masses, June 1914 cover Born in Budapest, Hungary on September 14, 1898, Gellert arrived in the United States at seven years old and grew up in New York City. In his early 20s, he lived in Tryon, North Carolina, where he edited a newspaper and developed an interest in African-American music. Later, in the early 1930s, Gellert lived at 49 East 10th Street. Then, from 1933 until 1937, Gellert went on to travel through the American South, recording and collecting Black American folk songs which he would compile into two anthologies in the 1950s. Gellert was also a regular contributor to The Masses, a Greenwich Village-based leftist publication, from 1930 until 1947. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

The University Place Book Shop, one of Book Row’s longest-running shops, was opened on University Place by Walter Goldwater in 1932. The business was listed at 105 University Place in 1936-37, then moved to 69 University Place in 1939, and finally ended up at 821 Broadway, where it stayed from at least the 1970s through 1995. Goldwater opened the bookstore with the help of bookdealer and scout Abe Sugarman, who was also the uncle of Goldwater’s wife, Eleanor Lowenstein. Goldwater was the son of the influential political radical Dr. Abraham Goldwater, who was personally acquainted with renowned figures such as John Reed, Emma Goldman, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Arthur Spingarn. The University Place Book Shop was renowned for its extensive selection of books by Black authors and on the subjects of Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Studies. While running the store, Goldwater sustained friendships with venerable Black authors including Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and his customers included Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, and Tuskegee Universities. In the 1950s, Goldwater issued a new edition of Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. The bookstore’s collection also covered the topics of chess, incunabula, Russia, radicalism, communism, socialism, and the political left. Goldwater was married to Eleanor Lowenstein, the proprietor of the Corner Book Shop at 102 Fourth Avenue. The couple lived together above Lowenstein’s shop, and both were deeply involved in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, for which Goldwater was a founding member. Goldwater made philanthropic contributions to the Schomburg Center, another one of his frequent customers, and to the New York Public Library. Yale and Columbia Universities were also customers, and hold some of the Book Shop’s collection. When his store closed in 1995, NYU paid $47,500 for Goldwater’s collection. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

During the Civil War, 813 Broadway was the home of the Hall of the Loyal National League, an organization established to support the Union and bring about the end of slavery throughout the country, not just in the slave states in revolt (as the Emancipation Proclamation did).

James A. Roosevelt, 1896-1899 The Loyal National League was composed of some of New York City’s most elite men. The league had locations all throughout the country during the Civil War with the 813 Broadway location being one of the largest and most prominent. The Secretary of the League was James A. Roosevelt, uncle of future president Theodore Roosevelt. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

The St. Denis Hotel building, 2014 (now demolished) In the 1920s, a number of leftist and labor organizations moved into the former St. Denis Hotel. Among these groups was the American Negro Labor Congress, which published The Liberator from Room 338. In 1950, the Peace Information Center, for which W.E.B. Du Bois served as chairman, moved in. The DuBois-founded Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement, was published out of Room 542. The Labor Research Association in Room 634 also published five- and ten-cent pamphlets with titles including “Negro Liberation.”

American Negro Labor Congress, 1929 Prominent figures of the African American civil rights movement, including Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, and James Baldwin were all connected with the organizations housed in this building. As a result, they were each labeled as “subversive” by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In late 2018, after plans were announced to demolish the historic building to make way for another tech-related development, Village Preservation staged a protest outside the building attended by hundreds of local residents. Nevertheless the city refused to act, and in 2019 the building was demolished, with the new office tower replacing it. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. .

The photographer Aaron Siskind (December 4, 1903 – February 8, 1991) lived and had a studio here beginning in the 1930s, above the famed Corner Book Shop. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

“One of the most notable sculptors of the twentieth century” according to the National Women’s History Museum, the celebrated artist, educator, and self-described “people’s sculptor” Selma Hortense Burke lived and worked at 88 East 10th Street from 1944 until at least 1949, according to New York City directories. While here, Burke completed “The Four Freedoms,” a 2 ½ by 3 ½ foot relief plaque commemorating President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which was used as a model for his image on the U.S. dime coin. Among her many accomplishments, Burke is celebrated for her highly regarded portrayals of towering African American figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Booker T. Washington, and Mary McLeod Bethune, for her significance in the Harlem Renaissance, for her unabashed drawing upon African models for her art, and for achieving success as a Black woman sculptor at a time when few female or Black artists, and even fewer Black female artists, were able to achieve any success or recognition in the United States.

Selma Hortense Burke with her portrait bust of Booker T. Washington, 1930s Burke was surrounded by sculptural objects growing up, which had come from her father’s and uncles’ travels in Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. As reported in Lisa E. Farrington’s book Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, in 1970 Burke stated: “I have known African art all of my life...At a time when this sculpture was misunderstood and laughed at, my family had the attitude that these were beautiful objects.” Burke moved to New York City in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1943, she won a competition to create a profile portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and was commissioned to produce a relief plaque of the President. Burke then had two sittings to sketch the President in person, and completed the plaque while living at 88 East 10th Street. In March 1945, as Burke remained at 88 East 10th Street, Eleanor Roosevelt visited her studio to approve the final design.

Selma Hortense Burke with her relief plaque of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt The plaque was dedicated following Roosevelt’s death, on September 24, 1945 at the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C. “The Four Freedoms” was unveiled by Frederick Weaver, Frederick Douglass’ grandson, and President Harry S. Truman spoke at the event. While U.S. Mint Chief Engraver John Sinnock is credited with Roosevelt’s image on the U.S. dime coin, Burke’s relief plaque is widely accepted as the model and original version. Throughout her life, Burke herself insisted that her design was plagiarized on the dime coin. Significantly, Burke also established the Selma Burke School of Sculpture while living here in 1946, as recorded in an article published that year in Headlines and Pictures (Chicago, Illinois). At this time, the school was located at 67 West 3rd Street (demolished).

U.S. Dime Coin, 2017 Burke later completed a number of sculptural projects, including Mother and Child (1968) and Big Mama (1972), which focused on the experience of Black women. Her final monumental work, an eight-foot tall sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr., which stands in Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina, was dedicated in 1980. Over the course of her career Burke also completed portraits of Booker T. Washington, Duke Ellington, Mary McLeod Bethune (now found in the collection of the Woodmere Art Museum), and other renowned Black figures. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter awarded Burke the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement award. She also received an Essence Magazine award, and a number of honorary doctorates. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

The great jazz musician Randy Weston lived at 204 East 13th Street in the 1960s, during the peak of his jazz career. At this time this section of the East Village was a hub of jazz and blues music in the United States, when Charlie “Bird” Parker and Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter both called the neighborhood home. Throughout his career, Weston incorporated African musical elements in his work, and played an important role in advancing the argument, now widely accepted, that the roots of jazz trace back to African music. Some of his most popular compositions include “Hi-Fly,” “Little Niles,” and “Blue Moses.”

Randy Weston, 1984 Weston was also a key political figure in global civil rights activism. As African countries fought for freedom from colonial exploitation in the mid-20th century, Weston saluted their struggles in his music. His album “Uhuru Afrika” (Swahili for “Freedom Africa”), which was released in 1960 and included lyrics written by Langston Hughes, was banned in South Africa by the country’s apartheid regime.

“Uhuru Afrika” by Randy Weston album cover, 1961 In 1959, Weston became a leading member of the United Nations Jazz Society, a group seeking to spread the love of jazz throughout the world. Two years later, in 1961, Weston made his first visit to Africa, traveling to Nigeria as part of the American Society for African Culture. After a second trip, Weston decided to make his stay more permanent, and moved to Morocco in 1968. He remained here for five years, traveling throughout the country and running the African Rhythms Cultural Center, a performance venue that supported artists from various traditions.

“Tanjah” by Randy Weston album cover, 1974 Weston’s musical accolades earned him Grammy nominations in 1973 for his album “Tanjah” and in 1995 for “The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians of Morocco.” In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts gave Weston its Jazz Masters award, the highest accolade available to a jazz artist in the United States. He was voted into DownBeat magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2016. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. .

"The Lancaster," an 1887 Queen Anne style James Renwick building, is an innovative example of the French Flat, or a middle-class apartment building. Charles Mingus, an iconic jazz musician and composer, lived here with his fiancée in 1972.

Mingus used his music to speak to the troubles facing Black and African American communities. In 1959, he recorded Fables of Fabus inspired by the governor of Arkansas, Orval E. Fabus. In 1957, Fabus refused entry to nine African American students at the Little Rock High School by calling the National Guard. Eventually, President Eisenhower sent troops to escort the students to the school. Highlighting this event, Mingus used the “call and response” style of singing, calling out to his drummer Dannie Richmond “Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie,” to which Richmond would respond, “Governor Faubus!”

Born in Dennison, Texas, on October 31, 1930, Booker T. Ervin Jr. was a tenor saxophonist who resided at 204 East 13th Street. Ervin had a storied career in jazz, working with musical greats such as Charles Mingus, Sonny Stitt, Roy Haynes, Dexter Gordon, and Randy Weston.

Randy Weston once said of Ervin: "for me, \[he] was on the same level as John Coltrane. He was a completely original saxophonist....a master.... 'African Cookbook', which I composed back in the early '60s, was partly named after Booker because we (musicians) used to call him 'Book,' and we would say, 'Cook, Book.' Sometimes when he was playing we'd shout, 'Cook, Book, cook.' And the melody of 'African Cookbook' was based upon Booker Ervin's sound, a sound like the north of Africa. He would kind of take those notes and make them weave hypnotically. So, actually the African Cookbook was influenced by Booker Ervin." Ervin enrolled in the Berklee School of Music following his military service. Moving to New York City in May of 1958, he befriended Charles Mingus and joined the well-respected Mingus Jazz Workshop. In 1959, Ervin contributed to the monumental Mingus Ah Um album.

Throughout his career, Ervin held a distinctive style of performance that would get him signed to Prestige Records in 1963. Despite the breadth of his compositions, Ervin remained under appreciated in the world of jazz. As a result, he packed up with his wife Jane and two children for Europe. Here, Ervin would initially perform at Copenhagen’s Montmartre Club, followed by acts at the Blue Note Club in Paris and the Jamboree Club in Barcelona. By 1966, Ervin returned to the United States and moved into 204 East 13th Street by 1968. It was here that he spent the remaining years of his life with his wife and children before passing away from kidney failure at the age of 39 on August 31, 1970. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .