The Black Mecca

While Clam House is a well-known venue, a nightly affair at the Hamilton Lodge (at 155th Street) holds the largest annual drag ball in all of New York. Thousands upon thousands of spectators make their way to view the hundreds of mostly young, working-class men all dolled up. The event is reported in numerous newspapers.
At 125th Street stands the building that will become the Apollo Theater in 1934. Trough the 1920s, it is a burlesque theater featuring bawdy variety shows, striptease, dances, and comedy. Owners Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon strictly enforce a whites-only policy. The banning of burlesque in 1933 sees their business go under, and the theater is left abandoned for a year before new owners reopen it as the Apollo. Meanwhile, on 280 West 155th Street and accessible via subway, is the Manhattan Casino, a 6,000-seat hall that hosts baseball games for the ever-growing crowds.
Built by Oscar Hammerstein in 1889, the Harlem Opera House (at 211 West 125th Street) was his first theatre. The venue changed hands and names multiple times; during the first years of the 1920s, it serves as a haunt for the vaudeville circuit. Frank Schiffman buys the property in 1922 and promptly closes it, with the building remaining closed for nearly a decade before becoming a movie theatre in the 1930s. It is demolished in 1959.
The Temple Israel of Harlem congregation purchased a building at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street to be dedicated as a synagogue; the building was originally constructed in 1887 for a congregation of German Jews. In 1907, the congregation, led by Rabbi Dr. Maurice Harris, built a synagogue at 201 Lenox Avenue before permanently moving to 201 West 91st Street. Half a decade later, the Lenox synagogue becomes the Mount Olivet Baptist Church.
Enter the Heaven of Father Divine (at 152 West 126th Street) and hear his public addresses nightly at 11:00 p.m. The religious leader and deity, Father Divine plants his Heavens around the country and throughout Harlem, but the 126th Street building is his headquarters. Each Heaven is a reconstituted hotel, with dormitories, open both to members of the sect (his “angels”) and to the public at $2 a night. At Heaven, anyone might obtain a meal with meat for only 15 cents. Father Divine demands that his followers renounce government assistance, as well as more carnal pleasures, but runs a variety of businesses on a cash basis. Outsider attempts to learn more about the full scope of Father Divine’s investments have, so far, failed.
Louis Blumstein emigrated from Germany to America in 1885 where he was a street peddler for a decade until he could open Blumstein’s Department Store on Hudson Street. It moved to 125th Street (between Seventh and Eighth Avenues) in 1898. After his death in 1920, his family demolishes the original store and builds a five-story regional shopping center worth more than a million dollars.
Lenox Avenue is a popular street for public speakers, from this block down through the poorest areas of Harlem. Often found standing on soapboxes, such speakers may be preachers gathering new recruits to their flock, communists attempting to spark a revolution among the workers of Harlem, or even cultists in disguise offering the downtrodden something no one else has... hope. While religious speakers are tolerated, left of center politics isn’t and such speakers are actively rounded up by the police as a public nuisance. At 272 Lenox Avenue is the neo-Grecian rowhouse of James Van Der Zee Studios, which opens in 1930.
Relations between African-Americans and Jews before World War II are mainly of three kinds: Jewish employers with black employees, Jewish landlords with black tenants, and Jewish small businessmen with black customers. Indeed, integration is resisted by many in Harlem, including many Jewish businesses. Blumstein’s, founded by a German Jewish immigrant in 1898, resists racial integration even as the African-American population of Harlem grows in the 1920s. In 1929, a few African-Americans are hired as elevator operators and porters, but higher-paying jobs are not available to them. Over the next few years, as the Great Depression deepens, calls for boycotts of stores like Blumstein’s will be unsuccessful until 1934 when Reverend John H. Johnson begins a “Buy Where You Can Work” campaign, which is (ultimately) backed by the New York Age newspaper. When that campaign starts, 75 percent of Blumstein’s customers are African-Americans, and by July, Blumstein capitulates due to the economic pressure, pledging to hire 35 African-Americans in clerical and sales jobs. A 1,500-person parade celebrates the victory, and Blumstein’s becomes the first to hire a black Santa Claus and use black models and mannequins. Indeed, the store also successfully appeals to cosmetic manufacturers to produce makeup for darker skin tones. Blumstein’s transformation is so successful that in 1945, Harlem’s largest newspaper, the Amsterdam News, profiles Arnold Blumstein as one of Harlem’s top ten businessmen.
The Bernheimer & Schwartz Pilsener Brewing Company shuttered its doors after the passage of Prohibition. The firm’s building stands between 126th and 128th Streets (purchased just before Prohibition took effect) and remains empty until the Interborough Fur Storage Company buys it in 1930. During the decade the building stands empty, it is little more than a pretty-looking red brick shell. Not far away, the Hollywood Cabaret (on 124th Street) becomes known for its “pansy” entertainment, drawing in large crowds.
The five-block region from 110th to 115th Streets along Seventh Avenue doesn’t differ much from the Valley north of it, but earns its reputation from the sheer volume of sex workers found there. Here, too, one finds a great abundance of speakeasies and shady storefronts. Underground boxing matches attract men from all over the city, who throw down their last two bits on a bet.
Aging tenements sag with their load of Harlem’s weariest souls, those who keep the city running but are undercompensated, and whose work goes unnoticed until it goes undone. The buildings on the south end of Harlem are a mix of old tenement housing and warehouses, usually laughably out of date from health codes. Too often, one encounters a mother with the bloody cough of consumptive, pulling herself out to work because she has mouths to feed. A family of six hangs out a sign saying “BOARDER WANTED” so they can make next month’s rent. Along the streets, one encounters more of the same, just in greater poverty. This is the land of desperate people, who are willing to take desperate chances. Looking to recruit those down on their luck to join in an underground battle for the very soul of Harlem? This is where you come.
La Marqueta lies under the el (between 111th Street and 116th Street on Park Avenue) and is an open-air market. The market is not officially sanctioned but few officers care enough to shut it down save for the occasional raid for counterfeit or stolen goods. The market is full of haggling customers and the majority of goods for sale consist of fresh fruit and vegetables. Some of the fruit sold is specific to the Caribbean islands or specialty spices for Creole or Haitian customers. Mixed in with the produce stands, other goods can be found including traditional medicines, books, and odds and ends better suited to a flea market. Customers might find protection charms or supplies for curse making. In this less-than-legal open market, it is wise to watch for pickpockets.
Greenberg’s Groceries (at 116th and Madison Avenue) is owned and operated by Shmuel and Celia Greenberg and their son Richard. The corner grocery store covers 1,030 square feet (96 m2), with a three-bedroom apartment upstairs for the family. The building, constructed in 1899, now resides in a neighborhood of mostly Jews plus a few Irish immigrants. The store specializes in the charge and delivery trade, markets to the upper class in the Harlem Jewish community, and is something of a neighborhood community center. It is rarely empty, with kids buying sweets and the elderly dropping in for a chat. The basic layout of the store has not changed much since 1907. The meat department occupies most of the back of the store, while the one-time side entrance (between the produce and dairy departments) is blocked off and filled with shelving. Wooden grocery shelves line the opposite wall and are filled with canned goods. Every clerk is armed with a pole that has clamps to reach items on the upper shelves. The store caters not only to customers who either drive or walk to the store but also to those who telephone in orders. Richard Greenberg is the primary driver of the store’s only delivery truck. Shmuel is proud of his full-service meat department, which only carries prime and top choice meats. Greenberg’s Groceries employs a number of positions: a produce manager, several clerks, a slew of butchers, and two drivers (one of whom is Richard).
A sprawling brownstone of 6,008 square feet (558 m2) at 278 West 113th Street is the Houdini House. In 1904, Harry Houdini purchased the home in a large German Jewish community for $25,000. The brownstone was constructed in 1895 but remained unfinished until Houdini had it completed. His lavishly furnished home provides him plenty of living space, including a sunken tub to practice his underwater act (his pride and joy) and a library stocked with thousands of books, which surrounds his office at the center. Houdini can frequently be found here.

Type

Neighbourhood

Location under

Harlem