Description
Harlem is the Manhattan neighborhood north of Central Park, long known as the cultural capital of Black New York, and perhaps of Black America. It is a place of music, churches, theaters and brownstone streets, and a living piece of American history.
The big names are on 125th Street. The Apollo Theater opened there in 1934, in a former burlesque house, and is still the most famous stage in the neighborhood.
Also on the map: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and, among the more than 400 churches of Black Harlem, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, long one of the most influential.
Music is everywhere. Harlem pianists invented stride, a style of jazz piano, in the 1920s; swing came with the Savoy Ballroom, immortalized in the song "Stompin' at the Savoy"; and hip-hop, R&B and soul groups got their start here too. In the 1960s the Harlem Cultural Festival in Mount Morris Park was nicknamed "Black Woodstock".
The Dutch named Harlem after a city back home, Haarlem, in 1658. Three centuries later the name of this Manhattan neighborhood meant something else entirely.
The change came fast. In 1910 about one in ten Central Harlem residents was Black; by 1930, seven in ten. They came with the Great Migration, fleeing the segregated South, and with them came the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, in poetry, novels, theater and art.
At night more than 125 venues were open between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. 133rd Street was called "Swing Street". The Cotton Club had Duke Ellington on stage but admitted whites only, while the Savoy was integrated.
Then came the Depression, decades of poverty and, from the 1990s, a revival that also brought gentrification. Further east, East Harlem, or Spanish Harlem, was once mostly Italian and became Puerto Rican after World War II, and is now home to many Latino communities.
The big names are on 125th Street. The Apollo Theater opened there in 1934, in a former burlesque house, and is still the most famous stage in the neighborhood.
Also on the map: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and, among the more than 400 churches of Black Harlem, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, long one of the most influential.
Music is everywhere. Harlem pianists invented stride, a style of jazz piano, in the 1920s; swing came with the Savoy Ballroom, immortalized in the song "Stompin' at the Savoy"; and hip-hop, R&B and soul groups got their start here too. In the 1960s the Harlem Cultural Festival in Mount Morris Park was nicknamed "Black Woodstock".
The Dutch named Harlem after a city back home, Haarlem, in 1658. Three centuries later the name of this Manhattan neighborhood meant something else entirely.
The change came fast. In 1910 about one in ten Central Harlem residents was Black; by 1930, seven in ten. They came with the Great Migration, fleeing the segregated South, and with them came the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, in poetry, novels, theater and art.
At night more than 125 venues were open between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. 133rd Street was called "Swing Street". The Cotton Club had Duke Ellington on stage but admitted whites only, while the Savoy was integrated.
Then came the Depression, decades of poverty and, from the 1990s, a revival that also brought gentrification. Further east, East Harlem, or Spanish Harlem, was once mostly Italian and became Puerto Rican after World War II, and is now home to many Latino communities.