The African-American neighborhood shines again.
Harlem, name of Dutch origin (Haarlem), wandering word for the seams of America, shine again . The African-American neighborhood is today a coveted target for many young white or Asian middle-class people, professionals, artists or aspiring artists, who find in its relatively cheap rents an incentive to settle. influences the newly conquered tranquility of its streets , colorful, yes, but free from the stigma that they dragged since the mid-fifties of the last century.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Harlem, as if rotten by misery, the one that still in 1990 condemned its inhabitants to a life expectancy similar to that of many African countries, seems buried. Gone are the days of prohibition , when the Italian-American mafia controlled its jazz clubs and the underground lottery was all the rage, also the terrible numbers of heroin and crack in the late seventies, when the proportion of drug addicts was twenty times higher than in the rest of the country. The history of Harlem dates back to the 17th century –Dutch first and from 1644 controlled by the United Kingdom–, the flourishing farms it housed in the 18th century, its past as a luxurious enclave during the 19th century, the urban explosion that arose after the construction of the subway and rail linking Manhattan with leafy Westchester County.
Then came the progressive substitution of the Jewish community (there were more than 150,000 immigrants from Eastern Europe) from 1904 onwards by the Afro-American, who fled from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, etc., in search of opportunities in the nascent industry and a territory less hostile than the one incubated under the shelter of the infamous Jim Crow laws. As of 1950, speculation, the extremely high occupational density and the apathy of the public powers created the perfect broth for the crime boom, vandalism on their heritage and the proliferation of garbage and pests . Until the beginning of the 1990s, the city would not combine an aggressive police campaign with investments in essential enclaves to revive its battered core.
Today Harlem constitutes a mandatory enclave for any visitor . Without forgetting the logical precautions, but far from the terror that his name alone caused until fifteen years ago. What remains of the hecatomb? To begin with, one of the best preserved architectural areas in the city, full of brownstowns and townhouses. Morris-Jumel Mansion (65, Jumel Terrace. Tel. 212 923 8008), built in 1756, is the oldest in New York and among its illustrious visitors is George Washington.
Thanks to the fact that Harlem was synonymous with problems, there were no large investments, pharaonic projects that cut through its streets. today we find gleaming rows of historic buildings, well preserved or undergoing restoration , revalued by more than 300%. We are talking about a neighborhood that was successively and jointly Jewish, Italian (in what would later become Spanish Harlem) and Irish and, for a century, capital of black America.
Here the so-called black renaissance , a movement of ethnic and cultural pride championed by writers such as Langston Hughes. In its innumerable joints, alternative to the most sumptuous of Midtown, swing triumphed, the dancers of the Savoy went crazy, bebop was born at the hands of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Louis Armstrong needed to move from Chicago and be hired in Harlem to cement his assault on the popular imagination. Duke Ellington was an illustrious neighbor on St. Nicholas Ave. (a plaque recalls him). The unforgettable Lady Blue (Billie Holiday) melted hearts and clocks in the Lenox Lounge (288, Lenox Ave. Tel. 212 427 0253), open since 1939: a must have a drink in her Zebra lounge, where they played Miles Davis Y John Coltrane and they were usual james baldwin Y Hughes.
up to the mighty theresa building (125th Street with Seventh Avenue), a hotel opened in 1913, segregated until 1940 and today converted into an office building, where all the great personalities of the time came to stay. Malcom X He kept the offices of his Organization for Afro-American Unity on its ground floor. Fidel Castro used his room when he visited New York in 1960. Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson were regulars. Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Dinah Washington or Ray Charles they set up their headquarters before and after performing at the Apollo Theater (253 West 125th St.).
Let's also not forget that Harlem, in years after the rise of jazz or soul, was origin of cultural phenomena such as hip-hop , whose parentage he shares with the South Bronx. But the neighborhood is much more, still, than secular music. In its countless Baptist churches the old spirituals still resonate, the gospel that emigrated from the South, mixed with the blues of the Delta, originated everything (not to forget, nothing better than remembering the classic calls and answers between the giants of soul and funk and his public and observe how the identical phenomenon repeats itself in the masses). The most famous of all its churches is Abyssinian (132, Odell Clark Place, at 128th West. Tel. 212 862 7474), but the gospel seeker would do well to avoid the masses and pan for gold at, say, the Baptist parish off 116th, off Seventh Avenue (also called, in Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd) and St. Nicholas Ave.
The recent recovery of the neighborhood, spurred on since Bill Clinton set up his offices next to Lenox Avenue, has its biggest drawback in gentrification, or migration of wealthy neighbors who displace some former inhabitants unable to face the rise in rental prices. Secondly, commerce in Harlem pales compared to the rest of Manhattan. No, here there are few, if any, luxury boutiques, lavish shops and window displays of Soho or Chelsea. This ensures that his biorhythms remain faithful to the sociocultural guidelines of a New York laminated by the progressive conversion into an exclusive preserve of the rich. In the absence of prosperous shops, the visitor would do well to browse through the street vendor stalls spread out along 125th Street.
It is worth visiting the hairdressers, where Relax irons scalps. You have to enter the Studio Museum (144, West 125th St. Tel. 212 864 4500) to feel the pulse of contemporary African-American art, and visit Marcus Garvey Park, named after the black leader who dreamed of returning the grandchildren of slaves to the mythical Babylon and former field of dreams of the writer Henry Roth (his fictionalized autobiography At the Mercy of a Wild Stream is a must, for any sensitive reader, even more so if you want to know the prehistory of the neighborhood, the days of the heyday of the recently getaway from Eastern Europe).
A good ride must understand a Sunday visit to some Baptist church , go to the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, where they offer spectacular buffalo wings and delicious ribs; perhaps then heading east, along St. Nicholas, until crossing Washington Heights, reaching the Cloisters and ending at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum (4881, Broadway. Tel. 212 304 9422), which occupies the mansion that William Dycman built in 1784. We'd do well to have walked the Westside before, coming up from the Upper West Side, walking past the tremendous facilities of the columbia university , stopping at the Ulysses G. Grant Memorial in Riverside Park, near Saint John the Divine (1047, Amsterdam Ave. Tel. 212 662 2133) , cathedral of the Episcopal Church and one of the four largest Christian temples in the world.
Map: See map
Address: 188 West 130th Street, New York View Map
Guy: Neighborhoods