Harlem/History

History

17th c. Colonial through 19th century Post-Bellum (1658 - 1873)

The first European settlement in what was then New Harlem was by Hendrick (Henry) de Forest, Isaac de Forest, his brother, and their sister Rachel de Forest, French - Dutch emigres in 1637.^[1] Capt. Jochem Pieter[-sen] Kuyter, Jonas Bronck, and pioneer settler [Dr.] Johannes de la Montagne, a French Huguenot of Leiden, Holland, who arrived in New Harlem in July 1639. Like the Puritan English, Holland served as a haven for many exiled French Protestants too.^[2] The area was originally inhabited by the Manhattans, a native tribe, who along with other Native Americans, most likely Lenape, repeatedly ambushed the Dutch, leading many to abandon it.^[1] The settlement was formalized in 1658 as Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, under leadership of Peter Stuyvesant.^[3] The Indian trail to Harlem's lush bottomland meadows was rebuilt by black laborers of the Dutch West India Company,^[4] and eventually developed into the Boston Post Road. In 1664, the English took control of the New Netherland colony and anglicized the name of the town to Harlem. On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Harlem or Battle of Harlem Plain, was fought in western Harlem around the Hollow Way (now West 125th St.), with conflicts on Morningside Heights to the south and Harlem Heights to the north.

In 1765, Harlem was a small agricultural town not far from New York City.

Harlem was "a synonym for elegant living through a good part of the nineteenth century."^[5] In the early years of that century, Harlem remained largely farmland estates, such as [Conrad] Van Keulen's Hook, orig. Otterspoor, bordered north of the Mill Creek (now 108th St., orig. Montagne Creek at 109th St.), which flowed into Harlem Lake, to the farm of Morris Randall, northwest on the Harlem River, and westward to the Peter Benson, or Mill Farm.^[6] This former bowery [of land] was subdivided into twenty-two equal plots, of about 6 to 8 acres each, of which portions later owned by Abraham Storm, including thirty-one acres (east of Fifth Avenue between 110th & 125th St.) were sold by Storm's widow Catherine in 1795 to James Roosevelt (great grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1760–1847). This branch of the Roosevelt family subsequently moved to the town of Hyde Park, but several of Roosevelt's children remain interred in Harlem.^[7]

As late as 1820, the community had dwindled to 91 families, one church, a school, and a library. Wealthy farmers, known as "patroons",^[5] maintained these country estates largely on the heights overlooking the Hudson River. Service connecting the outlays of Harlem with the rest of the City of New York (still rather contained on the southern tip of the island of Manhattan, roughly bordered to the north by Houston Street at then Bleecker Farm; modern day Washington Square Park) was done via steamboat on the East River, an hour-and-a-half passage, sometimes interrupted when the river froze in winter, or else by stagecoach along the Boston Post Road, which descended from McGown's Pass (now in Central Park) and skirted the salt marshes around 110th Street, to pass through Harlem.

An 1811 City of New York planning commission opined that "Harlem would not be developed for over a hundred years."^[5] The New York and Harlem Railroad (now Metro North) was incorporated (1831), to better link the city with Harlem and Westchester Co., starting at a depot at East 23rd Street, and extending 127 miles north to a railroad junction in Columbia County at Chatham, New York by 1851.

In the years between roughly 1850 to 1870, the village of Harlem declined. Many large estates, including Hamilton Grange, the estate of Alexander Hamilton, were auctioned off as the fertile soil was depleted and crop yields fell. The land became occupied by Irish squatters, whose presence further depressed property values.^[5]

125th Street station on the 7th Av. IRT Line

19th c. Harlem Reconstruction & 20th c. Renaissance

Recovery came when elevated railroads were extended to Harlem in 1880. With the construction of the "els," urbanized development occurred very rapidly, with townhouses, apartments, and tenements springing up practically overnight. Developers anticipated that the planned Lexington Avenue subway would ease transportation to lower Manhattan. Fearing that new housing regulations would be enacted in 1901, they rushed to complete as many new buildings as possible before these came into force.^[8] Early entrepreneurs had grandiose schemes for Harlem: Polo was played at the original Polo Grounds, later to become home of the New York Giants baseball team. Oscar Hammerstein I opened the Harlem Opera House on East 125th Street in 1889. In 1893, Harlem Monthly Magazine wrote that "it is evident to the most superficial observer that the centre of fashion, wealth, culture, and intelligence, must, in the near future, be found in the ancient and honorable village of Harlem."

However, the construction glut and a delay in the building of the subway led to a fall in real estate prices ^[when?] which attracted Eastern European Jews to Harlem in large numbers, reaching a peak of 150,000 in 1917. Presaging their resistance to arrival of blacks, existing landowners tried to stop Jews from moving into the neighborhood. At least one rental sign declared “Keine Juden und Keine Hunde” (No Jews and no dogs).^[9]

Jewish Harlem, however, was ephemeral, and by 1930 only 5,000 Jews remained. The area now known as Spanish Harlem was then occupied by Italians. Italian Harlem is now gone as well, as many Italian descendants moved north. Traces of the community lasted into the 1970s, in the area around Pleasant Avenue. In the early 20th century, Harlem was also home to a significant Irish population, and a large group of Finns.^[3]

Black population increase

Marcus Garvey Park

Masjid Aqsa - West African mosque near 116th Street

Small groups of black people lived in Harlem as early as 1880, especially in the area around 125th Street and "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street. The mass migration of blacks into the area began in 1904, due to another real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of a black real estate entrepreneur named Phillip Payton, Jr. After the collapse of the 1890s, new speculation and construction started up again in 1903 and the resulting glut of housing led to a crash in values in 1904 and 1905 that eclipsed the late-19th century slowdown.^[8] Landlords could not find white renters for their properties, so Philip Payton stepped in to bring blacks. His company, the Afro-American Realty Company, was almost single-handedly responsible for migration of blacks from their previous neighborhoods,^[10] the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), and Hell's Kitchen in the west 40s and 50s.^[11][12] The move to northern Manhattan was driven in part by fears that anti-black riots such as those that had occurred in the Tenderloin in 1900^[13] and in San Juan Hill in 1905^[5] might recur. In addition, a number of tenements that had been occupied by blacks in the west 30s were destroyed at this time to make way for the construction of the original Penn Station.

In 1907, black churches began to move uptown. Saint Philip's Episcopal Church, for one, purchased a block of buildings on West 135th Street to rent to members of its congregation.^[14]

The early 20th-century Great Migration of blacks to northern industrial cities was fueled by their desire to leave behind the Jim Crow South, seek better jobs and education for their children, and escape a culture of lynching violence. During World War I, expanding industries recruited black laborers to fill new jobs, thinly staffed after the draft began to take young men.^[10] So many blacks came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama."^[15] Many settled in Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was 32.43% black. The 1930 census revealed that 70.18% of Central Harlem's residents were black and lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street.^[16] The expansion was fueled primarily by an influx of blacks from the southern U.S. states, especially Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, who took trains up the East Coast. There were also numerous immigrants from the West Indies. As blacks moved in, white residents left; between 1920 and 1930, 118,792 white people left the neighborhood and 87,417 blacks arrived.

Between 1907 and 1915,^[17] some white residents of Harlem resisted the neighborhood's change, especially once the swelling black population pressed west of Lenox Avenue, which served as an informal color line until the early 1920s.^[10] Some made pacts not to sell to or rent to blacks.^[18] Others tried to buy property and evict black tenants, but the Afro-American Realty Company retaliated by buying other property and evicting whites. They also attempted to convince banks to deny mortgages to black buyers, but soon gave up.^[19]

These buildings on West 135 Street were among the first in Harlem to be occupied entirely by blacks; in 1921, #135 became home to Young's Book Exchange, the first "Afrocentric" bookstore in Harlem.^[14]

"Ghettoization"

Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950. The entertainment industry was a major employer in Harlem but relied on income from wealthier whites,^[3] whose numbers dropped significantly after Harlemites rioted in 1935. White audiences decreased almost totally after a second round of riots in 1943. Many Harlemites found work in the military or in the Brooklyn shipyards during World War II,^[20] but the neighborhood declined rapidly once the war ended. Some middle-class blacks moved north or west to suburbs, a trend that increased after the 1960s Civil Rights Movement decreased discrimination in housing.

Little investment in private homes or businesses took place in the neighborhood between 1911 and the 1990s. However, the unwillingness of landlords elsewhere in the city to rent to black tenants, together with a significant increase in the black population of New York, meant that rents in Harlem were for many years higher than rents elsewhere in the city, even as the housing stock decayed. In 1920, one-room apartments in central Harlem rented for $40 to whites or $100–$125 to blacks.^[21] In the late 1920s, a typical white working-class family in New York paid $6.67 per month per room, while blacks in Harlem paid $9.50 for the same space.^[22] The worse the accommodations and more desperate the renter, the higher the rents would be.^[23] This pattern persisted through the 1960s; in 1965, CERGE reported that a one-room apartment in Harlem rented for $50–$74, while comparable apartments rented for $30–$49 in white slums.^[24] The high rents encouraged some property speculators to engage in block busting, a practice whereby they would acquire a single property on a block and sell or rent it to blacks with great publicity. Other landowners would panic, and the speculators would then buy additional houses relatively cheaply.^[25] These houses could then be rented profitably to blacks.^[26]

One of the few ruined buildings remaining in Harlem, photographed on May 14, 2005. The building has since been demolished.

The high cost of space forced people to live in close quarters, and the population density of Harlem in these years was stunning—over 215,000 per square mile in the 1920s. By comparison, in 2000, Manhattan as a whole had a population density under 70,000 per square mile.^[27] The same forces that allowed landlords to charge more for Harlem space also enabled them to maintain it less, and many of the residential buildings in Harlem fell into disrepair.

The 1960 census showed only 51% of housing in Harlem to be "sound," as opposed to 85% elsewhere in New York City.^[28] In 1968, the New York City Buildings Department received 500 complaints daily of rats in Harlem buildings, falling plaster, lack of heat, and unsanitary plumbing.^[5] Tenants were sometimes to blame; some would strip wiring and fixtures from their buildings to sell, throw garbage in hallways and airshafts, or otherwise damage the properties which they lived in or visited.^[29]

Harlem has many townhouses, such as these in the Mount Morris Historic District.

Inadequate housing contributed to racial unrest and health problems. However, the lack of development also preserved buildings from the 1870–1910 building boom, and Harlem as a result has many of the finest original townhouses in New York. This includes work by many significant architects of the day, including McKim, Mead, and White; James Renwick; William Tuthill; Charles Buek; and Francis Kimball.

As the building stock decayed, landlords converted many buildings into "single room occupancies", or SROs, essentially private homeless shelters. In many cases, the income from these buildings could not support the fines and city taxes charged to their owners, or the houses suffered damage that would have been expensive to fix, and the buildings were abandoned. In the 1970s, this process accelerated to the point that Harlem, for the first time since before WWI, had a lower population density than the rest of Manhattan. Between 1970 and 1980, for example, Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 110th Street and 125th Street in central Harlem lost 42% of its population and 23% of its remaining housing stock.^[30] By 1987, 65% of the buildings in Harlem were owned by the City of New York,^[31][32] and many had become empty shells, convenient centers for drug dealing and other antisocial activity. The lack of habitable buildings and falling population reduced tax rolls and made the neighborhood even less attractive to residential and retail investment.

The doorframe of a brownstone designed by William Tuthill in the Mount Morris Historical District in Harlem.

Contemporary history

After four decades of decline, Harlem's population bottomed out in the 1990 census, at 101,026. It had decreased by 57% from its peak of 237,468 in 1950. Between 1990 and 2006 the neighborhood's population grew by 16.9%, including new middle-class residents of African-American, European-American, Hispanic and Asian descent.^[16]

After years of false starts, Harlem began to see rapid gentrification in the late 1990s. This was driven by changing federal and city policies, including fierce crime-fighting and a concerted effort to develop the retail corridor on 125th Street. Starting in 1994, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone funneled money into new developments.^[32] The number of housing units in Harlem increased 14% between 1990 and 2000.^[32] The rate of increase has been much more rapid in recent years. Property values in Central Harlem increased nearly 300% during the 1990s, while the rest of the City saw only a 12% increase.^[32] Even empty shells of buildings in the neighborhood were, as of 2007, routinely selling for nearly $1,000,000 each.^[33] Since completing his second term in the White House in 2001, former U.S. President Bill Clinton has maintained his office at 55 West 125th Street.^[34]

1946–1969, the civil rights movement

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices in line with existing rent control regulations. According to the Metropolitan Council on Housing, in the mid-1960s, about 25% of the city's landlords charged more for rent than allowed by law.^[35]

Many groups mobilized in Harlem in the 1960s, fighting for better schools, jobs, and housing. Some were peaceful and others advocated violence. By the early 1960s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had offices on 125th street, and acted as negotiator for the community with the city, especially in times of racial unrest. They pressed for civilian review boards to hear complaints of police abuse, a demand that was ultimately met. As chairman of the House Committee of Education and Labor at the start of the 1960s, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. used this position to direct federal funds to various development projects in Harlem.^[36]

The influence of the southern nonviolent protest movement was muted in Harlem. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the black leader most respected in Harlem,^[37][38] but at least two dozen groups of black nationalists also operated in New York. The most important of these was the Nation of Islam, whose Temple Number Seven was run by Malcolm X from 1952 - 1963.^[39] Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights in 1965. The neighborhood remains an important center for the Nation of Islam.

The largest public works projects in Harlem in these years were public housing, with the largest concentration built in East Harlem.^[40] Typically, existing structures were torn down and replaced with city-designed and managed properties that would, in theory, present a safer and more pleasant environment than those available from private landlords. Ultimately, community objections halted the construction of new projects.^[41]

From the mid-20th century, the terrible quality of local schools has been a source of distress. In the 1960s, about 75% of Harlem students tested under grade levels in reading skills, and 80% tested under grade level in math.^[42] In 1964, residents of Harlem staged two school boycotts to call attention to the problem. In central Harlem, 92% of students stayed home.^[43] In 1977, Isiah Robinson, president of the New York City Board of Education, was quoted as saying that "the quality of education in Harlem has degenerated to the level of a custodial service."^[3] As of May 2006, Harlem is the heart of the charter schools movement in Manhattan; of the 25 charter schools operating in Manhattan, 18 are in Harlem.^[44]

In 1963, Inspector Lloyd Sealy made history becoming the first African-American officer of the NYPD to command a police station, the 28th precinct located in Harlem.^[45] Community relations between Harlem residents and the NYPD were strained as civil rights activists requested that the NYPD hire more black police officers, specifically in Harlem. In 1964, across Harlem's three precincts, the ratio was one black police officer for every six white officers.^[46] Allegations of police brutality and corruption among Harlem's populace,^[46] and with the low percentage of black officers on the NYPD, relations between the black community and the police department remained strained. A riot broke in the summer of 1964 following the fatal shooting of an unarmed 15-year-old black teenager by an off-duty white police lieutenant. One person was killed, more than 100 were injured, and hundreds more were arrested. Property damage and looting were extensive. The riot would later spread out of Manhattan and into the borough of Brooklyn and neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the heart of Brooklyn's African-American community. In the aftermath of the riots, the federal government funded a pilot program called Project Uplift, in which thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called Youth in the Ghetto.^[47] HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, along with the National Urban League and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.^[48]

In 1966, the Black Panthers organized a group in Harlem, agitating for violence in pursuit of change. Speaking at a rally of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Max Stanford, a Black Panther, declared that the United States "could be brought down to its knees with a rag and some gasoline and a bottle."^[49]

In 1968, Harlemites rioted in despair after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as did black residents in other U.S. cities. Two people died—one stabbed to death in a crowd and another trapped in a burning building. Mayor John Lindsay helped to quell the rioting by marching up Lenox Avenue in a "hail of bricks" to confront the angry crowds.^[50]

1970–1989

Aerial view of Harlem with river, seen from north (2010)

By some measures, the 1970s were the worst period in Harlem's history. Many of those Harlemites who were able to escape from poverty left the neighborhood in search of safer streets, better schools and homes. Those who remained were the poorest and least skilled, with the fewest opportunities for success. Though the federal government's Model Cities Program spent $100 million on job training, health care, education, public safety, sanitation, housing, and other projects over a ten-year period, Harlem showed no improvement.^[51]

The deterioration shows up starkly in the statistics of the period. In 1968, Harlem's infant mortality rate had been 37 for each 1000 live births, as compared to 23.1 in the city as a whole. Over the next eight years, infant mortality for the city as whole improved to 19, while the rate in Harlem increased to 42.8, more than double. Statistics describing illness, drug addiction, housing quality, and education are similarly grim and typically show rapid deterioration in the 1970s. The wholesale abandonment of housing, described in the "Ghettoization" section above, was so pronounced that between 1976 and 1978 alone, central Harlem lost almost a third of its total population, and east Harlem lost about 27%.^[51] The neighborhood no longer had a functioning economy; stores were shuttered and by estimates published in 1971, 60% of the area's economic life depended on the cash flow from the illegal "Numbers game" alone.^[52]

The worst part of Harlem was the "Bradhurst section" between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Edgecombe, from 139th Street through 155th. In 1991, this region was described in the New York Times as follows: "Since 1970, an exodus of residents has left behind the poor, the uneducated, the unemployed. Nearly two-thirds of the households have incomes below $10,000 a year. In a community with one of the highest crime rates in the city, garbage-strewn vacant lots and tumbledown tenements, many of them abandoned and sealed, contribute to the sense of danger and desolation that pervades much of the area."^[53]

Plans for rectifying the situation often started with the restoration of 125th Street, long the economic heart of black Harlem.^[54] By the late 1970s, only marginalized and poor retail remained.^[55] Plans were drafted for a "Harlem International Trade Center," which would have filled the entire block between 125th Street and 126th, from Lenox to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, with an center for trade with the third world. A related retail complex was planned to the west, between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas. However, this plan depended on $30 million in financing from the federal government,^[54] and with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States, it had no hope of being completed.^[55]

The city did provide one large construction project, though not so favored by residents. Starting in the 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, Harlemites fought the introduction of an immense sewage treatment plant, the North River Water Pollution Control Plant, on the Hudson River in West Harlem. A compromise was ultimately reached in which the plant was built with a state park, including extensive recreational facilities, on top. The park, called Riverbank State Park, was opened in 1993 (the sewage plant having been completed some years earlier).^[56]

By 1980, the City of New York owned 60% of all residential property in Harlem,^[57] and began auctioning these properties to the public in 1985. Only a small fraction would be sold at this time, and later scandals would temporarily halt the sales altogether.

1990–present

The city's sale of confiscated houses was intended to improve the community by placing property in the hands of people who would live in them and maintain them. In many cases, the city would even pay to completely renovate a property before selling it (by lottery) below market value.^[58] The program was soon beset by scandal—buyers were acquiring houses from the city, then making deals with churches or other charities in which they would inflate the appraised values of the properties and the church or charity would take out federally guaranteed 203(k) mortgage and buy it. The original buyer would realize a profit and the church or charity would default on the mortgage (presumably getting some kind of kickback from the developer).^[59][60] Abandoned shells were left to further deteriorate, and about a third of the properties sold by the city were tenements which still had tenants, who were left in particularly miserable conditions. These properties, and new restrictions on Harlem mortgages, bedeviled the area's residential real estate market for years.

From 1987 through 1990, the city removed long-unused trolley tracks from 125th Street, laid new water mains and sewers, installed new sidewalks, curbs, traffic lights, street lights, and planted trees. Two years later, national chains opened branches on 125th Street for the first time -- The Body Shop opened a store at 125th street and 5th Avenue (still extant as of 2010), and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream franchise employing formerly homeless people opened across the street.^[61] The development of the region would leap forward a few years later with the introduction of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, which brought $300 million in development funds and $250 million in tax breaks.^[62]

Plans were laid for shopping malls, movie theaters, and museums. However, these plans were nearly derailed in 1995 by the "Freddy's Fashion Mart" riot, which culminated in political arson and eight deaths. These riots did not resemble their predecessors, and were organized by black activists against Jewish shop owners on 125th street.^[63]

Sign attacking Barack Obama outside the Atlah World Missionary Church in the former Harlem Club at 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue

Five years later, the revitalization of 125th Street resumed, with the construction of a Starbucks outlet backed in part by Magic Johnson (1999), the first supermarket in Harlem in 30 years,^[62] the Harlem USA retail complex, which included the first first-run movie theater in many years (2000),^[62] and a new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001). In the same year, former president Bill Clinton took office space in Harlem. In 2002, a large retail and office complex called Harlem Center was completed at the corner of Lenox and 125th.^[62] There has been extensive new construction and rehabilitation of older buildings in the years since.

In January 2010, The New York Times reported that in "Greater Harlem," which they defined as running from the East River to the Hudson River, from 96th Street to 155th Street, blacks ceased to be a majority of the population in 1998, with the change largely attributable to the rapid arrival of new white and Hispanic residents. The paper reported that the population of the area had grown more since 2000 than in any decade since the 1940s.^[64]

The neighborhood's changes have provoked some discontent. James David Manning, pastor of the ATLAH World Missionary church on Lenox Avenue, has received press for declaring a boycott on all Harlem shops, restaurants, other businesses, and churches other than his own. He believes that this will cause an economic crash that will drive out white residents and drop property values to a level his supporters can afford.^[65] There have been rallies against gentrification.^[66]

References

• WPA Guide to New York City 1939
• "Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. Negro New York, 1890-1930". Gilbert Osofsky, 1963
• TIME Magaine, vol. 84, No.5, July 31, 1964. "Harlem: No Place Like Home"
• Newsweek, August 3, 1964,. "Harlem: Hatred in the Streets"
• Harlem Stirs, John O. Killens, Fred Halstead, 1966
• Francis A. J. Ianni, Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime, 1974
• "Crack's Decline: Some Surprises from U.S. Cities", National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, July 1997