Harlem: Jazz, Gospel, and the Renaissance

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

One of the world's leading research institutions for Black history and culture, built around the personal collection of bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.

You're standing in front of a brick and glass building that holds more than eleven million items documenting the global Black experience. That collection started with one man. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a Puerto Rican born Black bibliophile who spent his life gathering books, manuscripts, and art that white libraries and universities ignored. In 1926, the New York Public Library bought his collection, and it became the foundation of what you see today.

Step inside the lobby if the center is open. The Langston Hughes Auditorium is to your left. Hughes himself lived a few blocks from here, and his ashes are interred beneath the lobby floor, under a cosmogram titled 'Rivers.' The archives upstairs hold the papers of Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X. This is not just a library. It is the institutional memory of a people, and it all began with one man who refused to let that memory be erased.

When you're ready, we're heading three blocks north to a church that shaped American politics as much as American faith.

Abyssinian Baptist Church

Founded in 1808, this Gothic Revival church became the largest Black congregation in America and the spiritual home of congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

You're looking at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and the story of this congregation is the story of Harlem itself. It was founded in 1808 by a group of Black worshippers and Ethiopian seamen who walked out of a white church over segregated seating. They named it after Abyssinia, the ancient name for Ethiopia.

The building in front of you was completed in 1923, a Gothic and Tudor Revival structure of gray stone with a pointed arch window above the entrance. Inside are imported European stained glass windows and an Italian marble pulpit. But the real power of this place came from its preachers. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. took over in 1908 and built the largest Black congregation in America. His son, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., became pastor in 1937 and later the first Black congressman from New York City, serving fourteen terms. From this church, he pushed through civil rights legislation that changed the country.

On a Sunday morning, the gospel choir here is one of the great musical experiences in New York. Even from the sidewalk, you can sometimes hear rehearsal through the stone walls.

Turn west now and walk toward Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Cross it, and you'll enter two of the most beautiful residential blocks in Manhattan.

Strivers' Row

Two blocks of landmark row houses by three famed architectural firms, home to Harlem's Black professional elite during the Renaissance.

These two blocks of West 138th and 139th Streets are the St. Nicholas Historic District, but everybody calls them Strivers' Row. Take a moment and look at the houses. You'll notice they're not all the same. Three different architectural firms designed them. On the south side of 138th Street, the red brick and brownstone row is Georgian Revival by James Brown Lord. Across the street and on the south side of 139th, the yellow brick with white limestone trim is Colonial Revival by Bruce Price and Clarence Luce. And on the north side of 139th Street, the dark brick with terra cotta details is Italian Renaissance Revival by Stanford White of McKim, Mead and White.

They were built between 1891 and 1893 by a developer named David H. King Jr., the same man who built the base of the Statue of Liberty and the original Madison Square Garden. He planned these houses for upper middle class whites, but an economic depression killed the market, and the houses sat mostly empty for twenty five years. In 1919, they were finally sold to Black buyers for eight thousand dollars each. Doctors, lawyers, musicians, and writers moved in. W.C. Handy, the father of the blues, lived at 232 West 139th Street. Eubie Blake lived at 236 West 138th. The name 'Strivers' Row' came from the idea that if you lived here, you had arrived. You had strived and made it.

Walk the length of both blocks if you can. Look for the wrought iron gates between the buildings. Those lead to rear alleyways that still have signs reading 'Walk Your Horses.' They were service alleys for deliveries and stables, a pocket of nineteenth century New York tucked behind these elegant facades.

When you're done exploring, head back to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and walk south five blocks to 133rd Street.