☞ REMEMBER: Boudoir Houses of St. Nicholas

Christopher Gray of the Times recently reviewed the history of the beautiful bay front townhouses found at St. Nicholas Avenue on Sugar Hill and yet did not mention the notable establishments that would eventually be set up in some of the storefronts found there within. Number 757 to 775 St. Nicholas Avenue were all built in 1895 as mostly single family estates with elegant stoops but those said structures would later be replaced by storefronts. This row of homes located between 148th and 149th Street housed mostly wealthier white families in the earliest part of the 20th century and eventually ushered in a couple of iconic establishments once the neighborhood demographics shifted during the Renaissance years.

Within the 1940s, the famous Jimmy's Chicken Shack would debut on the hill at a former stoop and the first incarnation of St. Nick's Pub would come about.  Jimmy's Chicken Shack was at Number 763 St. Nicholas and was apparently Malcolm X's favorite restaurant and the young Harlem resident reportedly lived in the building.  At number 773 St. Nicholas, Lucky's Rendezvous would also open up by the 1940's and evidently served as a gay-friendly jazz spot for the first couple of decades of its incarnation but eventually would become today's St. Nick's Pub by the 1960s: LINK

Read more on about the history of this block in the Times: LINK