At the turn of the last century, Harlem was poised at the threshhold of what would become known as its Renaissance.
The Great Migration of blacks from the South – one of the most massive movements of people in history – transformed the once-rural village north of New York proper into a teeming metropolitan center.
Everyone came to Harlem: from Pig Foot Mary, selling a hot lunch on the street cooked in a boiler in a baby carriage, to Langston Hughes, writing poetry that expressed the souls of a people, and Jacob Lawrence, who boldly painted their sometimes-torturous trek to this new Promised Land.
They turned upper Manhattan into the nerve center of the explosion of African-American cultural, artistic, musical and literary expression of the day.
As we enter the new millennium, Harlem is again in a renaissance – full-swing this time. Its vitality is once again drawing everyone across 110th Street – from young couples lovingly restoring Hamilton Heights brownstones to tourists admiring Franco Gaskin’s store-shutter murals and savoring Sylvia’s famous soul food.
But tourists aren’t the only ones having a good time in Harlem. The community’s nightlife is ablaze, with venues that draw everyone from the dot.com crowd to swing dancers to the hip-hop generation.
And it’s not just people who are coming to Harlem.
The $85 million Harlem Center is set to rise soon over 125th Street – one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world – joining more than 30 local and national retailers, from Starbucks to SONY Theaters.
The commercial boom is proceeding hand-in-hand with housing redevelopment. The restored splendor of places like Strivers’ Row – the 106 brownstones stretching along 139th Street designed by Stanford White in 1891 – and St. Nicholas Avenue’s high-altitude Sugar Hill have pushed brownstones values as high as $800,000.
Finally, Harlem is about something more important than history or hanging out. Harlem is about people.
And there’s no better time to discover Harlem – its history, culture, art, music, food, fashion and people – than this summer.
HARLEM WEEK – closer to a month, really – will show off this amazing community in all its glory and remind everyone, first-time visitor and resident alike, that no place shines like uptown.
So take the “A” train – or the B, C, D, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 9. Because it’s time to “Discover Harlem.”