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Facing unprecedented development, the country's foremost black community
asks: How should we value Harlem's built heritage, and how do we
shape its future?
By Alex Ulam
Photography by Alice Attie for Metropolis
December 2002
Michael Henry Adams is standing in the transept of a Roman Catholic church
in the middle of West Harlem, lecturing to a group of minority students
from New York University. Wearing a straw boater and with a walking stick
at his side, the architectural historian discusses in exquisite detail the
decorative features of Saint Thomas the Apostle: the massive masonry columns
and stained-glass windows imported from Germany. Then Adams, who is black,
describes the congregation of Irish immigrants who built the Neo-Gothic
church in 1907 and the discrimination against blacks that existed there.
Initially, he explains, blacks were not permitted to join; once they were
allowed, there were quotas and segregated seating. In the early 1930s black
children were still excluded from the church's school.
The discrimination at Saint Thomas the Apostle was typical in most public
buildings during the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s. African-American writers
and artists were gaining worldwide recognition, and black musicians like
Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were defining the Jazz Age. But
at the same time, some of Harlem's most famous places--like the Cotton Club
and the Victoria Theatre--catered exclusively to whites. Not only did the
Harlem renaissance take place against a backdrop of segregation, it was
also missing one important artistic medium: a distinctive black architecture.
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From left to right: Walter Edwards of Full Spectrum Development, Roberta Washington, Max
Bond, Michael Henry Adams, and Jack Travis are among those shaping the
architectural face of Harlem today.
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No black firms took part in the competition to design the Studio Museum
(above); the 2001 project went to Rogers Marvel Architects.
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But then Harlem, which boasts some of Manhattan's most charming residential
blocks, wasn't built for blacks. Strivers' Row, set along tree-lined blocks
on West 138th and 139th streets, for example, is a striking collection of
fanciful European-style row houses designed for middle-class whites at the
turn of the century. The neighborhood also has some of the city's grandest
apartment buildings, libraries, and theaters, many of which were built by
the leading architects of the day, including McKim, Mead & White, James
Brown Lord, and Bruce Price.
Harlem's public buildings are no longer places of discrimination. But a
racially charged debate over the very meaning and value of its architecture
is coming to the fore as the area undergoes what is being touted as its
second renaissance: a building boom that is raising the question of what
to preserve and what to build. More important is who, ultimately, will make
such decisions; African-American architects, planners, and developers feel
they have not had a satisfactory hand in shaping what that renaissance will
look like. Meanwhile the debate over historic Harlem is mirrored in the
few cases where black architects are finding commissions there. Some
are designing modern interpretations of the area's preexisting architecture.
But others are creating new buildings with motifs and shapes that hark back
to African ancestors instead of making references to European ones.
For preservationists such as Adams, author of the book Harlem Lost and
Found, all of Harlem's historic buildings are important--not only because
they served as a backdrop for the Harlem renaissance but also because of
their aesthetic qualities. In his quest to preserve Harlem's architectural
history, Adams says he is battling "the Taliban attitude--the notion
that because buildings represent some alien culture or indeed some oppressive
culture, they're not only expendable but should be replaced."
But many black architects--though not arguing for the destruction of Harlem's
historic buildings--see in this Eurocentric architectural heritage the embodiment
of an outdated set of cultural values. Max Bond, former chair of the Columbia
University school of architecture, doubts that if African Americans had
had an opportunity to express their own ethos in architecture during the
Harlem renaissance they would have done it using classical forms. "There
is a history of the use of classical architecture in this country as a means
of expressing authority," he says. "You have a language used to
express the grandeur and power of the state."
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Critics say Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Harlem USA building
(above) is of out context with its 125th Street surroundings,
which are reflected in its glass windows.
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For some Harlem's older buildings are reminiscent of an era of inequality.
Bond speaks bitterly of the segregation that existed until after World War
II at the Victoria Theatre, a neoclassical building that city officials
are currently considering for landmark status. One has to look at Harlem's
architectural heritage on a case-by-case basis, Bond says. "There are
things about Harlem's heritage that need to be preserved, but there are
also things about Harlem's heritage that should be changed--and changed
forever," he says. "The heritage of segregation is not one with
which I am sympathetic, so if something represents oppression, I don't want
it."
But for Adams, who is fighting to have all of Harlem put on the National
Register of Historoic Places, the buildings themselves are innocent. "To
have an architecture that symbolizes part of a long established tradition--yes,
that's part of a loaded agenda," he says. "The Southerners who
built temple-fronted plantation houses and courthouses were absolutely using
the ideas of antiquity to help them justify owning other human beings. But
they were also using that architecture to express a system of political
thought that brought about all the idealistic notions that later made it
possible for former slaves to be free." More important for Adams, many
of Harlem's historic buildings have what he feels is a transcendent aesthetic
beauty, and they should not be held responsible for "the sins of the
people who created them."
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Roberta Washington's design for the mixed-used condominium complex 1400
on Fifth (above) features railings with a Dinka motif (below) and columns
with African masks similar to the one in this early sketch (bottom).
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Courtesy Roberta Washington.
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Some who take issue with Adams's crusade say the real value of Harlem's
historic buildings is not in their architectural detailing. "There
are properties that have great cultural significance for the African-American
community, but they were given that significance by the ways that they
were used," says Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, in Harlem. When PBS did a series on New York
City neighborhoods with a focus on architecture, Dodson and a panel of scholars
at the center told the show's producers that the Harlem segment would require
a different approach. "If you simply do an architectural history tour,"
Dodson says, "you miss the significance of Harlem."
Preservation in Harlem poses special challenges not found in other New York
City neighborhoods, says William Davis, an architect and former member of
the City Landmarks Preservation Commission. "When people think of Harlem,
they think of things like the Lenox Lounge [jazz club]," he says. "If
the Lenox Lounge doesn't exist anymore, then it is only a memory. Without
it being there, there's not much."
In the last few years great progress has been made in landmarking Harlem's
European architectural heritage, but many of Harlem's important African-American
sites have fallen into disrepair. Some historic buildings are being sacrificed
to the "use it or lose it" imperatives of inner-city economic
redevelopment, for which issues of preservation appear to be afterthoughts.
The shell of the building that once housed Small's Paradise, the first
major nightclub in Harlem that welcomed blacks and whites equally, is being
renovated beyond recognition--into a high school with an International House
of Pancakes on its ground floor. Also endangered is the abandoned Renaissance
Casino and Ballroom. It was built by followers of Black Nationalist leader
Marcus Garvey, and during the 1920s and 1930s its ballroom was one of the
only upscale reception halls in New York available for black events.
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