Residents & Housing
On Harlem’s northernmost end, in a narrow strip from 145th to 155th Streets and between Amsterdam and Edgecombe Avenues, Sugar Hill is home to the region’s most celebrated African-Americans. By Harlem standards, if you can live in Sugar Hill, you’re living the sweet life.
Sugar Hill sits on an elevated patch of ground, allowing the blocks of row houses and spacious apartments a commanding view of the rest of Harlem to the south and Colonial Park to the east. Apartments and row houses alike were built on speculation before the Great War for middle- and upper-middle-class white residents, and feature large windows, decorated flooring, wrought-iron fire escapes, and intricate details. The buildings are set close to the street, giving just enough room for a stoop above a raised basement; they also include conveniences such as elevators and their operators, as well as guards at the door to keep out those who don’t belong.
These massive buildings give physical weight to the wealth of their residents, forming solid blocks of brick and stone divided by shared walls and backed up to access alleys. Central courtyards are common to six- and seven-floor apartment buildings, providing light and air to the interiors of apartments that may take up a full quarter of each floor. In 1928, the 500-unit Dunbar Apartments is completed, a five-acre complex between 149th and 150th Streets, built by John Rockefeller, Jr. and run by a cooperative association. The building provides additional middle-class housing to make up for shortages in the area. Unfortunately, the Great Depression strikes the next year, leading to the foreclosure of the complex.
The only black-operated bank in Harlem is located in the Dunbar Apartments—the Dunbar National Bank was founded by John Rockefeller, Jr. and has an all-white board, but the managers and tellers are blacks local to Harlem. The bank provides a valuable service to residents of the Dunbar Apartments, though it also does not survive the Great Depression.
This neighborhood is experiencing the pressure of a changing population in Harlem. The last bastion of majority white residents, Sugar Hill is nevertheless undergoing a slow transition, as professional blacks take up residence in the surrounding areas and white families abandon the area. Lawyers, ministers, doctors, civic leaders, businessmen, successful musicians, and artists make Sugar Hill their home. Those walking these streets may spot famous residents, such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, or W. E. B. Du Bois, stepping into and out of their ornate townhouses.
But Sugar Hill isn’t just for the well-heeled or the residential. In some fashionable apartments, decorated in tasteful artwork, one might pay a nickel to lose an afternoon in the haze of a drug the authorities haven’t yet bothered to outlaw. Prohibition has done little to quench the wealthy’s thirst for alcohol and, with the right bribes, imported rum, and other spirits find their way to the glasses of the influential and their invited guests.
Entertainment
In 1923, Irish gangster and bootlegger Owney Madden buys the floundering Club Deluxe from Jack Johnson (keeping him on as manager). Madden renames the 600- seat establishment at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue the Cotton Club, turning it into the outlet for his New-York-brewed Madden’s No. 1 Beer. He bans non-whites from attending (unless on the stage) and proceeds to spotlight the most talented African-American performers in the country’s history. Other than a brief closure in 1925, after which he cuts Johnson out, Madden succeeds at his game.
For the performers, the Cotton Club offers a higher paycheck than most establishments, as well as the opportunity to star in live radio shows that might launch their careers; however, the club doesn’t welcome them in the house. Madden’s emphasis on light-skinned women, as well as his penchant for “jungle” and plantation themes, telegraphs to entertainers exactly how he sees them. If you want to actually catch up with the talent, you’d do better to catch them next door at 646 Lenox, where they let off steam in the basement after the show.
Other Points of Interest
On 155th Street can be found the Prince Hall Masonic Temple. Built in 1925, it provides meeting locations first for the William McKinley Lodge, and then later for other fraternal groups in Harlem, including the Prince Hall Freemasons. Because Harlem Hospital refuses to hire black doctors, a group of seven doctors comes together to form their own clinic, becoming the Edgecombe Sanitarium, on the corner of 137th Street and Edgecombe Avenue. The sanitarium is a small surgical center that also offers treatment for tuberculosis.
The Independent Subway is under construction, after approval by the Board of Transportation in 1924, and has disrupted the peaceful living of Sugar Hill for many. Two collapsed buildings and blocks of construction debris later, the subway is completed in 1930 to connect at 145th Street beneath St. Nicholas Avenue; it connects to the A Train in 1932.
Comments