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Place Name
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Harlem
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Place Status (Type)
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neighborhood
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Location
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New York, United States, North America
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Latitude
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unknown
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Longitude
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unknown
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Harlem
, residential and business section of upper Manhattan,
N.Y. city, bounded roughly by 110th St. (S), the East R. (E) and Harlem
R. (NE), 168th St. (NW), Amsterdam Ave. (NW), and Morningside Park
(SW). The Du. settlement of Nieuw Haarlem was est. 1658 by Peter
Stuyvesant. To the W of Harlem, near the present site of Columbia
Univ., Br. and Continental forces fought (Sept. 16, 1776) the Battle of
Harlem Heights. Harlem remained rural until the 19th cent. when
improved transportation facilities linked it with lower Manhattan. It
then became a fashionable residential sect. of N.Y. city. By the turn
of the cent. Harlem had a large Jewish pop.; starting around 1910
Harlem became the scene of increasing Afr.-Amer. migration from the
South. It soon became the largest and most influential Afr.-Amer.
community in the nation, one of the centers of innovation in jazz, and
the home of such Harlem Renaissance authors as Langston Hughes, Countee
Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston. In East Harlem, a largely Ital.
neighborhood—the home of Mayor Fiorello H.
LaGuardia—many Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic-Americans
settled after World War II. The intersection of 7th Ave. and 125th
Street is generally considered the heart of Harlem; Lenox Ave., once
internationally known for its entertainment spots, is now mainly lined
with housing developments. Strivers' Row is a block of well-preserved
turn-of-the-cent. townhouses. Site of the Abyssinian Baptist Church,
headed for many years by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and the Apollo
theater, noted for performances by Afr.-Amer. musicians and
entertainers. An extensive scholarly collection is housed at the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (part of the N.Y. Public
Lib.), which is adjacent to the Countee Cullen branch of the lib.
Harlem today has a mixture of poverty and some gentrification, in part
due to a city policy favoring renovations of abandoned residential
bldgs. Increasingly popular as a tourist destination. Designated (1996)
as an Enterprise Zone.
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