Harlem

Situation and limits

The district of Harlem is located and extended to north from the island from Manhattan, between the Harlem River, the East River and the Hudson River. The central and Western sector starts in the south with the 110e street and goes until the 155e street to north. The district of East Harlem begins as for him a little more in the south, on the level of the 96e street. The other districts close to Harlem are Morningside Heights in the west and Washington Heights in north. The largest park of the city, recognized like the “lung of Manhattan”, Central Park is located at the south of the district, of which it marks the limit. The limits of Harlem were not always similar to those of today since the district evolved/moved during the history.

Although not forming a Borough strictly speaking, Harlem gathers a certain number of smaller districts . One will also note that Harlem is subdivided in three sectors, West Harlem, Central Harlem and East Harlem with for reference the Fifth Avenue, which generally separates the island from Manhattan in a part is and a western part.

The district of West Harlem extends to the west from St Nicholas Avenue and to north from the 123e Rue. It gathers several districts: Hamilton Heights, around Hamilton Barn, Manhattanville, in the north of Morningside Heights. The Heights indicate the heights of Harlem like Sugar Hill, a district where the middle-class in the Années 1920 resided.

Central Harlem corresponds to the space located between St Nicholas Avenue and the Fifth Avenue. It gathers the districts of Mount Morris, which extends to the west from Marcus Garvey Park, Strivers' Row, center around the 139e Rue, Sugar Hill located more at north, and Astor Row, around the 130e Rue.

Lastly, East Harlem is between the Fifth Avenue and the banks East River, with for principal district Spanish Harlem, in the south of the 116e Rue. As its name indicates it, the district accommodates primarily a majority of Hispanique S, of the Porto Rican S.

History: origins with the Roaring Twenties

Beginnings of Harlem

Harlem, a residential district and middle-class

In 1873, Harlem was attached to the municipality of New York; this annexation was accompanied by a first wave of constructions in speculative matter. The arrival of the air subway starting from 1880 reinforced the relations with the downtown area southernmost and caused especially the fast urbanization of Harlem. The promoters and the speculators made build residences and misèrent on the success of this district. Beautiful residences, famous the Brownstone S , were built in the sector of Marcus Garvey Park and accommodated the members of the New Yorkean middle-class. The Graham Court Apartments were set up in 1898 - 1901 on the Seventh Avenue. Harlem also obtained sports equipment (Sports shirt Grounds) and cultural (Harlem Opera House). The landscape gardener Frederick Law Olmsted, with which them New-Yorkais owes the installation of the Central Park, designed the gardens of Riverbank State Park which skirts Hudson River and the Riverside Drive.

However, the delays in the construction of the subway and the abundant offer of residences cause a drop in the prices of the real estate starting from the Années 1890. New migrants Juif S from Eastern Europe flowed in Harlem, even if certain owners tried to prevent their installation. Other European migrants, Italy NS, Irish and Finnish, lived in the holdings district as of the end of the 19th century. The sector of East Harlem started to be reduced to poverty at the beginning of the XXe century.

Arrival of the population Afro-American

Vis-a-vis the Lynchage S which intensified in the South of the the United States and vis-a-vis the Discrimination S and with the mechanization of agriculture, several thousands of Afro-américainsmigrèrent towards the industrial towns of the Midwest and the North-eastern.

Towards 1880, the black community was still very few and lived around the 125 {{E}} Rue or in the dilapidated buildings of the 130e Western Rue. The massive arrival of the Afro-Americans was due to several factors: the real crash of 1904 - 1905 caused significant drops of the rents. In the remainder of the city, the Blacks underwent racism (riots of Tenderloin in 1900 and of San Juan Hill in 1905, the degradation of their living conditions and sought to leave. The Promoter real Afro-American Phillip Payton Jr. encouraged the installation of black families in Harlem. The construction of the Pennsylvania Station in addition drove out the Blacks of the west of Manhattan (Tenderloin). At the time of the first two decades of the XXe century, many Afro-Americans joined them, leaving the districts of Upper West Side or Hell' S Kitchen.

Rebirth of Harlem

The time of prohibition

The Rebirth of Harlem is synonymous with “insane nights” and “various pleasures”. Among the high places of the Jazz, one found rooms like the Cotton Club , the Small' S Paradise , the Apollo Theater or the club of swing the Savoy Ballroom . The Années 1920 were also marked by the Prohibition, with the opening of the speakeasies , these establishments of sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks, and the bootleggers , the alcohol smugglers. Many bars and clubs reserved for the White were then controlled by the Mafia S Jewish and Italian. The gangster “Dutch” Schultz controlled in particular the production and the distribution of spirits in the district.

Rather than to enter in competition with the established networks, the Gang S Afro-américain S concentrated on the clandestine play. They invented a kind of Loterie, the bolito , which could be played illegally in a multitude of places of Harlem. The leaders of these companies, enriched by these illicit bets, acquired some financial capacity. They were interested then in other more honest projects, by lending in particular in their turn money with those which, wishing to invest, were not able to distinguish them from other more legal institutes. It should be noted that one of the first leading ones of these companies was a woman, Stephanie Clear St.

With the Great depression of 1929, the illicit trade, just like that which was legal, curve remunerative. The Maffia white then sought to take the control of the lottery, which she had been unaware of before. After a brutal war of the gangs, Dutch Schultz took the control of all these operations of Racket in Harlem, until its assassination in 1935. The popularity of the bolito disappears with the appearance of the lottery of the State of New York, which paid more and had the large advantage of being legal. There remained however a fringe of the population which preferred the illicit parts.

Harlem and black population: fights, crises then revival

Black activism: origins at the Second world war

Establishment of the first movements

Little time after the arrival of the black populations in the district the community became known under the name of “spiritual heart of the protest and the black movement”. NAACP ( National Association for the Advancement off Colored People ), movement for the promotion of the civic rights of the minorities, was established in Harlem in 1910. It was followed in 1916 by the Universal Negro Improvement Association of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League directed by Marcus Garvey. The group of the NAACP quickly became largest of the country. The activist Asa Philip Randolph lived in Harlem, where it published the radical magazine The Messenger ( the Messenger ) starting from 1917. It is also since Harlem that it organized the Syndicat off Brotherhood Sleeping Because Porters . Another militant of the black cause, William Edward Burghardt Of Wood lived and published in Harlem in the Années 1920, just like James Weldon Johnson.

The Crash of 1929 and its consequences

The crash of Wall Street in 1929 was the element release of an economic serious attack which touched all the the United States, before extending to many countries from the world. The Grande Depression touched Harlem of full whip. Unemployment increased and the population, enlarged by the arrival of new migrants come from the South, piled up in residences which fell in ruin. In the Years 1930, Harlem gathered: 350000 people, is a density of 233 inhabitants for a half hectare, whereas the average density was of 133 in the remainder of Manhattan. With the beginning of the year 1930, half of the inhabitants of Harlem profited from the program from social security. The Tuberculosis and the prostitution developed quickly in the district. Under the mandate of the mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-1945), the municipal authorities destroyed several holdings and slum to leave the place to great whole of buildings: thus the Harlem River Houses proposed residences with moderate rents. A third of the entire surface of East Harlem shaven then was rebuilt under the direction of the Urbaniste Robert Moses. The urban renovation continued in the Années 1950; it related to also other districts of the north of New York such as Manhattantown, Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side and gave place to many expulsions of Blacks and Porto Ricans. The latter ended up concentrating in East Harlem and the north of the 125 {{E}} Rue.

It is with this Grande Depression incipient that true black activism began in the district, with the slogan “do not buy where you cannot work”. It was the last countryside aiming at forcing the retailers of the 125e street to engage of the black which achieves its goal. In June 1934, of the Boycott S were organized by the Citizens' League for Fair play against the Grand store Blumstein' S located on the 125e Rue. The store agreed to engage Afro-Americans. Extremely of this success the protests of Harlémites continued, carried out by other leaders like the monk and future member of the Congrès Adam Clayton Powell Jr.. This last sought to change the practices of recruiting in other stores and to generalize the use of the blacks, and members of protesters groups. The character of the “divine Père” ( Divine Father ) moved the social dispute in the sphere of the monk. The “divine Father” had settled in Harlem in the Années 1930. The members of its movement bought hotels in the city to accommodate the most stripped, during the Great Depression. After the riots of 1935 and 1943, the movement became increasingly political while being opposed to the racial segregation. In 1940, it organized a petition in favor of a law anti-lynching which collected: 250000 signatures.

At the cultural level the Grande Depression did not have disastrous consequences on Harlem. In spite of the departure of the majority of the writers, literary creation continued, in particular under the impulse of Ralph Ellison (1913 - 1994) and of Richard Wright (1908 - 1960). The American Negro Theater was created on June 5th 1940 by the writer Abram Hill and the actor Frederick O' Neal. Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte attended its school. In the Years 1940, jam sessions were organized in Cecil Hotel. The Minton' S Playhouse was the name of the club which was on the first floor of the hotel; it was active of 1938 with 1970 and accommodated the great names of the Jazz of the time: Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie. The latter launched the Bebop in the middle of the years 1940.

New tendencies and increasing influence

The communist ideas found a positive feedback with Harlem as of the Années 1930, and continued to exert a notable influence in the Années 1940. March 19th 1935, of the riots started under the aegis of the movements activists, following a rumor according to which a police officer had killed a young Black. They mobilized close to: 10000 people who were caught with the stores White of them. One needed the intervention of several hundreds of police officers to restore the order. Four Blacks were killed and 195 wounded people. The damage was important and the middle-classes consequently started to flee the district. 600 plundered stores were counted. The same year, the policy of Harlem was marked by a movement internationalist of dispute against the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italian troops, with demonstrations of great width, petitions and even a call to the Société of the Nations. This internationalism continued intermittently, with in particular important demonstrations in favor of the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Nasser in 1956, symbol of the emancipation of the Tiers-Monde.

The black inhabitants of Harlem took influence in the municipal institutions, in particular starting from 1941 with the election of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. with the New York City Council . He was then easily elected with the Congrès after the installation of an electoral district of the Congress with Harlem in 1944. He left his seat to the New York City Council in another Harlémite, Benjamin J. Davis. But the political weight of Harlem is reduced thereafter since Adam Clayton Powell Jr. its time passed to Washington or in its house of holidays to the the Bahamas and that Davis was imprisoned in 1951. In 1943, a second movement of riots, started by the aggression of a black soldier by a white police officer, ended in the plundering of hundreds of stores and the death of six people.

1946-1969: The Civil Rights Movement

The situation the shortly after the Second world war

If the country left the economic crisis after the Second world war, one cannot say as much Harlem of it. The district was folded up gradually on itself, being isolated from the remainder of Manhattan, and acquired a bad reputation: Harlem became a Ghetto. The urban landscape was degraded little by little, the houses were dilapidated, the buildings and the trade were given up, several sectors remaining in waste lands. Harlémites were thus more confronted with the difficulties other New Yorkeans: they were struck by a strong unemployment rate, lived in a context of violence, Drogue, insalubrity and generalized poverty. The infantile Death rate and of school failure exceeded that of the remainder of the city. In 1964, the percentage of Toxicomane S living in Harlem was ten times higher than the average of New York, and twelve times more than for the unit of the United States. On an estimate of: 30000 New Yorkean drug addicts: 15000 with: 20000 lived then in Harlem. The rate of criminality was six times higher than the average of the metropolis. Half of the children lived in single-parent families or only, situation which contributed to the rise of the delinquency. Associations, the Churches, the Sect S and the gangs gradually replaced the public authorities on the ground. However, black activism also developed, allowing him the population and the district to be raised gradually.

Disputes and violence: the inhabitants organize themselves

At the end of the Years 1950 and at the beginning of the Years 1960, Harlem was shaken by the movement of the “strikes of the rents”, carried out by the local activist Jesse Gray, the “Congress of the racial equality”, the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HAYROU) and other groups. These groups wanted to force the owners to improve quality of the residences, by leading them to take measures against the Rat S and the cockroaches, to provide heating during the winter, and to maintain the rents on acceptable levels. According to the Metropolitan Council one Housing , in the middle of the years 1960, approximately 25% of the owners took a rent higher than that which was fixed by the law.

Several groups were mobilized in Harlem during the years 1960, to claim better schools, better paid employment and salubrious residences. Some were peaceful whereas others preached violence. With the beginning of the year 1960, the Congress off Racial Equality (CORE) had its offices on the 125e Rue and served mediators between the community and the city, especially in period of social disturbances. They made pressure so that the Civilian review board S hear their complaints against the abuses the police force, asks which was finally satisfied. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. became president of the House Committee off Education and Labor with the beginning of the year 1960, and used this position to assign federal funds with various development projects.

The influence of the nonviolent protest movement of the south was choked in Harlem. Martin Luther King was however the black leader more respected of Harlem, but at least twenty groups of black nationalists also operated with New York. Most important of them was Nation by far off Islam, whose Seventh Temple was directed by Malcolm X, between 1952 and 1963. Although this last barrel assassinated with the theater Audubon Ballroom (Washington Heights) the February 21st 1965, Harlem off remained one of the principal centers of the Nation Islam .

More the great projects of public works of Harlem during these years were the social housing, with a concentration mainly in East Harlem. As a whole, the existing structures were demolished and replaced by properties conceived and managed by the city which owed, in theory, to propose a surer and pleasant environment that those proposed by the private owners. In the final analysis, the protests of the community slowed down the construction of new projects.

Starting from the medium of the XXe century, the low level of the local school S was a source of concern. During Years 1960, approximately 75% of the students did not have the suitable level in reading, and 80% did not have the level in Mathématiques. In 1964, the residents of Harlem organized two Boycott to draw the attention to this problem: in Central Harlem, 92% of the pupils remained on their premises. In 1977, Isiah Robinson, president of the New York City Board off Education would have declared that the “quality of education had degenerated on a level worthy of that of a prison”. It is in this context disturbed that the third wave of riots took place, in July 1964, after the death of young a fifteen years black in a shooting, in which a white police officer was implied. A person lost the life, more than one hundred were wounded, and of the hundreds were stopped. The material damage and plunderings multiplied on this occasion.

Consecutively with the riots of 1964, the federal government financed a pilot program baptized Project Uplift thanks to which thousands of Harlémites young people obtained employment for the summer 1965. The project was initiated by a report/ratio of HAYROU entitled “youth in the ghetto” and the HAYROU was charged to implement it, with the assistance of the National Urban League and nearly one hundred small Community organizations. In 1966, the Black Panther Party organized an assembly with Harlem, by making countryside against violence. At the time of a manifestation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , a lecturer of Black Panther, max Stanford, that the the United States could “be made put at knees by a rag and gasoline in a bottle”, i.e. a Kingpin declared. In 1968, Harlem knew new riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.. Two people died, one stabbed with dead in the crowd, the other trapped in a building on fire. The mayor of the time, John Lindsay tried to calm the rioters while going on Lenox Avenue under a “brick flood”.

1970-1989: Harlem is inserted in the crisis

A calamitous situation

Because of certain measurements, the Années 1970 were one of the worst periods of the history of Harlem. Many its inhabitants, able to escape poverty, left the district in the search of a surer place, better schools and residences. Those which remained were poorest and the least educated, they had only few opportunities of finding a better employment. Although the federal government invested 100 million dollars on ten years in the fields of health, education, safety, cleanliness, the efforts remained insufficient. The statistics of this period reflect the degradation of the district. In 1968, infant mortality reached a rate of 37 per 1000, against 23,1 per thousand for the whole of New York. At the time of the eight following years, infant mortality for the city passed to 19, whereas that of Harlem culminated to 42,8, i.e. more of the double. The statistics on health, drug or education show a similar tendency for the Années 1970. The departures became so numerous between 1976 and 1978, that Central Harlem lost almost a third of its population and East Harlem approximately 27%.

The most underprivileged district of Harlem was the Bradhurst section , located between the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Edgecombe , of the 139e street until the 155e. In 1991, the NewYork Times will say some: “Since 1970, the exodus of the residents left on the spot the poor, the unemployed, little educated people. Almost two thirds of the hearths have an income lower than: 10000 $ per year. This community with the one of the highest rates of criminality of the city, the scattered refuse, the waste grounds and the unused buildings of which much is walled, all that contributes to give a feeling of danger and desolation. ”

Reaction of the city

Measurements taken to rectify this situation begin with the restoration from the 125e Rue, along the economic heart of the Black Harlem . At the end of the years 1970, there remain only some poor and marginal trade. One draws the plans of a Harlem International Trade Center , which would have covered the whole block ranging between the 125e and the 126e Rue, of Lenox Avenue to the boulevard Adam Clayton Powell Jr., including a center of exchanges with the Tiers-monde. A shopping mall is envisaged in the west between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St Nicholas. However, this project is related to a financing of 30 million $ on behalf of the federal government. A compromise was finally found which envisaged the installation of a park of State including/understanding of the sporting installations and relaxation, on the roof of the station. The Riverbank State Park was opened with the public in 1993 (the factory having been completed a few years earlier).

Towards 1980, the town of New York had approximately 60% of the residential park of Harlem; it started to sell its properties with the public since 1985. Actually, only a small proportion was sold at that time, some scandals stopped these sales also temporarily.

Since the Nineties: second Rebirth of Harlem

The gentrification

Since the end of the XX {{E}} century, Harlem knew important changes, at the same time in its social structure, its living conditions but also in its urban landscape. These upheavals fall under the recent revitalization of Manhattan.

The Gentrification indicates the reoccupying of the centers of the cities by the easy classes after restorations and rehabilitations . This movement initially left the south of Manhattan in the Années 1980 to gain the districts located more at north in the Années 2000. Between 1990 and 2000, the average revenue of Harlémites progressed. The fastest increase was measured in Central Harlem and East Harlem. At the regional level, the New York State Empire Zones Program encouraged the economic development of East Harlem by tax incentives.

Stages of the revival

The municipality of New York set up a policy aiming at allowing the possibility of home-ownership of the inhabitants of Harlem. The long-term objective was to improve the living conditions of the community. In the majority of the cases, the city financed the restoration of the real estate before selling it (by drawing lot) in lower part of the market prices. But the program was quickly caught up with by the scandals: people became purchasers of the buildings near the city, then, resold them with the Église S and other charity associations by marking up the price, then the churches and associations subscribed a real loan, under the protection of the federal article 203 (K), and bought the good. The original purchaser carried out an important benefit thus whereas the Church or association failed in the refunding of the real loan (obtaining, it is supposed, a bribe on behalf of a real Promoteur). The unused residences were left with the abandonment. Approximately a third of the properties sold by the city was buildings where always lived tenants and who were in their turn abandoned. These ruins, and the restrictions on the real loans degraded the market Immobilier in this zone, for long years. Of 1987 with 1990, the city engaged in great work of rehabilitation of the district: it withdrew the long unutilised ways of Tramway on the 125 {{E}} Rue, posed new water pipelines as well as new sewer S, installed new Trottoir S, fires of circulation, public lighting and planted Arbre S. later Two years, large chains of stores opened shops on the 125e Rue for the first time: The Body Shop established a store with the intersection between the Fifth Avenue and the 125e Rue, whereas the company of ice cream Ben & Jerry' S opened a sign and employed former homeless people. But the development of Harlem exploded a few years later thanks to the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone which brought 300 million dollars in development funds and 250 million dollars in deduction of taxes. The fall of criminality also played in favor of the district: today, Harlem is again a sure district in the course of the day and it is possible to walk on the main roads the night in full safety. This success is partly related to the action of the mayor of the city, Rudolph Giuliani, between 1993 and 1998, which set up the “Tolérance zero”, preached the integration of the ethnic minorities in the police force as well as a concerted work of the various municipal institutions, in particular of the schools.

Projects of shopping malls, Cinema S and Musée S were proposed. However, the latter failed to be abandoned in 1995 following the riots of Freddy' S Fashion Mart which made eight dead. These riots did not resemble those which had preceded, and were organized by black activists against the managers of stores Juif S of the 125e Rue. Five years later, the rehabilitation of the 125e Rue began again, with the construction of a Starbucks, supported by the tennis shoe tor Magic Johnson, originating in the district. The first shopping mall of the district since more than thirty years, Harlem the USA , also left ground during this period, just like a Multiplex, in 2000, then the Studio Museum in Harlem, in 2001. The same year, former President Bill Clinton opened his office in the district. In 2002, another shopping mall, the Harlem Center was completed on Lenox Avenue.

Economy

Trade

Since the medium of the Years 1990, Harlem again attracts the economic investments and great projects. However, even if this economic revival creates jobs, it does not touch all the layers of the population of the district. Unemployment rate remains on levels higher than the national average: in Central Harlem, it remains stable since the years 1990 and is established to approximately 9% of the active population. In East Harlem, one counted to 17% unemployed in 2004.

Several shopping malls was born since the Années 1990: East Harlem saw to be established a large surface of the chain Pathmark in 1997. It allowed the creation of 200 jobs in the sale and proposed many services (pharmacy, banks, etc). This supermarket, the built first with Harlem, was followed by other projects: Rebirth Plaza (real residential and of stores on Lenox Avenue and the 116e Rue), Harlem Center (which include/understand a store Office Deposit and offices on the floors), Gotham Plaza , East River Plaza , etc

The shopping mall “Harlem the USA” east one of the principal symbols of the Rebirth of the district: it joins together shops (HMV, Old Navy, Modell' S, etc) and a cinema. One finds there the Hue Man Bookstore , a bookseller specialized in the literature Afro-American. Other large signs were recently installed there like the coffees Starbucks or a shop Disney Store on the 125 {{E}} Rue. The small shopkeepers of the district complain about this new competition, and some estimate that it denatures Harlem, but in parallel, the emergence of these great centers is also one of the reasons of the attraction of the New Yorkeans for the district.

Tourism

There is still ten years, Harlem was a not very frequentable district, of day like night, and with the peak of the crisis during the Années 1970, the fear inspired by the district was such as the white taxi drivers feared to go fear there of being made attack. Thus, in the film Taxi Driver of Martin Scorsese which presents certain sordid aspects of the New York of the years 1970, Travis Bickle (interpreted by Robert De Niro) is made throw stones on its taxi by young blacks. However, since the second Rebirth of the district, the things completely evolved/moved. Indeed, without being become a completely sure district, especially the night, Harlem an important tourist place of Manhattan, and constitutes today a fortiori of New York, from the diversity of its buildings and places of entertainment which marked the history of the city, but also because this district represents, in spite of the difficulties encountered by the populations Afro-américain are one of the facets of the Melting Pot, that certain tourists come to seek in Big Apple .

Harlem seeks to attract new visitors by emphasizing his inheritance: certain clubs of jazz were renovated like the Apollo Theater for total costs of 65 million dollars. Apollo Theater receives the visit of 1,3 million people each year. Harlem is part from now on of the routes borrowed by the bus of tourists who come to attend concerts of Gospel Sunday. The municipality encourages the economic development of the 125e street, of which she wishes to make the principal artery and the window of Harlem.

To answer this new tourist request, a hotel Marriott is in construction. Known under the name of “Harlem Park”, the project envisages also trade and residences. The building should be most of Harlem with 40 stages, and create nearly 900 employment.

Population

One distinguishes four sectors in Harlem: East Harlem, West Harlem, Central Harlem, Spanish Harlem. According to the census of 2000, Harlem counts: 259200 inhabitants, of which: 108100 for East Harlem and: 151100 for Harlem Exchange. Harlémites account for 16,8% of the population of the island of Manhattan.

The population of Harlem is relatively young (27% less than 18 years). The Poverty line is higher than for the remainder of New York (36,7% of the population). East Harlem is touched more by the Pauvreté, the Obésité and the Analphabétisme that Central Harlem. The ethnic composition is also different between the two sectors: East Harlem is the district Latino (the Hispanique S represent more half of the population) whereas Central Harlem shelters an important black community (67% of the inhabitants). Today there exist tensions between Hispanic and black because of competition on the territory.

The recent Gentrification of Harlem is accompanied by a slow ethnic modification: the share of the nonHispanic White progresses, even if they remain minority (around 8% of the total).

The Asian community grows quickly but represents for the moment only 3% of the total population. Lastly, since the opening to the Immigration of the years 1960, of new migrants settle in Harlem: Africans, in particular of the Senegal board ( Little Senegal around the 116e street), which often keep their traditions and their language.

All the religions are represented in Harlem, but the district is known like one of the hearths of the Christianisme and the black Islam. One counts nearly 400 churches in Harlem controlled by various Protestant currents (Église Baptist, Méthodisme ( African Methodist Episcopal Church ), episcopal Église. Many small Congrégation S officiates in buildings or Brownstone S of the district. The Church Baptist of Abyssinie is as for it a very influential organization with Harlem, and has an important real inheritance. It is made lawyer of the black classes most underprivileged. The Mormons established a vault on the 128e Rue in 2005. The district is the center of the black islamist movement of the United States (Nation off Islam). Malcolm X lived in Harlem. Lastly, the Judaïsme is present in several Synagog S like The Old Broadway Synagog , the Temple Healing from Heaven and the Temple off Joy . A Jewish current Afro-American, called Commandment Keepers meets in the synagog of the 123e Western Rue.

Transport

The district of Harlem being located on the island of Manhattan, it is very well served by public transport, which it is of the Bus or the subway. That is also explained by the fact why it is by Harlem that all the underground lines which go in the Borough of the Bronx forward.

The underground lines passing by Harlem are as follows:

lines of IND Eighth Avenue Line

Line 1: of Cathedral Parkway to the 157e street
Line 2: of 110e Street North Central Park with the 135e street
Line 3: of 110e Street Central Park North with the terminus with Harlem 148e Street;

lines of IRT Lexington Avenue Line

Line 4: 110e street with the 125e Street
Line 5: 110e street with the 125e Street
Line 6: 110e street with the 125e Street

lines of IND Sixth Avenue Line

Line B: of Cathedral Parkway to the 155e street
Line V: of Cathedral Parkway to the 155e street

With regard to the bus, Harlem is also served by various lines. Of west in is, one finds the lines thus: M1, m2, m3, M4, M5, M7, M10, M11, M15, M18, M60, M100, M101, M102, M104, M116. The M corresponds here to the lines circulating on Manhattan.

Culture and arts with Harlem

High place of the culture Afro-American to the the United States, Harlem offers a variety of institutions, works, workshops of artists and museums which support the activism of the ethnic minorities.

Museums, cultural institutions and teaching

The Studio Museum in Harlem is the only museum Afro-American recognized by the Association of the American Museums. Located at the 144 West of the 125e Street, it is open since 1967; its collections include/understand objects and paintings representative of the Culture Afro-American. Conferences are organized in the auditorium. Founded in 1923, the Museum off the City off New York recalls the history of the city through a varied collection of objects and works of Article It is in the sector of Spanish Harlem, in edge of Central Park. Audubon Terrace gathers a whole of museums and cultural institutions installed in the North-East of Harlem: since 1904, The Hispanic Society off America gathers many works and rare books of the Hispanic culture. The major pieces of the museum are the tables of Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, El Greco and Joaquín Sorolla there Bastida, as well as a first edition of Don Quichotte . The American Academy off Arts and Letters is a literary institution which takes since 1904 the French Academy for model. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an information center located on the boulevard Malcom X which preserves more than five million documents. Baptized in the honor of the writer and historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938), the funds consist of its personal collection and various acquisitions which testify to the Renaissance of Harlem. The museum of Barrio was created by activists and Porto Rican artists and devotes themselves to the Latin-American culture.

Harlem counts a great university institution: the campus of the City College off New York (CCNY) is in Harlem, whereas that of the Columbia university is in the district close to Morningside Heights. The CCNY is located since the beginning of the 20th century along Convent Avenue , between the 130e street and the 141e street. Founded in 1847, it was the first higher establishment public and free of the the United States. The majority of its buildings, built in a style neogothic, are the work of the architect George Browne Post, and several of them received the distinction of landmarks .

Historical heritage and architectural

More than 700 buildings are classified like historical heritage and architectural with Harlem.

The district is a summary of the history of the New Yorkean architecture. The oldest building is the remains of Alexander Hamilton, built in 1802 in the federal Style. Two whole of Brownstone S of the end of the XIXe century remains with Strivers' Row and Astor Row. The historical quarters of Mount Morris Park concentrates buildings of styles néo-novel, néogrec and Queen Anne. In the first years of the XXe century, the buildings of the campus of the City College off New York were built in neogothic and are the work of the architect George Browne Post. With the dynamism of the district in the Inter-war period, of great residential units are built such as the Dunbar Apartments (1926) or the Harlem River Houses (1937). Claremont Theater Building, drawn by Gaetano Ajello and opened in 1914, adopts as for him the style néo-rebirth.

Harlem is also famous for its many pertaining to worship buildings which illustrate an important diversity of architecture. Most known are of style neogothic: Mother Zion Church (1925), Abyssinian Baptist Church (1923). Others are marked by a certain ecclectism: All Saints Novel Catholic church (drawn by James Renwick Jr in 1872), St Thomas the Apostle church (1907).

Lastly, the clubs of jazz (Apollo Theater, Minton' S Playhouse), the houses of the musicians or writers (Langston Hughes) constitute as many places of pilgrimage for impassioned jazz and literature.

Literature

Harlem inspired by many black, American and foreign writers. Of course the authors of the Rebirth of Harlem often take for framework the district: the novelist Claude McKay (1889-1948) is the author of the best-seller Home to Harlem (1928). Its Autobiography entitled Harlem: Negro Polis appears in 1940. Chester Himes (1909-1984) described the misery and the degradation of the district in its detective novels, whose the Queen of the apples , (1958) for which it obtains the Grand Prix of police literature. The work of James Baldwin (1924-1987) is marked by its individual experiment of the misery of Harlem and the topic of discrimination is recurring in Harlem Quartet . In Notes off has Native Sound , published in 1955, it evokes the riots of August 1943. Langston Hughes (1902-1967), in the ingenuous one of Harlem (1961), puts in scene an American Black come to settle in Harlem to escape racism from the South. Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) written invisible Homme, for which do you sing? and described Harlem in the years 1940. The invisible man appears the American Black, which seeks its place in the company of the time. This novel gained in 1953 the National Book Award .

The black condition of Harlem inspired also the theater: Don' T You Want to Be Free? (1938) is a work written by Langston Hughes which was played Harlem Suitcase Theater. The part The River Niger Joe Walker evokes the family life with Harlem in the years 1970. She was played on Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company , a New Yorkean company of theater, and gained the Tony Award of the best part, before making a round in all the country.

Lastly, in 1938, Orson Welles directed the part of William Shakespeare Macbeth with a troop of black actors in Lafayette Theater de Harlem.

Cinema

See also: List of made films with Harlem

The cinema adapted many literary works of the Renaissance of Harlem: for example, that of Chester Himes, Knitting machine Comes to Harlem realized by Ossie Davis in 1970. Others recall the period of apogee of the district in the years 1920: Francis Ford Coppola, Knitting machine Club (1984), Eddie Murphy, Nights of Harlem (1989) or Rodney Evans, Brother to Brother (2004). With Harlem Story ( Cool The World , 1963), the scenario writer Shirley Clarke evokes, in the semi-documentary form, the destiny of a band of black teenagers. Rachid Bouchareb in her film Little Senegal (2001) puts in scene a Senegalese who leaves to the United States to find the descendants of his ancestors. He finds himself in the district of Harlem where saw the African community, Little Senegal .

Photographs

The American photographer Bruce Davidson contributed to make known the life of the inhabitants of Harlem thanks to a series of photographs taken between 1966 and 1968 and entitled 100e Rue . This series gave place thereafter to an exposure to the MoMA and the publication of a book which became a reference for the history of American photography. In 1969, the exposure “ Harlem in my mind ” is off held with the Metropolitan Museum Art and succeeds in attracting many Afro-Americans in the museum.

Music

Since the Rebirth of Harlem in the Inter-war period, the district forever ceased being one of the principal hearths of musical creation in the United States. Harlem is thus the cradle of the hardware bop at the end of the years 1950, a musical movement which disputed the supremacy of the white musicians. The Salsa was born in the Spanish Harlem within the Hispanic community. The Gospel is present in the churches of the district; the Boys Choir off Harlem are a group founded in 1968.

Several titles pay homage to Harlem: thus on the album of Claude Nougaro dedicated to “large apple”, Nougayork , or on that of U2, Rattle and Hum ( Angel off Harlem in memory of Billie Hollyday); Cyndia Williams sang Harlem Blues . Sam Allen, pianist American (1909-1963) came to Europe in the years 1930 and accompanied the Review by the Knitting machine Club to the Moulin-Rouge.

See too

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